What will it take? (for HT)

[Shuffler]

I will take word of mouth over paid ads every time. It is a lot cheaper to keep a client than get a new one.  Take care of a client and they will talk about it. Making new clients cheaper to capture.

[DmonSlyr]

If word of mouth is bad, the small amount of players who play the game will continue to play while many will be turned away instantly by a bad review from word of mouth from a customer who did not like the game. Commercials lead people to the water without opinion first. The word of mouth can result in worse marketing if word of mouth is not great. Again, I've neve met a single person in real life who has heard of Aces High.

What y'all fail to realize is that most people just don't buy very many products. You have to have an extremely wide audience to drag in the bunch that will pay for it. If you cannot reach the majority of the Audience, you will not bring in as many as you could because they will never hear about it.

WW2 movies are not out of favor. Movies like Dunkirk are heavily commercialized to the mass audiance. I didn't even buy a ticket, but I bet millions did....that's my point.

Theres a reason why companies spend tons on advertising with commercials in repetitition. It works.

[CptTrips]

Hitech strikes me as a reasonably bright guy.  I have to assume if their past advertisements were consistently making them  enough money to justify the risk and cost, they simply would have kept doing it. 

If they stopped, there must have been a reason.  If it didn't justify itself on the Military Channel, I doubt it would work better on the Smithsonian Channel. 

Sure, it's worth trying and different platform with different ad approach, but I wouldn't pin your hopes on it making a order of magnitude change.  I'd be amazed if it was even break-even.

Seems stuff like putting CD in a a box with purchased joysticks is the more targeted type of stuff.  Google ads, etc.  I'm not sure that would even be cost effective. 

[Vraciu]

See Rule #4

[Vraciu]

Hitech strikes me as a reasonably bright guy.  I have to assume if their past advertisements were consistently making them  enough money to justify the risk and cost, they simply would have kept doing it. 

If they stopped, there must have been a reason.  If it didn't justify itself on the Military Channel, I doubt it would work better on the Smithsonian Channel. 

Sure, it's worth trying and different platform with different ad approach, but I wouldn't pin your hopes on it making a order of magnitude change.  I'd be amazed if it was even break-even.

Seems stuff like putting CD in a a box with purchased joysticks is the more targeted type of stuff.  Google ads, etc.  I'm not sure that would even be cost effective.

Exactly.   Players are pouring in here.   Advertising will not solve the problem we are having in regard to RETAINING them. 

[DmonSlyr]

Exactly.   Players are pouring in here.   Advertising will not solve the problem we are having in regard to RETAINING them.

And you think "word of mouth" is going to work for Aces High if retaining those players is hard? Doesn't sound like a winning arguement to me.

The game needs more awareness. It always has. An updated website, more visuals, more special event advertisements on the website and game. Marketing and awareness has always been HTC weak spot as far I know.

[Arlo]

Do you have any #s to prove that? <snip> One great commercial would probably attract 500 new customers a month. Just a guess though.

Looks like neither of us have numbers to prove anything, what-so-ever. AH was advertised on the History Channel, at one time. I don't think I've ever seen even 100 new customers a month, even then (though that would be great). I'm from the commercial TV generation and I really love both history and flight sims but a shiny War Thunder commercial was mildly amusing the first time I saw one and a prime opportunity to drain my bladder, the next (when I was watching broadcast cable - I watch nothing but downloadable content now).

I was making free promotional t-shirts and giving them away at air shows. You'd be amazed at how many people just look at you funny when you try to give them a free shirt with a nice looking AH skin art on it, no strings, no contests. There was a WT booth at one airshow with t-shirts being given to dogfight winners. A lot of visitors gave it a try. Dunno how many of them got hooked.

If I had the money and time I'd go back to exploring the possibility of making sim-pits that not only had the flight gear to play the game efficiently but had the authentic look and feel of being in a WWII cockpit (even modeling the layout of specific birds like the Corsair, Spitfire, Mustang, FW-190 and Zero). I bet that those, on a trailer at an airshow, might get a lot of people interested. I just don't know if it would get them hooked for the long haul, however.

Oh, lotto dreams.

(Missing the game. Gorram new rig is still not functional. School is still a priority.)

[CptTrips]

The game needs more awareness. It always has. An updated website, more visuals, more special event advertisements on the website and game. Marketing and awareness has always been HTC weak spot as far I know.

I agree with you that the more people that learn about your game, the better.

However, would you agree that unless a sufficient percentage of those eyeballs convert to PAYING subscriptions, the the advertising cannot provide a positive ROI?

For instance I wouldn't be surprised if the Steam release got as many or more downloads as would result from any media advertising.  And these were very targeted prospects.  Known PC gaming enthusiasts.   What do you think the percentage of  conversion to permanent subscriptions was?  You think ads during "Tales of the Gun" or "Pawn Stars" are going to generate higher quality leads?

