The 6-Week Marketing Reset Before Launch

This article is the decision-stage answer for independent and publisher-backed indie game studios shipping on Steam, Epic, console, and mobile. If you are reading it, you have already worked out that you need senior marketing leadership and you are now triangulating who, when, and at what price. The honest answer at the bottom of the page is that an engagement at the €15,000/month tier (Agency & vendor management) is what you are evaluating, and below I explain when that is the right call.

The TL;DR

Hire an interim marketing leader for Indie Game Development when one of these is true:

1. You have a leadership vacuum — your CMO left, your Head of Growth left, or your founder is doing the job and is now the bottleneck.
2. You have a specific transformation — a rebrand, a post-merger marketing integration, a new market entry, or a MarTech replatform.
3. You have a time-bound window — a fundraise, a launch, a Steam Next Fest, an AFM submission, or an investor update where the marketing function needs to be visibly under control.
4. You have growth that has stalled for two consecutive quarters and the existing team cannot diagnose why.

If none of these is true, you do not need this engagement. Hire a permanent CMO or stay the course.

What the €15,000/month tier actually buys

The €15,000/month engagement is structured around agency & vendor management. For independent and publisher-backed indie game studios shipping on Steam, Epic, console, and mobile this typically means:

• Weekly working sessions with the founder/CEO, fortnightly with the leadership team.
• A 30-day audit covering Steamworks stack, Steam Next Fest and Discord communities performance, organisational design, and budget allocation.
• A 60-day rollout: stack consolidation, channel reset, agentic workflow prototypes, hiring plan, and the first board-grade dashboard.
• A 90-day handover (or extension) plan.

You are not paying for slideware. You are paying for someone who has done this before — across Vinted's France launch, where I ran influencer marketing from zero foothold (the same play that works for early-access indies) and 50+ other organisations — to make the unpopular decisions inside the first two weeks.

The economics, plainly

For a Indie Game Development business doing €5M–€100M in revenue, the realistic alternatives are:

Option	Annualised cost	Time-to-impact	Termination risk
Permanent CMO (Tier-1 talent)	€280K–€450K + equity + recruiter fee	4–9 months search, 90-day ramp	6–12 months severance
Interim at €15,000/month	€15,000 × 6 months	1–2 weeks	30-day notice
Marketing agency (retainer)	€120K–€240K	4–8 weeks	30–90 days
Stay the course	Opportunity cost of stalled growth	N/A	N/A

The €15,000/month tier consistently lands cheaper than the wrong permanent hire, because the wrong permanent hire costs you 9 months of growth that does not happen.

What I will not do at this tier

• Promise specific ROAS or CAC targets in the first 30 days. Anyone who does is guessing.
• Replace your team without a written 90-day plan reviewed with you.
• Sign a contract that does not include a 30-day exit clause.
• Take an engagement where Indie Game Development-specific regulatory exposure (AFM for fintech, ePrivacy for D2C, platform ToS for indie games) has not been mapped beforehand.

What I will do, in the first 14 days

1. A written stack and channel audit with one page of executive summary and one appendix of evidence.
2. An organisational diagnostic identifying the single highest-leverage hire or workflow change.
3. A direct conversation with your CFO or VC lead about expected payback period under realistic assumptions.
4. A 90-day plan with weekly milestones and a board-grade dashboard prototype.

How to engage

The intake is at /apply: a five-minute form covering organisation profile, current marketing landscape, MarTech infrastructure, and engagement preferences. Response within 48 hours. If we are a fit you will have a written proposal within five business days. If we are not a fit I will say so and recommend an alternative.

You can also review my interactive CV for verified case studies across ING, P&G, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, WeTransfer, Vinted, and 50+ other organisations.

The full pricing ladder, for reference

• €5,000/month — Channel execution — paid media, CRM, content.
• €7,500/month — Campaign strategy & planning.
• €10,000/month — Agentic workflow setup (AI agents).
• €12,500/month — Creative direction & brand guardianship.
• €15,000/month — Agency & vendor management. ← this tier
• €17,500/month — Team coaching & upskilling.
• €20,000/month — Hiring & team building.
• €22,500/month — Board-level stakeholder reporting.
• €25,000/month — Full interim CMO — orchestrates humans + AI agents.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How fast can you start?

Inside a week for most engagements. Inside 72 hours for crisis mandates (departed CMO, AFM letter, launch in 30 days). The contract is the bottleneck, not the work — and the contract template is pre-cleared with NL counsel.

2. What if it's not a fit after 30 days?

Every engagement has a 30-day exit clause. If we are not a fit we close out, you keep the work-product, and you owe one final invoice. No legal drama, no recriminations. This is in your interest and mine — a misaligned engagement is the most expensive thing either of us can run.

3. Will you do equity instead of cash?

Occasionally yes, for pre-seed / seed-stage businesses where the engagement is sub-€10K/month. Above that the engagement is cash-only. Equity-for-services creates a misaligned incentive that no founder reading this carefully actually wants.

4. How is the €15,000/month tier different from €17,500/month?

Scope. €15,000/month covers Agency & vendor management. The next tier up adds the next layer of responsibility — agency management, team coaching, hiring, or board reporting depending on the rung. See the full ladder for the precise differences.

References

[1] VG Insights / Steam revenue analysis, 2024. https://vginsights.com/insights/article/2023-year-in-review-steam-game-statistics [2] MarketingUpgrade.pro. "Pricing & Engagement Tiers." https://www.marketingupgrade.pro/#pricing [3] MarketingUpgrade.pro. "Marketing Glossary." https://www.marketingupgrade.pro/glossary