Vanilla Forums Blog

Given the importance that successful businesses place on customer satisfaction, it’s a little shocking just how under-utilized this asset truly is. Satisfied customers advocating on behalf of a brand is one of the most powerful ways to grow ROI. But brands too often confine their understanding of customer advocacy to the marketing sphere alone — making it nothing more than a line item in the marketing budget.

Consumption of online video is increasing rapidly, and more and more companies are using video across their businesses. Sales teams are emailing custom videos to promising leads, marketing teams are promoting new features with engaging launch videos, and support teams are using screencasts and product videos to teach customers about different features.

The list goes on and on.

Explaining the value of online communities to executive management is not easy. While the C-Suite may have an esoteric understanding of the need to build a successful group of people around their product or service, they must also see empirical evidence to prove that such efforts are effective. No matter how much buy-in you get as an online community manager, you'll always be required to bring data.

Online communities present a great opportunity for game developers and publishers to advertise their releases, support their players and create lively social hangouts for people who share something in common. At least, that’s what any gaming community should look like.

Unfortunately, despite becoming increasingly recognized and respected among the mainstream as a form of art much like any other, the world of video games has also developed something of a reputation for toxic communities.

With thousands of new games appearing on Steam and countless more on other platforms every year, it’s not easy to get noticed among all the noise. For smaller independent game studios, this can be immensely challenging, especially if they don’t already have an established history.

That’s why having a solid pre-launch marketing strategy is crucial for generating excitement about your upcoming game. Here are five ways to build it.