Develop your marketing plan

• Worksheet: Goals⁠
• Worksheet: Audience⁠
• Worksheet: Distribution channel⁠
• Launch checklist⁠

• Clear Objectives: Defines what you truly want to achieve with your title.
• Target Audience Understanding: Demonstrates a deep understanding of who you’re trying to reach.
• Effective Channel Identification: Helps you identify the most effective channels to connect with your audience, whether through social media, your website, an email newsletter, or influencer campaigns.
• Content Guidance: Guides the type of content you want to produce.
• Measurement of Success: Provides a means to measure success and consider necessary changes if things aren’t working as planned.

• Acquisition-focused: A competitive multiplayer title leaned heavily on fast, sharable gameplay clips and clear unique selling points (USPs) to attract new players. The team highlighted high-skill, team-based play to appeal to new players who enjoy strategy and mechanical mastery.
• Acquisition and retention focused): A social world used simple thumbnails and clear descriptions on their product page to help potential new players understand the experience, while also keeping existing users engaged through routine and frequent seasonal updates.
• (Retention-focused): A free-to-play title kept its community strong by shipping steady updates, adding new cosmetics, running regular in-world events, and actively moderating its community spaces. This ongoing support kept engagement high over time.
• Acquisition-focused: A multi-developer collaboration organized a themed event across several titles. The campaign raised broad awareness for new players while giving returning players fresh content to re-engage with, making it a strong example of a hybrid approach.

• What is your vision for your title?
• What makes it stand out? Any key features that differentiate your title against others?
• Are you prioritizing new users, community health, revenue, or a mix?
• How do you plant to measure success?
• What does your timeline look like for short, medium, and long-term goals?

• Paid Channels: Digital advertising where you pay to place your message in front of your target audience: ads, sponsored posts, influencer campaigns.
• Owned Channels: Platforms you directly control: your website, blog, social profiles, newsletter, and email list.
• Earned Media: Organic mentions and coverage you don’t pay for: press reviews, community buzz, and user-generated content.
• Shared Channels: Social media platforms where people interact and share discoveries: Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, and so on.

• What unique selling points (USPs) should your content highlight? Start with a script or key beat sheet to stay focused.
• What is the ideal content length? Short-form works for quick highlights and viral moments; longer-form suits deep dives or gameplay previews.
• What is your hook? Capture attention immediately to prevent viewers from scrolling away.
• What is your call to action (CTA)? Clearly tell viewers what you want them to do: join your world, download your app, pre-order, or add to a wish list.

• VR or MR (Mixed Reality) Titles: Strive to blend live-action or mixed reality footage with VR game capture to ground the player experience and demonstrate flexibility in play style and immersion.
• Worlds: Incorporate both VR and mobile gameplay to demonstrate more accessible ways to experience your world.
• Low-Cost Options: Utilize cinematic engine capture, first-person gameplay, graphics, and supers. Consider your soundtrack and establishing a strong, consistent brand identity.

• Case Study #1: A slow-paced, atmospheric project explored several tonal directions and ultimately chose a minimalist, ASMR-style presentation that emphasized calm and relaxation.
• Case Study #2: A high-intensity action project explored visual pacing needs and developed a storyboard focused on sharp angles and quick transitions to maintain a high energy environment.

• Follow Asset Guidelines: Ensure you follow Meta’s asset guidelines for a smooth launch.
• High-Fidelity Screenshots: Your screenshots should be well-thought-out and high-fidelity.
• Enticing Description: Allocate enough time to craft a compelling description for your game.
• PDP Examples: Check out Maestro⁠, Moss⁠ and Ghost of Tabor⁠ on the Meta Horizon store for excellent PDP examples that effectively set clear player expectations.

• Acquisition: Examine funnel analytics such as reach, unique clicks, unique conversions, and wish list additions.
• Retention: Look at active users, average time spent, and weekly and monthly retention rates.
• Pricing Tools: Experiment with pricing tools, holiday season promos, and content bundles to lower the barrier to entry.

• One team tested different logo placements and main colors, finding that a cooler-toned key art led to a noticeable lift in their click-through rate (CTR).
• A second team simplified an early key art concept into a minimalist version, resulting in an extremely significant increase in CTR. They continued experimenting with additional styles, reinforcing the value of constant iteration.
• A third team tested color treatments and character compositions. The tests at first yielded similar results, but then they explored a lighter paint-over as their next test element. They then observed a notable increase in performance, theorizing it was more representative of the game and player experience.