Advertising will pay for itself if you are achieve high rates of subscriptions.  But there is the rub. Without a high conversion rate, the cost of acquiring  a few subscriptions becomes prohibitively high.  You don't get paid for downloads, you only get paid if they subscribe.

[DmonSlyr]

I agree with you that the more people that learn about your game, the better.

However, would you agree that unless a sufficient percentage of those eyeballs convert to PAYING subscriptions, the the advertising cannot provide a positive ROI?

For instance I wouldn't be surprised if the Steam release got as many or more downloads as would result from any media advertising.  And these were very targeted prospects.  Known PC gaming enthusiasts.   What do you think the percentage of  conversion to permanent subscriptions was?  You think ads during "Tales of the Gun" or "Pawn Stars" are going to generate higher quality leads?

Advertising will pay for itself if you are achieve high rates of subscriptions.  But there is the rub. Without a high conversion rate, the cost of acquiring  a few subscriptions becomes prohibitively high.  You don't get paid for downloads, you only get paid if they subscribe.

Advertising is nothing more than trying to get people in the door to check it out. How the game works does not equal marketing. If they come in the door and look around, the marketing paid off. If they don't stick around because of the game mechanics, that's an entirely different issue. 500 new people downloading the game because of a commercial is a success. If only 50 stick around for the sub, that's because of an inside issue with the game that most did not like. Therefore you need more people to check out the game in order to increase the subs to 75. Repetitive commercials work very well at this. There is nothing that says you cannot work on the inside game mechanics to reslove those issues to keep them around longer. That's an entirely different part of the business.

[Vraciu]

Advertising is nothing more than trying to get people in the door to check it out. How the game works does not equal marketing. If they come in the door and look around, the marketing paid off. If they don't stick around because of the game mechanics, that's an entirely different issue. 500 new people downloading the game because of a commercial is a success. If only 50 stick around for the sub, that's because of an inside issue with the game that most did not like. Therefore you need more people to check out the game in order to increase the subs to 75. Repetitive commercials work very well at this. There is nothing that says you cannot work on the inside game mechanics to reslove those issues to keep them around longer. That's an entirely different part of the business.

We don’t have a marketing problem Violator.  Listen very carefully.   We have a retention problem.   Stop focusing on the non-issue and deal with the actual problem.

[CptTrips]

Advertising is nothing more than trying to get people in the door to check it out. How the game works does not equal marketing. If they come in the door and look around, the marketing paid off.

That is where I disagree.  I believe it only pays off if it leads to sales that exceed the cost.  Otherwise, you could market yourself right in to bankruptcy.   

If it is costing them $1,000 in advertising to acquire a user that will pay a $14.99/month subscription, then any company that continues to do that deserves to go out of business.

In a business, all costs have to be justified by the revenue they help produce.  Otherwise, it's called a hobby. 

[DmonSlyr]

We don’t have a marketing problem Violator.  Listen very carefully.   We have a retention problem.   Stop focusing on the non-issue and deal with the actual problem.

Marketing and retention are 2 different things.

Marketing a FSO or combat challenge on the arena message that month would get more people involved and more people enganged than only doing it in the Forums. Commercials and advertising work the same way.

Retention is a operational issue that is not effected by the marketing that needs just as much attention. 2 different things completely.

That is where I disagree.  I believe it only pays off if it leads to sales that exceed the cost.  Otherwise, you could market yourself right in to bankruptcy.   

If it is costing them $1,000 in advertising to acquire a user that will pay a $14.99/month subscription, then any company that continues to do that deserves to go out of business.

In a business, all costs have to be justified by the revenue they help produce.  Otherwise, it's called a hobby. 

I'm not saying you don't have a point to an extent, but it's hard to gain revenue if no one knows you even exist. Most businesses have to take a risk on marketing to increase the audiance. If you see that people are responding to the marketing by downloading the game, but don't see them subscribe to the game. It's not the marketing that needs to be cut, it's the operational aspects in the game that need to be looked at. Again, 2 different sides of the business.

[Vraciu]

See Rule #4

[ACE]

Lots of people quit and won’t come back due to a simple change that could be implemented IE side switch rule.

[CptTrips]

I'm not saying you don't have a point to an extent, but it's hard to gain revenue if no one knows you even exist. Most businesses have to take a risk on marketing to increase the audiance. If you see that people are responding to the marketing by downloading the game, but don't see them subscribe to the game. It's not the marketing that needs to be cut, it's the operational aspects in the game that need to be looked at. Again, 2 different sides of the business.

And I agree with you to an extend.

 I'm all for marketing IF if costs less than it makes you.  Though you might need to first fix the retention issue before you waste the money on marketing. The horse before the cart.  Once you have the retention issue fixed, pour on the marketing.   If I get to where I am generating $1.25 in revenue for every $1.00 in marketing costs, I'll pour money into that marketing all day long.

But until your resolve the retention issue, marketing just generates a series of expensive lost opportunities.  You have to prepare the ground so that you can take advantage of the opportunity marketing presents you.