1. Think about your customer
Who are you making fonts for? What do they need? Keep your customer in mind when creating your fonts and preparing marketing materials for a font release!
2. Think about the competition
Before you prepare font marketing materials, pretend you are a font user looking for a font in the same style as the font you’re about to release. Search online or use the WhatTheFont app to find similar fonts to the one you are about to release. What other similar fonts are out there? What are they priced at? How is your font different? What makes your release worth buying over something else? Maybe you have a larger character set or more font features. Emphasize these things to customers to help them make an informed decision. Don’t rely on your foundry brand name to generate demand; this is only one component of a customer’s decision. The features of a typeface that customers care most about according to the 2019 Font Purchasing Habits Survey are: 1) number of styles, 2) kerning & spacing, and 3) alternates & ligatures. How does your font stack up in these areas?
3. Make compelling images
Almost always, images directly influence a customer’s decision to buy a product on our website. We arrived at this conclusion through extensive user testing, analysis of site traffic, and based on customer feedback from the Font Purchasing Habits Survey. Images should be considered your primary marketing materials that best display your font in a compelling manner. You’ll notice that a lot of surface area on various pages throughout the site is dedicated to images for these reasons. Think of these posters as the marketing label or packaging for your font. If you were walking through a store, browsing a website, or reading a magazine, the label or packaging of a product is what grabs your attention first, then entices you to find out more, and then guides you towards a purchase. We have found that our customers respond most positively to images that show the font used in examples; combined with photography, on products, used in fictional logos or posters, or other tangible instances. You want customers to look at your font and images and think “Wow! I can design something that cool If I buy this font.” Often we see foundries using images that are visually pleasing, but fall into the "academic specimen" category. Usually these images show the font in a very “flat” design, with traditional digital layouts used by typographers to show the character set or features. By themselves, they won't be as helpful to customers; people really want to see the fonts in use so they can envision them in their own projects. Mixing the practical specimens showing features and the emotive and inspirational panels is your best bet! Want to see some great examples of successful font imagery? Just check out the Hot New Fonts page.
4. Develop your customer base
We recommend building your own email list of people who are interested in your fonts and foundry, and email them when you have a new font release or an extra-special offer. Building a base of supporters using social media and/or your own website means you have people who will get excited about your new font releases and a way to take ownership of your foundry presence and marketing. The more people who visit your font page on MyFonts, the higher it ranks in our search, thus more people are exposed to it. MyFonts can act like a megaphone, magnifying any marketing you do when you drive traffic to your font pages. MyFonts has tons of site traffic - roughly 350,000 unique site visitors per month on average in the US alone! As you can imagine, doing things to take advantage of this volume can really impact your sales. Many foundries use MyFonts successfully this way with their marketing campaigns.
5. Spread out your releases
Don’t release multiple fonts on the same day. It is generally best to spread out releases, and release on a regular cadence, i.e. weekly or every three weeks. This is so that each release will get time to shine on the What's New list individually. If you release all of them at once, then they will all slowly move down the What's New list together as more fonts are released, and your foundry name will disappear from the What's New list. If you spread them out, your foundry name will more consistently appear on the What’s New list. Any fonts that make it to the Hot New Fonts list will disappear from the list after they have been on the site for 45 days. If all your fonts are released on the same day, then they will all disappear from the Hot New Fonts list at the same time. Staggering releases keeps your brand visibility higher. The only instance in which we recommend releasing more than one family at the same time is when they are related, like a collection of different-width families for the same typeface design.
6. Create as few packages as possible
Our user tests and research indicates that fonts sell better when there are fewer packages in the buying choices. We recommend no more than 3 packages per family. Keeping things simple for customers makes a big difference!
7. Price your family packs strategically
We recommend pricing a complete family pack at roughly 3-6x the price of a single font. The goal is to encourage customers to make the decision to purchase your entire family instead of one or two styles in the family. Our research indicates that this is the sweet spot when pricing. But don’t take our word for it - try it yourself! You can also see our pricing guide here.
8. Be strategic about discounts
Discounts are highly effective in driving visitors to your font page. When creating promotional imagery, specify the discount and create excitement around the sale by emphasizing that the discount is limited time. Do not add a date on your poster image, as this could be confusing for customers in different time zones. We recommend running your discounts for the full 45 days so as many people as possible could see the discount. If you choose to run promotions for a shorter time, be sure to align your marketing to emphasize the time sensitivity.
9. Make your font description user-friendly
Include SEO-friendly keywords in your description, so that your font has a better chance of being found in search. Think about your customers when creating the description by including information about the font that may not be easy to find elsewhere, like font features and language support. What differentiates your font from the millions out there? What inspired you to make the font? Tell your customers!
10. Perform a thorough quality check on fonts prior to release
Before uploading, please thoroughly test your font files on Macs and PCs. Double check your description, images, and tags for spelling and grammar to ensure that the fonts will be displayed to customers in the most compelling way possible.