Hello,
I know there is a thread about game marketing. But I think its a little more specific here.
Like the topic says: Has someone here a game released and left the marketing to a agency?
Was it worth the money?
What did they offer for the money?
How to find out who are the black sheeps? (There are many offers in google, but I how can I know they did what they promised)
Can you suggest any agency?
Thank you very much
Unless you are a studio with deep pockets and good lawyers to look after your interests and defend you: don’t do it.
You want to advertise: do it yourself. A good place to start would be buysellads.com
As to worth the money? Publicity won’t make your game popular, you will need hype generated by reviewers and forum communities, or in store features (like Apple’s App Store New feature, or Steam’s front page feature.) Marketing may make sure you retain some traction for longer. I can’t say I noticed a bump from ads, but I think I can say I noticed a drop when I discontinued my humble ad campaign.
If you want to trust your soul to an agency, try to pursue a publisher instead. If you are mobile, and your game good enough to be accepted by a publisher, they will be handling all marketing, and on top making sure the title gets seen by reviewers. In the mobile space, Chillingo and BulkyPix are examples of publishers that will do this for you (there are others,) rumor has it they may take about 50% of the app profit and lock you into a 5 year deal, but given it may be impossible to be noticed without them, it may be worth the money as you may net much more than going pure solo.
Do keep in mind all publishers are picky, they dont grab any title since they invest heavy money on marketting, they want to make sure what they are putting money into has a chance of getting a profit for them.
No, no deep pockets here 
I am not talking about big budgets. But there are offers in the internet for lets say less then 1000$. There are even money back guarenties if they dont push you in the top/100 (not sure about the 100 could be another number).
Dont get me wrong, I am also highly warily about such offers.
There are some people they used such a service and they where ask for promo codes by famous blogs. Don’t know if this is big success. (got this from gamasutra)
Actually what you are describing as generating hype is exactly what they offer. Providing reviewers, press releases to blogs and so on.
I am wondering how the high frequented blog would react. Maybe if an “official” agency is mailing them they look a little closer to it then if I would do it by myself. I am not a native english speaker, so I need some help anyway for writing something like this.
Again, I am talking about marketing offers for “people like us” need some kind of marketing, not much money, to stupid to do it by myself.
Thanks for your help.
There is a website called prMac that will send press releases for just 20 bucks. They offer you a template for you to be able to make a nice pro-looking press release.
As for the promises about top/100 or money back… I have heard a lot of scams go that path, some in these forums. Any professional will only go as far as say they will do their best, but no one will actually guarantee getting you into the top 100.
Thats a great help. Thank you.
Actually thats what I mean. They try there best and if they don’t get you in the top/100 hundred you get money back, not all, don’t remember how much it was, 50-70 percent maybe. Still, I don’t know how trustworthy that is.
re: top 100:
hehe. If there are companies out there making a living on such promises, I’m certainly in the wrong branch of IT. “We’ll sell your house within 4 weeks, or you get half your money back!” 
Baring the schemers, it’s really not that hard to get a top-100 result on google. All you need is some basic SEO knowledge and lots of websites.
The real problem is, that it doesn’t matter if you’re listed last or at hundredth - no one goes through 100 search results, and then clicks your page. You need to be at least on the 2nd page (top 40), before it has any significance.
Looking for google’s guide, I found this. I guess that will be my disclaimer.
Thank you for your knowledge Tobias Jey
It sounds to me like you’re referring fairly specifically to the the marketing firm ComboApp specifically mentioned in the Bulletproof Outlaws blog linked to in the other thread yavadoo. If that’s the case, the guarantee they make is actually quite narrow. Specifically, if you hire them for their “Top 100 Campaign” they guarantee they will get your game into a single top 100 in a single category on the Apple App store. They do not offer services specifically geared for the Android market. Importantly, they don’t guarantee they will keep you there for any length of time. This means they are promising they will for example, get your game into the top 100 of the “arcade” category on the iTunes app store for a single day. This in no way means you’ll be anywhere near the top 100 of the overall app store or even the overall games category. Further, this service costs $4,900 and not everyone can get it. They state you must submit your game for their review and they must agree to take you on as a client for this particular service (other services they offer have no such restriction). This seems a clear statement of the fact that not every game that might look for them to promote it is top 100 material, and they’re going to try to avoid backing a loosing horse. If they fail to meet this promise, they refund half your money, $2450.
I’m personally not so down on marketing firms as the other posters here seem to be. Various businesses I’ve worked for over the years have hired marketing firms to promote their products and most continue to do so. Not all of these companies hiring PR firms were mega-corps like Coke, some were much more modest in size, (though still far larger than a single indy developer.) The reason these companies continue to hire marketing firms is they believe there is value in doing so. Two different friends of mine are in marketing, and though they’re of course biased, both can make strong arguments for the value of their services.
