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Understanding emotional triggers can be highly effective for marketing:

Create a strong connection with your audience by tapping into FOMO, nostalgia, or sense of security, among other emotions.
Indie games take risks to offer new, unique gaming experiences. Here's your guide to building, growing, and monetizing your own indie game.
$200K MRR with an online photo editor. Ivan Kutskir has been building for 10 years, and his current project has skyrocketed through paid ads.

Want your product seen by over 70,000 founders and businesses? Sponsor an issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter. Choose between 3 affordable tiers that can fit almost any budget.

Seven Emotional Triggers to Use in Marketing 🤗

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by Syed Balkhi

Well-crafted marketing copy can tap into the emotions of your customers, compelling them to take action. Emotional triggers in marketing copy are not just words; they are strategic tools that can significantly impact the decision-making process.

Try these emotional triggers widely used in marketing copy!

Fear of missing out (FOMO)

FOMO is a powerful emotional trigger. The fear of missing out on a great deal or opportunity can drive consumers to take immediate action.

A limited-time offer or exclusive product can tap into this trigger, encouraging customers to make a purchase before it's too late.

Anticipation

Humans are curious creatures, and marketers often use this trigger to their advantage.

Teasing or hinting at something exciting to come can create a sense of anticipation and curiosity in customers. For instance: "Something revolutionary is coming your way."

The use of a trigger word like "revolutionary" creates excitement, and leaves the audience wanting more. It's kind of like dropping a trailer to build up curiosity for a movie. Once people are hooked, you can then release the full product details.

Status and social standing

The desire to be admired and respected by our peers is engraved in our nature.

For instance, copy for a luxury brand might say: "Stand out from the crowd with our new, exclusive designer collection."

The copy implies exclusivity and status, suggesting that owning items from this collection will elevate the customer's social standing.

Surprise and delight

Surprises have a powerful effect on our emotions, and can create an instant connection with the brand.

Marketing copy that offers unexpected rewards or promotions can leave a lasting impression on customers. Giving them something extra or unexpected can make them feel appreciated and valued, leading to a positive association with the brand.

For instance, copy for a coffee shop might say: "Enjoy our new holiday blend and get a pastry on us!"

Value and belonging

Being valued and feeling like we belong are essential human needs.

You can include terms like "join the community" or "be part of something bigger," creating a feeling of belonging.

Nostalgia

The most underrated emotional trigger is nostalgia. Tapping into customers' past memories and emotions can be a powerful tool.

Marketing campaigns that evoke positive memories of childhood or simpler times can create an emotional connection between the customer and the brand.

Security

Security is a fundamental human need, and plays a vital role in our decision-making process. Marketing copy that conveys a sense of protection or safety can appeal to this emotion.

Copy for a cybersecurity company might say: "Protect your financial information with our top-of-the-line security software."

Think about the emotions you want to evoke in your audience, and use words and phrases that tap into those feelings!

Discuss this story.

In the News 📰

Photo: In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter

📱 X is turning to small businesses after pissing the giants off.

🚀 Three major elements that impact startup growth.

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

🔎 Combining Google Ads with other channels to retarget and convert.

🤝 Reddit's guide to turning conversations into customers.

👀 What founders get wrong about sales and marketing.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

Trend Alert: Indie Games 🎮

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from the Trends.vc newsletter

Problem

We are tired of the same genres and game mechanics. We crave new experiences.

Solution

Indie games experiment with game mechanics, stories, genres, and themes. They take creative risks to offer unique game experiences.

Players

Indie video games:

Among Us: Complete tasks and fight imposters on a spaceship.
Minecraft: Build, explore, and survive in a blocky world.
Undertale: Role-playing game where choices matter.

Indie tabletop games:

I Feel Attacked: Game about the people you love to hate.
Untamed: Feral Fractions: Control animal factions to take down the enemy stronghold.
Castles by the Sea: Build and populate a seaside kingdom.

Building indie games

Use a starter kit to save time building and optimizing your game.
Take inspiration from popular games to stack the odds in your favor. If people enjoy them, chances are they will enjoy yours also.
Build a unique game by experimenting with genres and game mechanics.

Growing indie games

Build your own community to foster loyalty and get feedback. Last Epoch has an official subreddit and a Discord channel with updates, player discussions, and more.
Build in public to earn trust, feedback, and early fans.
Add your game to cloud gaming services, letting your fans play from anywhere in the world.

