The Truth - You're being scammed

[TellTale]

Hey! You're a minecrafter, you have a business and you want to grow it in the best, fastest way possible.

You need to reach as many people as you can in as short an amount of time as possible and so you turn to YouTube and Discord Server Advertisements, as well as posts on other big social accounts. If this is you, you are scamming yourself because it simply does not provide to the effect that you're paying for.

I have considerable experience with running minecraft servers, and recently started one from scratch, creating a well polished minecraft server. My biggest task was maintaining the player base and ensuring a constant stream of players. I have connections to some large discord servers for the minecraft community, and the reach was nearly 18K players - we posted some ads and our discord server grew roughly 150 members. In addition, roughly 10% of those people joined our server.

We also let a special friend who has a YouTube channel run some gameplay videos. He maintains decent views, but his views are for his channel -- not the cool server that he might be show casing. We had a very low percentage of his viewers check out our server (less than 5%) ..

I knew before hand however that these advertising avenues would likely have no effect on the server, as I've been that route before. Instead I turned to more modern means of reaching users - Minecrafters you don't need to use minecraft based tools to grow your user base! Simply be creative and find an alternative way to reach the same audience.

Facebook Ads. This is hands down the absolute most cost effective and straight forward way to get players. If you take the time to learn and understand their system, for as little as $5 a day you can get hundreds of clicks. Not to mention the shock on peoples faces when they see that minecraft server ad .. like, what the hell?

Bing, Google, Yahoo and other popular engines offer great competitive ad campaigns.

Here is an image to show data for Yesterday using a test campaign I setup on Bing.

As we can see here, I spent $4.06, I have 86 clicks and 1,980 impressions. .. $4.

To summarize: You can spend $50 on some YouTube video, with no guarantee of players, or $20 on that discord shout out -- or you can be cost effective and smart. Build an ad campaign, learn how to market and grow your business without wasting money.

 

[on]

Thank you, Velcer, very cool

 

[Innings]

I might try this, looks very promising.

 

[Kavish]

I agree with this when it comes to businesses but for Minecraft servers?
I don't know.

I think when you are trying to broadcast your Minecraft server as a professional or legit server, then this would make sense.

 

[Niteburn]

I don't know about Facebook Ads but something that works well is Instagram Ads, seeming that most kids are on there nowadays.

 

[TellTale]

I don't know about Facebook Ads but something that works well is Instagram Ads, seeming that most kids are on there nowadays.

Facebook ads is also Instagram.
https://business.instagram.com

 

[Zirak]

This is very cool, but I have a question, how will this attract specific players for specific gamemodes that may be competitive? For example, I own a Competitive Factions server, how would this attract more faction-based players who want to be competitive, vs advertising in a faction discord that is full of the specific group of people I am after? I would get this if it was for say a mini-games network like Hypixel, but for specific gamemode servers, like mine, how would this be more useful? (I do see the cost part though, which could be big)

Not beating down on this, just an honest question, cause if this does work, I may try it out too!

~Jack

 

[ShayPunter]

Any form of PPC advertisements are great, take Google Adwords:

You spend about £5 per day for an ad on the term "minecraft prison server", then you'd have a page that gives them the IP and perhaps a special reward (to encourage them to join the server and play).

It's pretty much the same way for Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, though instead of a search term, your targeting users demographics such as interests, age etc.

(that's a little advertising idea for you all )

Generally speaking though, for a more simpler solid way to gain players is to simply purchase those banner ads on the server listing sites, though they can be quite expensive if you've got a bigger competitor bidding.

 

[TellTale]

This is very cool, but I have a question, how will this attract specific players for specific gamemodes that may be competitive? For example, I own a Competitive Factions server, how would this attract more faction-based players who want to be competitive, vs advertising in a faction discord that is full of the specific group of people I am after? I would get this if it was for say a mini-games network like Hypixel, but for specific gamemode servers, like mine, how would this be more useful? (I do see the cost part though, which could be big)

Not beating down on this, just an honest question, cause if this does work, I may try it out too!

~Jack

You can Target audiences based upon various factors. If you're creative enough with Facebook ads you can target people who want to drink a cup of coffee when they wake up in the morning.

Search engine based ads are probably the easiest - you will simply find phrases that match what your server is about and when users search these or similar, they see your ad. It's pretty straight forward.

DISCLAIMER: Please research how to use these tools before using them. There's a lot to setting up a good ad campaign.[DOUBLEPOST=1564765727][/DOUBLEPOST]

Any form of PPC advertisements are great, take Google Adwords:

You spend about £5 per day for an ad on the term "minecraft prison server", then you'd have a page that gives them the IP and perhaps a special reward (to encourage them to join the server and play).

It's pretty much the same way for Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, though instead of a search term, your targeting users demographics such as interests, age etc.

(that's a little advertising idea for you all )

Generally speaking though, for a more simpler solid way to gain players is to simply purchase those banner ads on the server listing sites, though they can be quite expensive if you've got a bigger competitor bidding.

Simpler, yes - definitely I can agree there. But $12K for a banner ad isn't probably so ideal, especially for smaller minecraft servers.
I would definitely encourage anyone to get a banner ad if they can afford it, providing it's on a good site - but also consider you can save a ton of money, and perhaps have far better results with your own campaign.