Marketing is a business that relies on specific skills and even more importantly, connections. Most game designers have neither of these, so it might make sense to hire someone who does if you have the budget. Know what you know, know what you don’t know as they saying goes. If the principals of this marketing firm have connections with editors and reviewers at important blogs, this could be worth the money. BPO mentioned repeatedly and specifically how he saw spikes in his sales when he received favorable reviews at larger blogs and sites. Also, they do things like bombard the internet with press releases, and make target advertising buys on your behalf, so they’re not just sitting on your money. You could do press releases and buy advertising yourself, but a firm that specializes in marketing apps is probably going to be better at writing press releases and getting them into the right hands, as well as knowing what advertising tends to be more effective than another.
I’ve done some preliminary due diligence on ComboApp, as I like you have considered using them or another firm like them. What I’ve found so far is ComboApp has been around for at least two years, and does have a verifiable list of clients. This is a good sign as it means they’re probably not a fly by night operation or a complete scam. I have not as yet contacted any of their past clients to ask them directly for their experience with ComboApp, but if I do consider moving forward with them, I certainly would and would recommend you do the same. I’ve cross referenced the time period ComboApp was employed by these various developers with stats available on App Annie to see if I could find any correlation between increased sales and hiring ComboApp. In some cases there does seem to be something of a correlation, but in most cases it’s entirely unclear. In ComboApp’s defense, many of these past clients hired them for relatively smaller services such as writing and submitting press releases. I have not yet been able to find a client who hired ComboApp for their top 100 campaign, and before I did, I would insist on them providing such references which I would verify personally. ComboApp does to their credit provide a list of past clients on their site, and more can be found with some googling and blog crawling.
So, there it is. Always do your due diligence before hiring anyone, but they, or another marketing firm may not in fact be a bad investment of marketing dollars. Also, make sure you’ve actually spoken to some of these past clients yourself before you hire anyone. Keep your eyes open. If I go forward with a marketing firm when the time comes (still a fairly long way off for me), I’ll be sure to post my experience on this forum for others. If you go forward with ComboApp or another, please do the same, the rest of us would love to hear your thoughts.
Cheers!
We’ve had a terrible experience dealing with ComboApp in the past and wouldn’t recommend them to anyone! They rip you off big time and the quality of service is shocking! There are much better app marketing agencies out there… just don’t waste your money on ComboApp!
Hey there,
I noticed that this question was asked last year but still would like to respond in case we can be of help. If you are interested for a chat, email our CEO at tapdaq.com, ted@tapdaq.com. We hope to hear from you soon.
Cheers!
yavadoo, I think you are better off focusing on press release and doing your own marketing than spending money on advertising agencies, even it seems like a good deal under $1,000 Bucks, in my own experience when I was marketing my Game “Fallen World” http://fallenworld.us for OUYA and iOS. When I Search Google for my game, I find more Link Backs, Reviews, and Media related to my Game that were from my own Marketing Efforts between Writing up a Press Release myself, using Press Release Services such as http://www.gamespress.com/, and http://www.gamerelease.net/, and also Submitting the Press Release via Email to as Many Game Review Sites as Possible.
Although my Game was not a huge success, I know that my Marketing Efforts worked without the need of an Advertising Agency as an Indie. My game had a number of flaws, but I think if it was abit more polished and some issues were addressed before release then I may have done much better. Good learning experience none the less, I’d use the same steps again for my next game, but I will make sure I have a good game on my hands… as no matter how much good marketing you do, if you have a bad game you have a bad game lol! it’s not going to sell if it’s not something people will like.
I disagree with this. Many of the PR firms I’ve looked into manage this for you end to end. They know the game industry well and know what it takes for your game to get exposure, far more than us developers do.
Some PR firms know the game industry and have the connections to get your game in front of many reviewers and sites that you may not have been able to do by yourself. I’d suggest googling for ‘Game PR’ and see what comes up. I’ve actually found many of these companies to be really busy, so business is good for them.
I’ve chatted to a couple of them too, and some of them sound really really clued up on the industry and gave me some good advice.
The premium ones will end up costing you a few thousand $$$ but considering that’s only a few weeks of development costs it’s really not too bad.
I think a good part of any game budget should be a well planned marketing campaign with an established PR firm with experience in the game industry. There is so much competition nowadays that if you don’t have good marketing you will probably end up nowhere.
To answer your question, I’d suggest contacting all of them (Now is a bad time with Christmas and holidays etc), and see which one resonates with you best. Send them a clear email, telling them about your game, some screenshots, what you hope to achieve etc.