Marketing Evaluation

Will Hounsell & Sam Hayman

Feedback received:

One piece of feedback we received from the client was to put the marketing plan slide before the products slides.

Another piece of feedback was to go into more detail/revise the target audience, and to focus on males aged 18-24.

We also were told to revise the vouchers, and to perhaps have them sold at EGX as well, and smaller coffee shops such as coffee houses at Universities.

We also need to explain where the posters are being sold & change their release date from September 11th.

Target Audience revisedOur target audience are young people aged 18-30, we suspect most of our audience will be made up of males aged 18-24 perhaps starting University, we believe this because the when we got people to give feedback on our game; the male demographic was more positive.

Our game will definitely not attract the same audience Call of Duty does; we won’t have that mass of diverse players from different countries, age, gender, ethnicity, etc. Our game will appeal to a less mainstream audience, a more indie audience, perhaps someone who would read a magazine such as Little White Lies.

Our target audience are the type who are also very likely to spend a lot of time in coffee shops, perhaps the local ones on their University campus. So they’re more likely to receive the voucher for the game, which will increase game popularity.

This statistics graphic from the ISFE shows that 55% of gamers are male and 51% are under 35. This is furthers our target audience as these are the ages we are going for.

The statistic below the profile one shows that a lot more free apps are downloaded rather than ones that cost, which is why we will be releasing the game for free. In fact, for very thing on this graphic, the free category has the highest percentage.

Revised Marketing Plan

*Poster release date changed from 11th September to the 12th*

Marketing Segmentation.First Impact Player Market Segmentation

BreakdownAchievers are our main audience, an achiever goes out of their way to achieve the best score, obtain all of the collectables, all the achievements, etc. Our game is very score based, this is why we believe they would be the biggest percent of players.

We decided not to include Socialisers in our pie-chart because we believe the game does not include much of a social aspect.

We have added the “Killers” to our chart as an estimate of how many players would be under this category if we included some kind of score systems.

Achievers: Focus on winning, rank, and direct peer-to-peer competition. They are engaged by leaderboards and ranks.

Killers: Focus on attaining status and achieving preset goals quickly and/or completely.They are engaged by achievements, either determined by the game or themselves.

Explorers: Focus on exploring and a drive to discover the unknown. These players may end up knowing how the game works and behaves better than the game creators themselves.

Socialisers: Focus on socialising and a drive to develop a network of friends and contacts. They help to spread knowledge and a human feel, and are often involved in the community aspectof the game.

Posters Revised

We are releasing the posters to build the excitement of the game before the it’s debut at EGX, we will be releasing the posters at places such as HMV. This is also ties in with our target audience; 18-24 University students, they’re probably looking for some new posters to hang up in their room at Uni. The posters are also released during Freshers at Universities, where all the new students are looking for ways to settle in at Uni, and these posters will appeal to that indie crowd of students.

A rough idea of what a dorm would look like with our poster in it.

Posters Revised

VouchersAs well as releasing our vouchers at Cafe Nero in the attempt to gain as many downloads as possible (Nero is a popular chain of coffee shops, so it is naturally bound to give out more of the vouchers with people buying food/drink), we will also be targeting local coffee shops at Universities, as well as linking with our target audience this is also the best way to increase the game’s popularity amongst young people. This benefits those shops as students may tell each other about the free vouchers and thus, more students will buy stuff from the shops in order to get the vouchers.

CostsAfter some online research, I found out how much it would could cost to print 400 large posters, the price came to a mere £88.97, this would be plausible as it would most likely be within our budget.I couldn’t find anything online that

directly related to the price of having our vouchers in coffee shops, I did however, find something similar that gives a general idea of how much 6 months of advertising would cost (double for a year), our campaign only runs 2-3 months, so this would likely cost no more than £600-700.

From the same website I used to find the cost of printing posters, I also found how much it would cost to print 5000 vouchers, the price only came to £71.24, which is also very cheap considering the amount of vouchers we would be receiving in return.

Costs

At EGX we will also be handing out vouchers at the coffee shops there. This is a guaranteed way to gain interest in the game; the first is all of the customers will be interested in games, as it is a games convention, so they’re rather likely to download a free game, because as shown from the ISFE statistic; people prefer free games. The second reason is due to the pure abundance of customers, hundreds of people will receive these vouchers.

EGX – Coffee Vouchers

This mock-up shows what the potential coffee booths at EGX will look like with some advertisement from us on them to advertise the free download vouchers, which will increase their popularity.

EGX – Coffee Vouchers

Linking EGX to our target audienceEGX is in the centre of London, so there are a variety of Universities

around it, which means a range of students could come to EGX would increase our game’s popularity, in particular that niche 18-24 male demographic we’re aiming for.

Universities near EGX include:- Ravensbourne University - Kingston University- Metropoliton University

How does this information help us reach our target audience?

Our target audience are males aged 18-24, possibly freshers to Uni, looking for a poster to hang in their rooms. This means that any students interested in gaming near EGX (which is students from at least 3 universities) will no doubt come to EGX, which increases the chances of them becoming interested in our game which increases the game’s popularity, this ties back to one of our marketing campaign goals.

Research into our competition

Alien Hominid is a side-scroller “shoot em’ up” game released in 2003 on Newgrounds, it was later ported to PS2 & Nintendo GameCube. Even before its release, the game received coverage in magazines such as Play and GMR, which increased the game’s hype. The game received positive reviews with an average review score of 8/10.

A major difference between our game and Alien Hominid is the release location, our game is only being released on the app store, so Alien Hominid does not pose much of a threat in terms of download rates.

• Alien Hominid is also a different genre to ours, the main similarity the games have is the 2D view and the Sci-Fi setting. Another difference between the two games is Alien Homind has been released on three consoles whereas ours is only for iOS devices.

Research into our competition