Free Allegiance Forums

To the Allegiance Community,

After months of planning and background work from the 2014 Allegiance Marketing Team, and as a progression from years of Allegiance Marketing, we are ready to launch a paid marketing campaign. Monetary donations from the community will be accepted and will greatly influence the efficacy of this campaign! (The donation button is below.)

Additional Banners
(These banners were created with exact Facebook desired specifications in mind)







The Plan

Facebook banner advertisement aimed at males age 13-45 interested in free online multi-player space games, real time strategy, intense action, etc, (demographic details available on request).

The Goal

Get people to click on our banners and bring them to ourHome Pagewhere they can watch our current Allegiance Trailer Video and ultimately get them to install and play the game.

The Cost

This campaign will cost $25 USD per day

The Timeline

Start: April 11 April 18th

*We will run it every Friday-Sunday 7am-12pm EDT. After four weeks (May 16th) we will determine if we are getting acceptable results, make adjustments, and determine next steps.

Community Involvement With Player Retention Is Vital

Getting people into the game is only the first step. The next part is where help from the community is needed. We must all strive to be more active in game and welcoming to new players. (Click here for welcoming key points.) Further, we must take any new pilots under our wings. These are the players that will grow our player base, if only we show them how fun Allegiance can be even in the absence of huge games.

Getting new players on mumble is extremely important. And use of the forums and of the calendar, specifically will benefit new players. All players are strongly encouraged to advocate for the use of mumble. Further still, veterans are encouraged to set up training sessions with new players either planned or impromptu.

Considerations

Community funded paid advertisement has been brought up several times over the years but has always been halted by the admission that Allegiance wasn't ready [to maximize player retention results]. There is no denying that we face significant challenges in growing our game, in some cases now more than ever. It will take concerted effort from this community to make new players see past Allegiance's faults and instead recognize the potential for exciting and unique game play experiences.

Luckily one problem we currently face is nearing resolution:
The new version of the ACSS installer will expedite getting into the game and include high res texture packs, points to our event game times, and links to mumble. The release date of the new installer is TBA.

Accepting Donations

All donations of any amount are greatly appreciated. You have the option of setting up monthly donations as well.
100% of funds donated will go towards funding Allegiance Facebook Marketing with the banners above.
The Allegiance Marketing Team Fundraising Goal is $6000 and we are starting from $115.

To Donate Click Here

That link will take you to our Paypal page you can donate via check or credit card (with or without signing up for paypal).
If you do not wish to use Paypal whatsoever, please PM me or post in this thread and I will get in contact with you.

If you wish to donate to the Marketing Team but don't wish to support the Facebook Campaign, please include that in your donation comments. I will include a publicly viewable spreadsheet of all transactions.

Other projects that donated funds could be used for in the future:

-Fund the creation of a professional high quality Allegiance trailer video
-Game Advertising Online banner campaign
-Reddit campaign
-News paper ads (online and offline)
-Radio/TV ads

For More Information

If you would like any more information or if you have other ideas for marketing please don't hesitate to contact me (Dome) via PM or email: Domesta@gmail(dot)com. Or sound off in this thread and I will reply.

Also, check out all of our other Allegiance Marketing Initiatives on our publicly viewable Trello organizational page! https://trello.com/b/YEVcmVae/allegiancemarketing

I think that you should make an effort to distance from the "free to pay" market, and tout, the Open Source, Community controlled and developed aspects.

we are not merely "free to play" we are DONATION ONLY free

Marketting alleg as open source will get a lot of flak (if noticed) from actual open source community. As MS license is hardly considered "open source".

Just add "No microtransactions no fees" and all good

Banners need more work IMHO Ill post my comments later on them.


Esp. the bios one - I asked a few people to tell me if they understand what it is about and they had completely no clue (bios ships do not look like spaceships)

Psychosis wrote:QUOTE (Psychosis @ Apr 7 2014, 10:20 AM) I think that you should make an effort to distance from the "free to pay" market, and tout, the Open Source, Community controlled and developed aspects.

we are not merely "free to play" we are DONATION ONLY free

We are including "shared source game" (and related interests) in the 'interests' targeting.

_xJammer_ wrote:QUOTE (_xJammer_ @ Apr 7 2014, 10:44 AM) Marketting alleg as open source will get a lot of flak (if noticed) from actual open source community. As MS license is hardly considered "open source".

Just add "No microtransactions no fees" and all good

Banners need more work IMHO Ill post my comments later on them.


Esp. the bios one - I asked a few people to tell me if they understand what it is about and they had completely no clue (bios ships do not look like spaceships)

Also, the headline for the Green banner is: Allegiance is a free, online, multiplayer space simulation game.

The description is: Allegiance combines the resource and economy elements of RTS games with the situational tactics of a first person space combat sim unlike any game you've ever played.
__________

The banners are there to pique interest enough to get clicks. We'll be able to tell which banners get the most clicks and adjust accordingly.

Good ideas, keep em coming!

I will be getting back to my PAD submissions campaign soon.The list of sites is here: http://padsites.asp-software.org/I am up to page 5 so far.

Maybe we should hold off for a bit as these are popping up on my FB "home" page:

Facebook targeted advertising is very intrusive now. I get game advertisements every day.

My point is if STO is campaigning hard right now it will look like competition.

Update

Total donations to date (April 12, 2014): $285

Donators:

Blacksun94 - $15
Culmination - $80
Dome - $100
Raumvogel - $50
Thallium - $40

Thank you for your support!

We're still looking for more donations as we try to get enough money for a solid month of Facebook advertising ($775) and our larger goal of $6000.

_______________________________________

There is a small problem with the sizing of the banners so Ashortdude is working on fixing them.

I decided to delay the launch of the campaign until next Friday, April 18th which will give Ashortdude enough time to fix the problem. (A delay may also reduce the amount of time we are competing with StarTrekOnline advertising.

Further, a delay may also give pkk enough time to complete the next version of the Allegiance installer. The current installer updates artwork files individually and it takes ~6 minutes to install the game after restarting the installer a few times.

If you haven't donated yet please consider that any amount helps! We're investing in the game's future.

To Donate Click Here

For other ways you can help grow Allegiance, Click Here

I still strongly recommend limiting when advertising runs or you will be throwing away money. Unfortunately Facebook does not even support setting anything other than a start and end date. But you could manually start an ad every Friday afternoon and run it through Sunday night. Going to get few/no players during the week when anyone who downloads will find servers empty and uninstall.