I do my marketing thinking out loud

For years, my marketing plan was pretty much that I read my emails and answered the phone.

 If someone contacts me and says, “Hey, I’d like you to make a game for us.”

I say, “Sure,” and tell them how much it will cost.

Yes, I’m surprised we’re still in business after ten years, too.

Now that we have a new product out that is a game builder anyone can use to make educational games, it occurred to me that perhaps the company should have a marketing plan.

Check it out here = https://7genblocks.com/

Learn to build a game.

You could even win $500 and help the earthquake victims in Venezuela while you are at it.

See? I’m getting better at this marketing stuff already.

Crowd-sourcing my marketing plan

I call it crowd-sourcing. Maria calls it asking random people on the internet.

I’m going to run down my such-as-it-is marketing plan. Feel free to comment. Please do not contact me about your services as a marketing specialist at $800 an hour. 

1. We hired a marketing associate to create videos on how to use 7 Gen Blocks, write newsletters we send out to our mailing list and create graphics for both social media and merchandise
2. We hired a part-time intern to post to our social media, create some asset packs for users who don’t have time to create their own artwork and to update our mailing lists. 
3. We started sending out a newsletter once or twice a week. We have three different lists, by interest – education (sign up for it here) https://www.7generationgames.com/educator_newsletter/  , startups/ general business – fun fact about that list – I have no idea where the first 363 sign-ups came from but you can get on the secret list now, if you want https://www.7generationgames.com/how-in-the-world-did-you-get-on-our-newsletter-list/ , and investors (only people who invested are on that list). I’m trying to find the line between annoying and too infrequent to be noticed.
4. I go to conferences where I collect emails for those newsletters. The next one is the Wyoming Native American Education conference in August. 
5. We’re doing a contest for best game and best artwork made with a game. The winner in each category gets $500 and we donate $50 to the World Food Program for every game made.
6. We hired a project manager (shout out to the awesome Diana Sanchez who handles things like government forms and paying bills so I can do more development and occasionally think about marketing)
7. I do webinars on how to use 7 Gen Blocks to make a game. These are one hour covering everything from design to creating a game with instruction, assessment and game play – like a runner game https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSez3A5S3D6nMDLz_u5TFbNc5eYUvxyBExGMGaNJyAXL3UsZag/viewform?fbzx=6402219359864993535&pli=1 It has been suggested I should do a series of short videos and post those online – 10 minutes on prompting to create a game design, 10 minutes on public domain art sources, 30 minutes of “work along with me to make a game”  
8. We have Youtube (multiple), Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram accounts on which we are not very active. Diana is interviewing candidates next week for an internship position to regularly update our social media presence.

So… that’s my new marketing plan in addition to answering the phone. People of the internet – give me your ideas.