Monetizing indie games

Sell early access to get funding and feedback.
Offer battle passes. They reward players with in-game items for playing the game and completing challenges. Players can buy battle passes to get access to content, or battle pass levels to progress faster.
Sell digital goods, like soundtracks and artwork. Give players something they will enjoy outside of the game menu.

Predictions

We’ll see more million-dollar, one-person indie developers.
We’ll see accelerators for indie game developers. They will help with marketing and sales. Indielab Games helps grow indie studios from the UK. GameFounders helps indie studios launch games and demos.
Indie games will tap into other forms of media, like animations, movies, and TV shows.

Haters

“This is a hits-driven business with a low chance of success.”

Most indie developers make games out of passion. If you want to make games to get rich, this may not be the right business for you.

“Game concepts are copied a lot. It seems that there’s no strong moat.”

In games, execution is everything. They have more moving parts than software. Experiment with story, characters, visuals, and game mechanics to make a unique game.

“You’re not indie if you’re working with a publisher.”

A lot of great indie developers work with publishers to market their games, while keeping full creative control. You can go it alone, or sacrifice a part of your revenue for better visibility.

"Some of the indie game developers you shared have dozens of employees.”

Some studios started with one person or a small team. Some got funding and hired fast. Some got acquired right after they made a successful game.

Links

Let’s Talk About Indie Games: The thread for this report.
Building a Report on Indie Games: The tweet behind this report.
Getting Started in Indie Game Development: How to pick the right game idea, engine, and assets.
The Point of a First Level: How to give a great first impression with the first level.

Related reports

Become a Trends Pro Member to get the full report on Indie Games, or get the next free Trends.vc report here.

Discuss this story.

🔥 Landing Page Hot Tips

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by Rob Hope

Strengthen your landing page with these design, development, and conversion tips!

Focus on form UX.

Landing pages often overlook the importance of good form usability. Fancy layouts with too many required fields will drop conversions.

✅ Arrange fields in one column.

✅ Keep required fields to a minimum.

✅ Position labels near the top left of fields.

✅ Tab in the correct order.

Subscribe to Rob's One Page Love newsletter for his favorite UI, design, and development finds.

Photopea Started as a Hobby and Hit $200K MRR 📸

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by Leo Askan

Ivan Kutskir founded Photopea, an online photo editor, which is now generating $200K MRR.

The background

I was born in Ukraine and moved to Czechia with my parents when I was 11. When I turned 18, I came to Prague to study computer science at university.

I got my first computer around 2013. It was the beginning of the internet era here in Czechia, and we had limited internet access initially. Making Flash games was a personal interest of mine.

First internet dollars

When I was in high school, I began connecting with people who needed Flash games or animations. I started making money before university by doing these freelance projects.

Flash was owned by Macromedia, and later bought by Adobe. I used Photoshop back then, and was quite proficient with it. I got really excited about the web technologies emerging around then, like the Google Chrome browser, web games without Flash, web GL, and other new web technologies. I saw that web-based applications could be much more performant than they were five years prior with Internet Explorer. So, I transitioned from making Flash games to developing JavaScript games, and monetized them with ads.

As I was working on these games and other projects, I came up with the idea to make a web-based viewer for PSD files.

I wasn’t aiming to create an editor at first. I just wanted a platform where one could open a PSD file, and the JavaScript would process and analyze the file to provide a preview of its content, like showing how many layers there were.

Back then, if you wanted to open a PSD file, you had to buy Photoshop. There was no other way. You could open PSD files in GIMP, but it would open them without any styles or adjustment layers, so it wasn’t accurate. So, I built it.

Advice for bootstrappers

Your project should be something you’re passionate about, almost like a hobby. If you’re excited about your work, it will feel less like a task, and more like something you’re eager to spend time on. For me, working on Photopea was akin to playing an instrument; it was something I did for enjoyment, not just as a job.

When starting out, don’t be intimidated by the idea of entering a crowded market or tackling complex tasks. Begin by focusing on the core, essential features of your product, the ones that are most important and useful. With Photopea, I focused on essential features that were either poorly implemented, or missing, in other software.

Start with the most important features and build from there!

Check out the full interview here.

Discuss this story.

The Tweetmaster's Pick 🐦

Cover image for Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

Enjoy This Newsletter? 🏁

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Syed Balkhi, Darko, Dru Riley, Rob Hope, and Leo Askan for contributing posts. —Channing

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The Rise of Indie Games