I have had a lot of success pulling users seeking minecraft skins, searching various crafting recipes and so on. (I mention this because not everyone looks for minecraft servers, or visits server lists)

 

[ShayPunter]

Simpler, yes - definitely I can agree there. But $12K for a banner ad isn't probably so ideal, especially for smaller minecraft servers.
I would definitely encourage anyone to get a banner ad if they can afford it, providing it's on a good site - but also consider you can save a ton of money, and perhaps have far better results with your own campaign.

I have had a lot of success pulling users seeking minecraft skins, searching various crafting recipes and so on.

I agree for sure! You could learn (or hire a Digital Marketing Manager/PPC Professional) in around an hour, at least the very basics to use PPC.

To use it effectively though you MUST know who you are trying to target, otherwise, you are throwing money down the drain.

There's a lot of marketing activities for Minecraft that everyone could take advantage of (such as SEO, Display Ads even YouTube advertisements), so like OP said, don't limit yourself to just solely MC based advertising. If you need any advice on Digital Marketing feel free to PM me or just quote me and ill give you some help

 

[Zirak]

Any form of PPC advertisements are great, take Google Adwords:

You spend about £5 per day for an ad on the term "minecraft prison server", then you'd have a page that gives them the IP and perhaps a special reward (to encourage them to join the server and play).

It's pretty much the same way for Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, though instead of a search term, your targeting users demographics such as interests, age etc.

(that's a little advertising idea for you all )

Generally speaking though, for a more simpler solid way to gain players is to simply purchase those banner ads on the server listing sites, though they can be quite expensive if you've got a bigger competitor bidding.

You can Target audiences based upon various factors. If you're creative enough with Facebook ads you can target people who want to drink a cup of coffee when they wake up in the morning.

Search engine based ads are probably the easiest - you will simply find phrases that match what your server is about and when users search these or similar, they see your ad. It's pretty straight forward.

DISCLAIMER: Please research how to use these tools before using them. There's a lot to setting up a good ad campaign.[DOUBLEPOST=1564765727][/DOUBLEPOST]
Simpler, yes - definitely I can agree there. But $12K for a banner ad isn't probably so ideal, especially for smaller minecraft servers.
I would definitely encourage anyone to get a banner ad if they can afford it, providing it's on a good site - but also consider you can save a ton of money, and perhaps have far better results with your own campaign.

I have had a lot of success pulling users seeking minecraft skins, searching various crafting recipes and so on. (I mention this because not everyone looks for minecraft servers, or visits server lists)

Thank you! I may try this method out then. Thank you for the thread, hopefully this will help my server.

 

[Mhtro]

Wait until this kid figures out Facebook

 

[User]

This works for businesses, but as opposed to Facebook, I'd suggest Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. There aren't many Minecraft players using Facebook.

 

[TellTale]

This works for businesses, but as opposed to Facebook, I'd suggest Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. There aren't many Minecraft players using Facebook.

There are more than 10 million active facebook users who have minecraft interests.

 

[User]

There are more than 10 million active facebook users who have minecraft interests.

And how many active users have Minecraft interests on Instagram? Considering there are many users like DanTDM with millions of followers (most of which are active) on Instagram, I'd imagine that Instagram is likely in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions.

 

[TellTale]

And how many active users have Minecraft interests on Instagram? Considering there are many users like DanTDM with millions of followers (most of which are active) on Instagram, I'd imagine that Instagram is likely in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions.

Facebook and Instagram kind of go hand in hand. My previous post was simply to defend face books user base.

 

[User]

Facebook and Instagram kind of go hand in hand. My previous post was simply to defend face books user base.

Yes, I'm not saying it's small at all. Just that you will find a much higher concentration of Minecraft interest on Instagram, and likely similar ad rates.

 

[901cosmic]

Hey! You're a minecrafter, you have a business and you want to grow it in the best, fastest way possible.

You need to reach as many people as you can in as short an amount of time as possible and so you turn to YouTube and Discord Server Advertisements, as well as posts on other big social accounts. If this is you, you are scamming yourself because it simply does not provide to the effect that you're paying for.

I have considerable experience with running minecraft servers, and recently started one from scratch, creating a well polished minecraft server. My biggest task was maintaining the player base and ensuring a constant stream of players. I have connections to some large discord servers for the minecraft community, and the reach was nearly 18K players - we posted some ads and our discord server grew roughly 150 members. In addition, roughly 10% of those people joined our server.

We also let a special friend who has a YouTube channel run some gameplay videos. He maintains decent views, but his views are for his channel -- not the cool server that he might be show casing. We had a very low percentage of his viewers check out our server (less than 5%) ..

I knew before hand however that these advertising avenues would likely have no effect on the server, as I've been that route before. Instead I turned to more modern means of reaching users - Minecrafters you don't need to use minecraft based tools to grow your user base! Simply be creative and find an alternative way to reach the same audience.

Facebook Ads. This is hands down the absolute most cost effective and straight forward way to get players. If you take the time to learn and understand their system, for as little as $5 a day you can get hundreds of clicks. Not to mention the shock on peoples faces when they see that minecraft server ad .. like, what the hell?

Bing, Google, Yahoo and other popular engines offer great competitive ad campaigns.

Here is an image to show data for Yesterday using a test campaign I setup on Bing.

As we can see here, I spent $4.06, I have 86 clicks and 1,980 impressions. .. $4.

To summarize: You can spend $50 on some YouTube video, with no guarantee of players, or $20 on that discord shout out -- or you can be cost effective and smart. Build an ad campaign, learn how to market and grow your business without wasting money.

Businesses all over the world use this, it's much more effective, thank you for the wise words