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How do you market a game with a very specific target demographic?

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 7:09 pm
by verysunshine
I made a quiz game for people studying for the Alberta Basic Security Training exam because I couldn't find any good studying resources online. I promoted it on the Alberta subreddit, but I'm not sure if I should be doing more to market it.

My target demographic is people in Alberta who are studying for the ABST. That's quite specific. I don't know how to reach that specific audience without wasting a ton of time on barely relevant content.

Re: How do you market a game with a very specific target demographic?

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:45 pm
by Kuiper
"Search Engine Optimization" used to be considered a dirty word (and maybe some people still regard it as such, due to its associations with spam), but extremely narrow niches are exactly the place where SEO can work to your benefit.

It's very difficult for people to find you or your content by googling for something like "video game" or "quiz," because these are such common terms and you're competing against all kinds of content. However, the number of sites producing content that would turn up in a search for "Alberta Basic Security Training Exam" is significantly lower: the chance of your content showing up on the front page of a google search for this (or related) topics is much higher, because it's not as if big sites are producing a ton of content for this niche.

It might be worth starting a website (not a blog on a site like tumblr or medium, but your own Wordpress/other CMS installation where you can control everything, and post about things that could potentially be useful to people who are about to take the Alberta Basic Security Training exam, with post titles like "How to prepare for the Alberta Basic Security Training exam," or "Common questions seen on the Alberta Basic Security Training exam," or other common google queries that are likely to be searched by people who are in your target demographic. You could become an authority on this subject, and each of your posts could end with, "Here, check out this thing I made that is definitely relevant to your interests." This is also known as "content marketing:" you make good content that is relevant to your customers' interests, and they reward you with their eyeballs (something that you'd usually have to pay money for to obtain via advertising).

The alternative to organic, home-grown SEO is to simply buy advertising space on google or facebook, so instead of having to go through the process of creating ABST-related content that gets recognized by google as being authoritative, you instead just pay some money to cut to the front of the line and have your advertisement for your ABST prep quiz shown to people who search for ABST and other related queries.

If you're interested in dipping your toes into the world of SEO, some of the best content on this subject I've seen is written by Patrick McKenzie, here's a link to all of the posts on his blog, sorted by category; scroll down to the "SEO" header for that specific content.

You could also venture into the "real world." For example, Columbia College offers a ABST course. Maybe you could contact the person who teaches the course and say, "Hey, I made a resource that might be useful to your students." Or, if you're taking such a class yourself, you can reach out to your classmates directly. Given that your potential "customers" in this case are people who are physically close to you in the real world (and regularly gather at places such as college classrooms with other people who study the thing that your content pertains to), it might be worth using that physical closeness to your advantage.

Re: How do you market a game with a very specific target demographic?

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 5:51 pm
by Mutive
My suggestion would be to find places that cater to people who'd be taking the ABST and market it there.

e.g. are there people who teach training classes? Might they be willing to mention it (or hand out coupons for 25% off in their classes)? Are there websites that help prepare that you could advertise on? (Or partner with in some way?)

I don't know much about the test, so it's hard for me to recommend concrete examples. But I'd think that if you could find places where people preparing for the test would naturally congregate, that would be a great start!

Re: How do you market a game with a very specific target demographic?

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 5:03 pm
by verysunshine
I will contact people who teach the ABST. I'm fairly certain that some of these places, including Columbia College, where I took the course, have information boards. I could whip up some posters for the boards, and send them in e-mails. Or I could just send the links.

I'm looking at making the game look a bit more accessible by making it available on the Google Play store. If I do that, I might also update the project to add content in areas where the current version is lacking.