Couple easy ways to build up your HTML5 mobile gaming Marketing.
We all realize in what niche HTML5 mobile gaming is. Market is small, and numbers of games aren’t big too. We cannot think “BIG” yet, although for each HTML5 developer it is important to promote the product, and brand. If you want think “professionally” about your products, you will for sure need to find a way to be noticed. You ought to tell about your game to anyone who is interested. You will want to get interest of gamers, your competitors, and especially possible publishers or investors. Doing this right way helps you grow higher awareness not only around your products, but also in whole HTML5 gaming developers community. Why? It’s easy – the more informations you put out to the web, the more it is possible that someone notices it, and starts talking, or asking you “How does this HTML5 technology work? Maybe we will start a cooperation together, and monetize your games?” This short guide is inspired by experiences we had, and still having – hopefully you will find it very useful with your own HTML5 mobile gaming business.
Name it, and brand it!
This may sound obvious (for some of you), but you can’t even imagine how name of your game defines your brand, and how important it will be for future of your product. Try to think like a gamer when he is looking for specific kind of game via Google. He uses certain words to define the game he needs. For example take a look at competitors – there is always a genre “gems”, “ninja”, and additional word “fruit”, “crazy”. Do you remember how huge success Fruit Ninja game had? Not only thanks to original gaming experience, but the name of products is easy to recognize, easy to remember, and everyone know what this game is all about, when they hear its name.
Social media.
I would recommend three most popular: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Of course there are other social networks or micro blogs, although for now, when your brand is not yet huge, let’s think small way. When our brand and products grow, you may experiment on a higher level. On all of them you may be liked/observed by gamers, publishers, competitors, you may share informations about your company or your successes. Let’s take an example. We have a new entry for social media: “We are releasing a new game next week!”. You wonder where it should be placed? Actually you may do it in all three networks. Why? The information is in interest of all target groups, you may get new gamers, possible publishers who are willing to release it. On the other hand you may create only a Facebook fan page for one game. Do it if your game becomes a hit, or at least popular, and loud enough so the people will be searching for it. On such fan page you will only post informations about certain game: updates, contests, new releases – practically this one will work best for gamers. There is one more good solution to promote a single game – YouTube. Make a cool video of your game, it shouldn’t be too long (max. 1 minute). By a certain words or game name, gamers for sure will be searching for preview of gameplay to find out if it’s cool, and worth playing.
Try to follow/like others, try to interact with them – you will notice that with time they will be interested in your entries, this will build up a higher followers awareness. There is another usage of those social media. You will get better, mostly business related audience by writing a…
Blog.
This is by far the most valuable way to gain interest of business related partners, and awareness of your gaming company in the market. It takes a some time and work to build quality and regular readers. But the effort is worth it. The easiest way to setup a page based on WordPress and customize it. But technical details are not the topic here. The most important is content. Decide on style, and informations you want to show your readers. You may experiment, and speak only your mind, share your experience or for example post entries of others or write games reviews. It’s up to you. But IMHO you should stick to content you started writing – that will give you stable audience. Look how others do that, get inspired by them, if you ought to copy always remember to quote, and provide source of a link or user picture/graphics. You should really remember that to avoid copyrights issues.
Of course there are another important factors that will help your blog become noticed: SEO, SEM, Keywording. I wouldn’t like to write a specific guide here, because this blog entry would become a separate book 
But, basically you should stick to the specific wording used in your niche. Categories, keywords, tags – those factors will be searched in Google, and they should show up in your entries. I would recommend two, very cool, and nice guides that may help you get noticed, and write better blog: SEOBook by Aaron Wall, and Socialtriggers by Derek Halpern. There is a lot of useful informations. You may not need all of them, but I guarantee that they will help you a lot.
Anything else?
Try to experiment. When you build up your awareness, and you already have couple partners you may go a bit further. A press entry made by PR dept. of your publisher which tells about your company or game, gives you a huge boost, you will be also promoted by partner on his portals. Specific banners, outside promotion (native game version at App Store, or banners in other portals), crosspromotion offered by some mobile publishers… There are practically many marketing ways to gain audience.
Those are most important ways to promote your brand and game. I wouldn’t neglect any other way to move further, only your imagination or lack of time could stop you from experimenting. But remember one thing: always evaluate which marketing tool, or promotional way is good for your business,. Think couple times before using it, and you will know how really good it works for you and your brand.