TIKTOK WITHOUT TIKTOKERS: How to promote a game from zero to 60K subscribers

Hello! I’m Kate, Social Media Lead at Donut Lab, the studio that develops a mobile shooter called Donut Punks (formerly Kids vs. Zombies). We are an indie startup, so we don’t have huge marketing resources — that’s why we have to figure out how to promote the game without going broke.

Where to start?

While the path to classic social networks such as Facebook or Tweeter was well-trodden, TikTok seemed completely unexplored and frightening. We decided to start a game page there out of curiosity, but at the very beginning, we didn’t really know what exactly we wanted to post. Simply duplicating content from other social networks was totally impossible, and therefore, we needed to come up with a new content format to fit into the existing style of TikTok videos. And yes, we didn’t have a significant component — the “TikToker” — a person who would dance, act out different scenes, and say something cool. Actually, we didn’t really want to make videos in that format…

In general, in these confusing conditions, excitement took over, and we began to experiment.

To begin with, we collected references by studying TikTok videos of other game companies. But we didn’t find much inspiration there. Basically, our competitors posted high-budget (by our standards) animated videos or lazy and unimaginative gameplay compilations. Hypothetically, we could follow this path by uploading animators, but then we would release one post per month. And TikTok demands being swift!

Our saving grace was ready-made game assets. Donut Punks has very vibrant playable characters, and everyone is given a rich set of animations for different game situations: win, lose, idle, run, attack, etc. It all looked like ready-made bricks from which it would be quite possible to create a small scripted scene.

In addition to the characters, a lot of art was created for the game: locations, backgrounds, and loadings. It became clear that we have a real constructor from which you can put together ready-made videos. And… I installed After Effects, watched a couple of tutorial videos, and started editing. I selected characters and animations, came up with texts, and put it all together. As a result, the starting budget of our TikTok page was equal to the price of the After Effects license (well, and my reward as well, haha).

At first, the videos turned out to be very simple, but I really tried! Therefore, over time, the editing, the plot, and the effects have become more complex and cooler.

Finally, I began to enjoy it and started posting videos one after another. My team and I enthusiastically reacted to each new record in the amount of views. “A thousand! Wow!” “Two thousand. Awesome!” “Three thousand. Aaaaa!” And then somehow, it reached 1 million views by itself. And then another million. And another one. Finally, we realized that the content had found its audience.

What helped us along the way?

1. Humor and vitality

We decided we would make videos about everyday life and all the delights that we care so much about: food, relationships, sleep, work… As a result, thanks to the insane art style, the content turned out to be colorful and convincing.

2. Focus on tags

We specifically added trendy tags to our videos (but of course, we did this so that the topics matched), and in addition, we monitored what tags were put in the videos comparable to ours. This is how we attracted an additional audience.

3. Cool music

Well-chosen music and sound effects have a great effect on TikTok success. When it comes to music, of course, there are no rules — you just need to trust your instinct and taste. But the main thing is not to mess around and not to put music for the sake of having at least something playing in the background. A good soundtrack should serve the drama, and everything is important here — the combination of rhythm and events on the screen, text, and vocals.

4. Freedom of creativity

In addition to lofty matters, freedom of creativity has one very practical quality — speed. It’s important to make videos quickly, and if you try to follow some rules, you can get stuck in the editing striving to make everything perfect. It’s much better to make quick and spontaneous videos. Let the humor in them be weird and the graphics imperfect — just feel this bizarre vibe of creativity and enjoy. The audience will definitely catch on to what you’re making.

5. Patience and tedious waiting

Videos don’t always have a steady increase in views. We also experienced a situation when in the first days, the video was watched moderately, and on the third, there was a sudden peak, and the counter showed hundreds of thousands of views. At the same time, videos that are destined to collect 1 million almost immediately begin to grow intensively.

These tips are, of course, very general, but what can you do? On TikTok, the rules and algorithms are constantly changing, so the more you experiment, the better.

For example, Sodapop suddenly became the main star of our channel. Why? No one knows for sure… Maybe it’s because he’s all so plumpy and sweet. Or because he’s always drinking something. And his eyes, ummm, are beautiful… Especially when he craves soda. To be honest, initially, we didn’t expect him to be successful and counted on other heroes. But it all turned out the way it did.

Again, on TikTok, everything is fluid and changeable. So we weren’t hung up on Sodapop but continued to try new formats. Some of them worked better, some worse. So, suddenly, it turned out that the commercials, which were created in parallel by the marketing department, work great on TikTok. Their misleading madness very harmoniously intertwines with the stream of other videos, which we took advantage of. And, by the way, we received another mental achievement for optimizing costs — the videos were already finished, so we essentially got a pack of new content for free.

What about the figures?

Over a year, we produced 178 videos, which means new videos were released almost every other day.

There were zero subscribers at the beginning of the year. But by the end, there were 65,000. As for the number of likes — there were 560,000.

The top video of the year gained 3.4 million views. This feels good.

And the team responsible for the video expanded: I was joined by Natalie and Stan. The guys helped with editing and ideas, and I freed up my time for other tasks on social media.

Let’s see how all these achievements affected the game. From the very beginning, we expected that after watching our videos, users would click on the tracking link to install Donut Punks and join the game.

And here’s what the analytics showed us: TikTok users gave good retention (especially when you consider that the game at that time was in a beta version, and many classic retention mechanics had not yet been introduced).

In addition, we received a small but stable source of traffic, the intensity of which hasn’t decreased over the year.

When creating content, we targeted the U.S. audience, so we studied in advance the content, tags, and music that were popular there. And then, based on that knowledge, we created our content. As a result, most of our subscribers and viewers came from the U.S. Economically, this is very cool. Targeted advertising in the United States is much more expensive than in other regions, and, of course, way more demanding than what we spent on creating TikTok videos. It turned out that we saved a lot on promotion and significantly increased brand awareness in one of our key markets.

In general, the result of launching our channel on a social network and the cost of creating content completely satisfied us.

Now it’s time to formulate a few more principles (the more, the better) and speculate on how to make content that will not only entertain viewers but also motivate them to go download the game.

1. Emotional connection with the character

Short video clips allow you to show the characters and place them in a variety of situations, which you won’t see in the game. Here, one complements the other. Having fallen in love with videos that have characters in them, users will want to spend more time with them and will begin to play.

2. Clear gameplay

Pure gameplay videos aren’t very suitable for the TikTok format for various reasons. For example, your game assumes a horizontal orientation of the screen, and on TikTok, you need a vertical one. In videos for games with top-down graphics, there may not be enough visual accents for the viewer to get to the bottom of it in a short period of time. But there’s a cunning solution. You can make a gameplay reconstruction or its interpretation, adapting it to all the features of the social network. This way, you’ll get a video that will show the game in the best light and, most importantly, it will be understood by TikTok users.

3. Great consistency (I learned that word, hurray!)

Or to put it more simply, conformity. The content of your TikTok should match the game in terms of mood, jokes, and general vibe. Because if you make epic videos, say, about magic, adventure, and pink pony dragons, but in the game, you have a visually gloomy match 3, users are unlikely to stay for long.

This is basically the end of my story! I’m sending a mental like to everyone who has read this to the end. Although this sounds so banal, please go and give us likes and subscribe to our channel, and I wish to flood TikTok with your talented videos.