One of my greatest weaknesses as the lead marketer at Stonemaier Games is online advertising. I’ve experimented with ads over the years with little success. It’s far from the only way to spread the word about a brand, but I’ve seen other creators use advertising tools incredibly well.
So a few months ago I reached out to a few advertising experts who had filled out our job application and found a good fit in Andrew Cook. On a month-to-month basis we’re paying Andrew to create and run ads (primarily on Facebook and Instagram for now) for our games, with a set budget each month. Andrew has been a joy to work with–he’s very independent, he sends weekly results, he runs ads by me for a quick review before publishing them, and he’s flexible (especially given that we’re figuring things out as we go).
I found it really helpful to define the purpose of the advertising experiment; whenever we create a new ad, I try to be specific with Andrew about the goal of that ad:
- expand our reach to people who aren’t already familiar with (or following) Stonemaier Games
- generate launch notification signups for new products (e.g., Apiary)
- build buzz during key moments for new games (when launch orders are shipping and when the retail release happens)
- generate sales for specific products
The most distinct and impressive result I’ve seen so far is the 8,000+ launch notifications we received for Apiary, which is more than any new game we’ve launched over the last 3 years other than Red Rising.
I talked to another creator, Laia Gonzalez, about this, as I’ve been impressed by the pre-launch ads for Kelp that she has run through her company, Wonderbow. Laia saw two big jumps in Kelp project followers when she started running ads showcasing a mini-expansion (+800 followers) and then later in conjunction with Essen Spiel (+700 followers).
Laia kindly offered some insights about which ads performed better than others:
- Image types: “We tried different types of images in our ads. Some had a more casual, ‘user-generated content’ look, while others were professionally made and showed the laid-out components, while a different set just displayed the box. Surprisingly, those featuring just the box outperformed the others.”
- Videos vs images: “We thought videos would be great for showing how the game is played. But, surprise, surprise, the video ads didn’t do as well as the images – in fact, they performed really, really bad. It could be that people either don’t have the attention span to watch a full video or that the first frame of a video isn’t as catchy as an image.”
- Pre-campaign offer: “We’re offering a mini expansion for just $1 before the Kickstarter even starts. This way, we get vital insight into the actual demand for Kelp and this information allows us to fine-tune the quality of components and find the lowest price point we can set for the game. Although we’ve been really successful pre-selling the mini expansion, what’s interesting is that the ad focusing on the game itself is performing much better than the one with the $1 offer in the main headline. This shows me that in board games, it’s not just about offering the lowest price.”
- Audience: “While board game enthusiasts welcomed our ads, so did people who share interests in aquariums, design, and plants. However, targeting people that like the outdoors and camping didn’t do as well.”
Thanks Laia! If you’re curious about Kelp–a deeply asymmetric game that pits an elusive octopus against a predatory shark–here’s a link to the prelaunch page. Laia also recommends the platform LaunchBoom for new creators to learn and chat about crowdfunding.
Before I wrap up, I wanted to share a few other results and observations from our ongoing advertising experiment:
- Add a question: Unlike normal social media posts about our games, ads don’t generate much conversation. So I’ve encouraged Andrew to add a simple question (when applicable) to the ads to increase engagement.
- Multiple images: For a while, all of our ads were single-image ads. But I realized that just like any other social media post, the ads could include multiple images to scroll through. My perception is that the first ad is the most important, but if someone wants to go deeper, it’s helpful that they can do so just with the flick of their finger.
- Signup forms: The content the ad leads to is just as important as the ad itself. Andrew has been great to make a few requests regarding our signup forms to increase the clarity of what people are signing up for and the ease of use.
- Sexism: For a week we ran an ad featuring a person playing Expeditions (one of many photos we commissioned from Tim Chuon). The person happens to be a woman, and for some reason that meant that a bunch of men outside of our regular sphere of influence thought it was their place to make incredibly sexist comments on the ad. I deleted the comments whenever I saw them–and eventually the ad itself when the comments persisted–and I’m appalled by this behavior. If you’re someone who does this, please stop–you have the opportunity to learn and grow from past mistakes.
- Subtitles: We haven’t run video ads yet as part of this experiment, but if we do, we will add subtitles to them, as I think a lot of people watch ad videos with the sound off.
- Name the product: Every now and then I see an image-based ad that doesn’t include the name of the product anywhere in the image or description. It’s a good reminder to me that sometimes we forget the most obvious thing!
Overall I’m happy with the experiment so far, and we’ll continue working with Andrew month to month, adding new product campaigns and different types of ads. So far it seems that most of the revenue is coming from Facebook, not Instagram, but it’s hard to tell about followers. I personally prefer Instagram for my social media interactions, but it’s always on my phone where I’m less likely to interrupt my scrolling to click on anything, so I can understand that conversions are more difficult there.
Can you think of any ads you’ve seen recently on social media (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, banner ads, etc) that you’ve found compelling to look at and click on?
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Also read:
- Paid Advertising and How Backers Find Your Project
- Which Banner Ad Message Gets the Most Clicks?
