It can be difficult to market a small servers such as TotalFreedom. I know this from experience because I've worked with them, with them, and am one of them myself.
It's complicated for a number of reasons. In this article, I'll go over a few of the more common ones and suggest some strategies for overcoming them and making things easier for our server.
(1) Restricted Funds
Naturally, a small business would not have the same marketing budget as a big multinational corporation. That may make expanding an organisation seem unlikely at times, but there are ways to extend a limited budget further. When I worked with a small company, one of the first things I did is make sure they're taking advantage of all of the free and low-cost marketing opportunities available to them.
Networking events, for example, can be very effective , and we should always ask current customers for referrals and advice before spending some money on marketing.
(2) Small Audience
This is another concern that many big, multinational companies do not have to deal with. When our product's potential market is limited, we need to market it very carefully, because we don't have the cost efficiencies that come with mass marketing a mainstream product with broad appeal.
As a consequence, it's important that we think about different ways to reach out to potential clients. Learn about their concerns, how they communicate with others, what groups, forums, and social networking sites they visit, and anything else you think could help you target them more effectively.
(3) Complicated Services
This is a common problem for businesses that sell goods or services to other businesses, particularly if the products are highly technical or the service is difficult to comprehend. We've already established that you'll most likely need to target a specific demographic with a limited budget, so this is a new challenge.
If our product or service is difficult, our direct rivals are likely to be as well. People prefer to stick with their current supplier or do nothing when they can't tell the difference between one supplier and another or understand what's being offered (unless they absolutely need to be on one server).
This is a wonderful opportunity for us to stand out by offering consumers useful content on your website, such as free guides or instructional videos. This will help us stand out from the competition, assist the clients, and prevent a hard-sell strategy.
That is all standard boilerplate advice and teaching you’d receive from a marketing class or a consultant. Reading through those, you’ll notice that TotalFreedom is on the shorter end of each of those categories.
TotalFreedom does not fit into one category. It is in a messy grey area between anarchy, creative, and a downright fucking censor state. I don’t believe the freedom aspect of this server is retained. We aren’t a creative server, we don’t have essential building plugins. We are a social construct, a playground separated into factions.
I’m going to have to think long and hard about what this server truly is.
The ESL team is launching its advertising campaign soon, and when we do, these factors will be out of our control. The server has too many flaws to even be ready for advertisement, yet it is my job to advertise it; and advertise it I will. All I can do now is hope that these issues will be fixed before we bring new players.
