How to Work in Video Games Marketing

Video Games Marketing

When it comes to video games marketing there is no ‘one size fits all’ role and it really takes a team effort to bring our camapigns to life. Bringing video games to market is a collaborative task of individuals who all bring their field of expertise to the table. Combining all these skills allows us to create a marketing plan for our products. In this blog post we want to share with you what we do as a marketing team at Coatsink so you know how to work in video games marketing!

How did you get started?

Digital Acquisition Manager

What do you do in your position? What does it mean to be a Digital Acquisition Manager?

Hello! I’m Laura and I’m actually pretty new at Coatsink. I joined the team at the start of 2020 to help manage the various marketing channels and come up with creative and effective ways to tell people about our fabulous games and hopefully make them want to play them (and that’s the long version of my job title).

What’s the best way to gain experience? What kind of education do I need to be a Digital Acquisition Manager?

The best way to gain experience is to start in a more general marketing role where you get to know the basics of marketing as well as try out the different roles and skills within the discipline (there are LOTS). It took me a good few years to find out which parts of marketing I was the most interested in and wanted to pursue, which eventually led me here! 

The most important thing to keep in mind when you’re thinking about a career in marketing is that the job isn’t just about selling something, it’s about providing something customers really want and value, and being able to communicate that creatively. You need to really understand the customer motivation and values to be good at this job, so although there’s a huge creative element to my role, any campaign needs to start with a big chunk of research into your product, the market and who your target audience is and what they care about.

The creative side of things is also really important and the best way to gain experience with this is to try new things, or at least don’t be scared of sharing your ideas,  no matter how ‘out there’ they might seem. Video games marketing needs those brave and bold ideas to stand out and often they come from those coming into the industry with fresh eyes!

What’s the best thing about your job?

For me it’s kicking off a big campaign and being able to see all the different parts of our team come together to create something awesome. We recently exhibited at a big industry conference in the USA (PAX East) and every single member of the team had a hand in the event. Seeing the demand and the campaigns we put together working and creating buzz and growing our audience has been really rewarding and has been an awesome start to the campaign.

I also really love the analytical side of the job, I find it really interesting to dissect the numbers and performance of a campaign and figure out what’s working and what’s not. The more you learn about what you’re doing and how effective it is the better you understand and learn about your audience and improve future activities.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given in your job?

Quite early on in my career my boss at the time told me about the ‘focus group of one’ effect and why it is important to test your own biases and assumptions. It’s tempting within this role to use my own opinion to make decisions, but in this profession that can be very risky as your target audience is often vastly different to you as a person (another reason research is so important). The best thing you can do is get the input of others (ideally your target audience where possible) and never assume you’re the expert. It’s totally fine to have hunches and to use your own and other’s experience to guide decision, but just make sure you’re testing against an alternative where you can.

How to gain experience?

A particularly interesting question about my role because there are so many paths that can lead to it. There are of course the more traditional roles of education that give everyone a headstart, however experience from simply doing is ultimately the most valuable. The internet allows just about anyone to gain experience in video content, there are many online courses and tutorials but there are also many opportunities to learn from your own passion. Making content for Youtube, streaming on Twitch, all help you gain experience towards a role like my own.

Portfolio?

For any role, your portfolio should only be your strongest work, 3 bits of amazing work are better than 6 weak pieces. Keep on top of updating it and removing older work as you progress, consolidating the best pieces into a website is best practise. Remember to include details of what you actually worked on within each piece, did you make the animation or the motion graphics? Maybe you directed all the shots, edited and colour corrected it all too, be specific. Try to show off your range of abilities across your portfolio and include links to the pieces you think most apply to the role directly, don’t expect a company to dig through your portfolio for that one piece.

Community and Social Media Management

What do you do in your position?

My main goal as a Social Media and Community Manager is to grow communities around our games. I do this by building an interesting and engaging content marketing plan and social media campaigns. 

I also offer support to players who need help with our games. Most frequently, I do this through emails, social media or our owned Discord server but I also browse through Reddit or watch first impressions and reviews on YouTube to assist wherever possible. Similarly, it is my task to give community feedback to our devs and the rest of the marketing team. 

Although my main task is not content creation, I still stream to Twitch once a week and help out with video content whenever possible.

Besides my day to day job of dealing with social media, I also work at events such as PAX, EGX or Gamescom only to mention a few. While at shows, I manage our social media channels, giveaways and booth wherever possible. Whenever visitors need a second player or need help with our demos, I am there to help out. 

What’s the best way to gain experience?

The best way to gain experience is to study a relevant course at a university. If you don’t have the chance to go to uni, try to acquire the skills you need for your position in your free time. Prior to working at Coatsink, I invested a lot of time into streaming and video creation knowing I would need these skills in my career.