You don’t need to be an extrovert to be good at marketing
I hear this all the time from indie developers “I love the game making part of being a game developer, but absolutely suck at the marketing part because I have crippling social anxiety.”
Somewhere around the social media boom of the 2010s people started concluding that social media = marketing. Like they are the same thing. For many, when people say “do marketing” they mean, “fire up TikTok and post about your game.” Therefore many assume that the best marketers are the people who are the best “influencers.” If you aren’t a bubbly social media influencer, you are a bad marketer.
But this is incorrect and you shouldn’t feel bad that you are not a bubbly extrovert, and that is not required to be “good at marketing”
My theory is that these images represent the perceived reality of what being a good marketer is and is ground zero for indie anxiety around marketing. These pictures make it look like to be good at “marketing” you have to be the prettiest, most confident, most effortlessly extroverted person who wears cool hats and nice clothes that are color coordinated to your thoughtfully accessorized bedroom. To “do marketing” it feels like the equivalent of standing up in your high school lunchroom, boldly walking over to the cool kids table and squeezing yourself between the prom queen and the high school quarterback and then regaling them with the funniest and well timed anecdote.