- Everything Crowdfunders Need to Know About Advertising
- 10 Million Views: The Results of an Advertising Experiment
- Rick and Morty, Revisionist History, and Ads I’m Happy to Consume
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21 Comments on “Bees and Seaweed: Recent Advertising Results”
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[…] invested much in advertising in the past, but I think Andrew Cook has done a great job with a variety of social media ads over the last few months, and we plan to continue them in […]
[…] Sponsored Content and Advertising: We have a very specific and minimalistic approach to sponsored content. We sponsor The Mill, which is a YouTube channel specifically about Stonemaier Games, and we sponsor rules videos for our games from Watch It Played and Meeple University. On very rare occasions if we get requests for a specific type of video (e.g., a solo playthrough) that content creators haven’t made independently, I may seek someone to provide that content. We also dabble in paid advertising, including ads on BGG, Facebook, and Instagram (most recently with the help of Andrew Cook). […]
[…] Bees and Seaweed: Recent Advertising Results […]
[…] invested much in advertising in the past, but I think Andrew Cook has done a great job with a variety of social media ads over the last few months, and we plan to continue them in […]
Short video ads (like 10 seconds) definitely catch my attention. Pair it with a bit of themed music and you can really draw a viewer into a world pretty quick!
I’m also baffled by the sexism. Sorry that was such an ongoing problem. the internet can be a strange place.
Hi, this blog post gave me two thoughts. One was that being a birder and cat lover, I’m a sucker for games with those themes. I was thinking it might be useful to target, say, science-interested people (people who watch some of the popular science explainers on YouTube, say) with an ad that shows the interesting theme of bees in space. Maybe there are some new un-mined future gamers there? Dunno if it’s enough to warrant the cost of advertising.
The other thing I would try in response to the sad sexist behavior is continue to use that picture, but only in content where the audience is mostly women. It seems there should still be value in messaging that everyone’s welcome around the table and hopefully wooing new customers that way. I’m sure you all thought of this already.
I personally love seeing ads for games I do not otherwise know about (not SM specifically as I’m pretty involved in the SM community)
I’m so sorry that sexism showed up in the gaming community. Games are for everyone. It’s sad that people had to do that sort of thing.
As a boardgamer:
– I am powerfully motivated by curiosity. “I don’t recognize that game?” Could make me click.
– overhyped steam trains are a turnoff. I am more likely to ignore it.
– motion is cheating. Video ads are the cousins of ever-hated popups.
1. Been a huge fan of your blog. Thanks for all you do for game creators and crowdfunders alike.
2. So cool to see Laia and Kelp featured here! The $1 reservation has been tremendous for a LOT of our clients forecast real demand for their game/product and make sure their ad spend is going to the right people. We’ve been doing it for awhile now, and it a core part of our strategy.
3. Absolutely terrible about the sexism in the ads. I don’t understand why people think that’s okay…or why they even focus on it when the ad is about a game. At that point, I don’t even want them as a client/customer. Sorry, you and your team had to go through that. Hope the model didn’t see any of it.
4. Thanks for the shoutout! I’m one of the co-founders of LaunchBoom. We’re celebrating in our slack channels right now cause of your link. 😂
Thanks, Victor! The $1 registration pre-launch is a really interesting strategy that I haven’t considered for crowdfunding projects.
We’ve started experimenting with different video ads at our agency (we just create the main board game trailers, we don’t do the actual marketing.)
What we discovered from our clients was that cutting up different 5 sec ads from the main board game trailer seems to be the most effective.
Just a quick burst of eye catching shots in quick cuts along with a clear call to action seems to be doing the trick. We also make sure to create them in different dimensions for the different social media platforms – square and vertical.
I think it’s that “blink and you miss it” aspect that generate curiosity and leads one to want to learn more and click.
Ori, that is a great idea! We’ll try this for our live campaign ads 😊
Thanks for sharing this method, Ori!
As someone who frequents your blog endlessly, it’s really amazing to see Laia and Kelp get shouted out. The artwork is next level, super excited for this launch. Thank you for shouting out LaunchBoom as well :)
Thanks Maria!
I personally like just box as an image. It imitates how you find a game in a game store. See an interesting box and pick it up and flip it over. I see the box in the image and then I seek out more content on the game. I don’t help you with you key performance indicators, because a actually open a private tab and then google the game.
I believe sex sells more in the end. I notice the ads with cleavage have way higher CTR than the others. Please do an A/B test where you use the exact same image, but with different people.
We’re not selling sex.
I have noticed that a lot of ads on Facebook start with an image of a female which you see as the ad scrolls into view. Then the ad is a video that auto plays, and the image that was there briefly has very little to do with the ad itself. So yes, advertisers know what sells. And how do I know, because I looked at some of those ads
I understand that’s a viable advertising method (though it’s not one we use), but it does not give people permission to make sexist comments on those ads.
CTR / Traffic isn’t a KPI though, just a vanity metric of ad performance. Too many clicks will have been hormone driven without real purchase/subscription intent. Clickbait tactics will always see your Value/Visit KPIs plummet, not to mention that I don’t recognise leveraging cleavage as part of Stonemaier Brand Identity.