11Bit Studios are a Polish game developer and publisher founded in 2010, best known for This War of Mine and the Frostpunk series. With the hotly anticipated sequel to Frostpunk, they wanted to make sure it was a record-breaking release for the studio.
They already had a passionate fan base of players of the previous game, now they wanted to increase awareness and pre and release sales of Frostpunk 2 PC release.
Frostpunk 2 had a Super Homepage takeover, bringing thousands of impressions whenever anyone visited the site.
The game was also promoted in our September Showcase, one of our monthly marketing activities that highlights great games we think our audience will love. We’ve run these showcases for years, building a strong relationship with our audience that constantly delivers for our partners.
Beyond this, there was a home page carousel for the game on the Green Man Gaming homepage carousel for over a week. It was also listed in the Featured Deals and New Games section, and we ran two blogs on the game over the course of the campaign, one dedicated blog on the game, and another round-up article of the best games of the month to keep the game top of mind for customers considering making the purchase.
We also utalised Green Man Gaming's 610,000 social followers across organic social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram and X where we posted numerous times to alert our audience to when the game was available for pre purchase and when it released.
We reached out to our 6000 content creators to gage if they had any interest in the game. We then cross checked the list with 11Bit and gave the approved streamers a free key in exchange for covering the game at release.
Our micro influencers then streamed and uploaded footage of the game on Twitch, Youtube, and other social channels, driving the conversation and showing off the new features and improvements compared to the original Frostpunk.
This further built up the impressions and engagement with the game which helped our performance channels to work harder on launch. We had a high level of CTR from this channel and attributed a lot of traffic and sales to it.
Included across our global Google shopping feed we also ran a series of Google Ads across America, Canada, the UK, Brazil, and Australia. We used a combination of brand based impression bidding for video based ads across Youtube and also honed into conversion based bidding strategies.
We had a large variety of ad creatives and actively split tested images, ad types and copy as we ran the campaign.
Google overall generated over 180,000 impressions, with a solid CTR of 0.86% and low CPC £0.50
Our Paid Social Ads went even further for even cheaper, for a combined reach of 687,000 impressions, 0.81% avg CTR with Reddit and Facebook both yielding low average costs per click £0.24. We got alot for our money.
We spent more across Facebook so in turn it drove the highest amount of impressions and clicks. however reddit played an important part of the cross channel journey to increase ad frequency per user.
We targeted opted-in customers who had wishlisted or purchased similar games from the Green Man Gaming Store, reaching almost a million potential buyers. We sent x4 emails in total including; pre purchase, last chance pre purchase, wishlist and out now.
Here's an insight to our targeting:
Opted in customers who have either wishlisted or purchased from GMG / Steam the following similar games;
'Frostpunk', 'Rimworld', 'Bellwright', 'Surviving the Aftermath', 'IXION', 'The Crust', 'Timberborn', 'Oxygen Not Included', 'They Are Billions, 'Satisfactory', any 'ANNO' game, 'This War of Mine', 'Surviving Mars', 'The Last Haven', 'New Cycle', 'The Long Dark', any 'TROPICO' games, 'Infection Free Zone' or 'Endzone - A world Apart’
The campaign generated a combined total of 1.8 million impressions, driving a huge increase in awareness of the game.
The campaign resulted in thousands of sales, helping 11Bit Studios get their game on the map. 31.6% of all sales on 3rd party stores were driven through this campaign.
The campaign had a total ROI of 816%, making it a major success for the studio and their IP.
“Working with Green Man Gaming on the launch of Frostpunk 2 was a standout experience. Their performance marketing campaign delivered incredible results - an impressive 816% ROI that exceeded our expectations. I’d recommend partnering with GMG to any developer looking for impactful, data-driven promotion.” - Maciej Jaczewski
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