Where is the Audience?
Man, self-publishing is rough.
I mean, it’s not like there weren’t warning signs from every single resource on the topic, but dang. Self-publishing got hands.
The good news is that, for Mana Mania, a good number of things are already taken off of my plate. The art and graphics are minimalistic and done by our team or by friends at a low rate. We’ve got a manufacturer lined up who will take care of shipping, albeit at a slightly higher cost than some other potential suppliers. Play testers gave us a bunch of thumbs up. No, the biggest hurdle is just getting the audience together.
Diceratops’ socials team has really been hitting the books for about two years now, and we’ve got a non-insignificant following to show for it. Amassing 1200+ followers on Instagram and 40+ Discord members takes at least a bit of effort. But when it came time to put out the news that our Kickstarter Preview page was live (link here) and that people could sign up for notifications, very little of that translated into sign-ups. I think in the first day or so we hit 25 followers on the KS page, which is far short of our goals for funding (~300). So where was/is our audience?
As of writing, that number is still only at 71 followers, and we’re still attempting to pump those numbers up. In the meantime, let’s walk through what we’ve tried to close the gap before launch.
Strategy 1: Announcing on Social Media
The easiest and by far least rewarding step. It’s where you open yourself up, heart bare to the world, and see who comes running. Turns out, for a small publisher like us, only the most loyal of testers and fans are going to be lined at the gate. You have to go out and find the rest of them, no matter what the numbers on your profile page say.
Womp.
Strategy 2: Instagram Advertising
Diceratops has played around with Instagram ads in the past, with little investment and little success. For $10 a day over a five day period, starting just a day after posting, we blared out a separate announcement to the broader Meta gaming community. Around 2300 people were exposed to our content in that period, and around 90% of that was from the ad (by Instagram’s analytics). We bumped the numbers up to 50 KS followers, but I have to wonder whether that was because of the ad or because of the separate outreach that was happening alongside it.
At best, we just paid like $2 per backer, which isn’t exactly a sustainable model for funding.
Strategy 3: Individual Outreach
I am lukewarm to receiving DMs from random accounts promoting their businesses and was somewhat pessimistic about the prospects of this next strategy. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I don’t actually buy that many board games. My collection is small, I am a frugal person, and I prefer to play a small range of games with friends or through my local game café. If other publishers messaged my personal account immediately after following me, I wouldn’t bite. Nevermind when they do it to our official Diceratops account.
On the other hand, I’d like to publish Mana Mania in the next year, and that’s going to mean advertising to a lot of people who ultimately won’t be interested. Someone subscribed to Diceratops Games is theoretically interested in the content we produce, and we follow most of them back. This makes us mutuals, and in internet world, that typically buys you the social capital for at least one self-promo DM. So, during downtime at my day job, I spent hours and hours manually sending slightly-different messages to hundreds of our followers on Instagram. (I’m terribly sorry if this is how you discovered that our DM was not tailored from scratch for your inbox. I’m only human.) I am yet to finish, but the results have been somewhat effective.
A few dozen people responded to these messages, and every time they did, the dopamine rush was enough to warrant continuing my slog. My personal intervention won over 20+ people into at least subscribing for notifications, which feels great. What doesn’t feel great are the hundreds of Sent’s and Seen’s in the Diceratops DM’s box. The good news is that those people didn’t unfollow us on mass, and if they didn’t respond, there probably wasn’t much of a bridge to burn by send a mass-message. The bad news is, we’re still not getting a good hit rate on signups from our own followers.
Strategy 4: Friends and Family
I’ve been passively prepping my loved ones and long-time acquaintances for the knowledge that Diceratops Games even exists. With the KS preview launch, I made the difficult decision to let people know I have hobbies and interests. (Terrifying.)
But in earnest, I’ve made an attempt to reach out to old classmates and connections. Not just for the sake of shilling a kickstarter (or at least, what feels like shilling), but to upkeep some contacts that had gotten lost in the hustle and bustle of life. Old coaches, professors, teachers, coworkers, drinking buddies, and convention-goers; people that had touched my life and were worth speaking to again by themselves. I had given the necessary cause to allow myself that interaction while feeling productive, which is something that has held me back before.
Not everyone was keen, but at least the company was good.
So from here, there’s still a lot to try. Unfortunately, the road ahead is long and winding, but not so long as to be comfortable and at times more winding than it seems worth. Let me know if you’ve got any ideas, and please, feel free to spread the word.
More Ads: Facebook and BGG are promising, but our entry for Stoicheion still needs to be rebranded as Mana Mania, which is an endeavor in itself. It’ll take research and more personal investment to pursue either, but it may ultimately be necessary. I don’t know that we’ll continue Instagram adverts until we hit actual campaign launch.
Boots on the Ground: There are plenty of LGS in our state, and from the interactions we’ve had in the past, many were open to helping us out. It’s simple to just pass out a few fliers, but there was also a promising opportunity in local game nights. The problem is, most stores are not close enough to warrant this on a whim, nevermind the expected return on time investment. We don’t have enough feet on the street to reliably catch the hidden nerd population of Nebraska.
Previews: We’ve sent out one copy of Mana Mania for previews among different content creators in the US. It’s slow going, and the first one is yet to be released. However, with an outside party speaking on our behalf and promoting the gameplay to their audience, there’s a significant chance we see some more people filter in. But more previews would require more game copies and more willing previewers in the states.
