Hey guys, Anthony here, Sales and Marketing Manager at AudioCat. Since joining the AudioCat team a few months ago, I have loved every second of my experience and have learned so much about the blind and visually impaired community. This knowledge has enabled me to tailor my marketing content appropriately and offered me unique insights that have helped in other areas of my professional life.
You see, besides proudly being a member of this brilliant team and our fantastic community, I am also the founder of an accessible travel brand called The World is Accessible. As a wheelchair user, I have primarily focused on areas of accessibility for those with mobility issues involving wheelchairs, scooters, walking aids, etc. However, branching out to cater more to those with visual impairments and enabling seamless travel for this community is a significant focus for me now.
But enough about that; you aren’t visiting the AudioCat blog to listen to me waffle on about my travel community. Though, if you are interested in such topics, you will find a travel channel within the AudioCat Discord server where you can chat with me individually about far-flung vacations and dream holiday destinations. For now, let’s get back to the topic of AudioCat, shall we?
So, what does the role entail? What are my tasks? Well, currently, all three members of the AudioCat team are on either a freelance or voluntary contract, which means working hours are slightly limited due to other commitments. We’re hopeful, however, that in the not-too-distant future, we will be able to secure enough funding to turn one or two of the staff members into part-time or full-time roles. The issue of funding is something I also help out with in my day-to-day tasks. As part of my role as a Marketing and Sales Manager, I reach out to potential partners and businesses that either want to collaborate with us or lend their support in some way. My role also involves helping with concepts such as creating a Kickstarter campaign — something that you might find out more about soon.
In addition to securing funding to help pay our staff, we also need to secure a budget for our marketing practices. Currently, we rely heavily on the good nature of our community. Some of you have been stellar, showing your support in ways we could only have dreamed of. Every review, play-through video, podcast, social media post, blog, etc., goes a long way toward helping us get the word out about AudioCat, far and wide.
You may have noticed that we keep track of our activities and goings-on behind the scenes through weekly and monthly round-ups on social media and in our newsletter. Some have asked why we do this. Why do we feel the need to ‘overshare’? From a marketing and public relations standpoint, we love to be super transparent and open with you guys. We believe that being forthright and sharing about our lives helps to humanize us, steering us away from the undesirable corporate image that many other companies perpetrate. It’s one of our current strategies, and we hope to continue with it moving forward.
What are my plans to help get the message across about AudioCat and our suite of games, as well as the games and features we have in the pipeline? For the most part, I spend my days reaching out to the likes of international blind unions, charities, and networks, attempting to reach as wide of a blind and visually impaired audience as possible. As I mentioned before, I have a disabled travel community, but the percentage of visually impaired members within these broader disabled communities is often quite small. With that in mind, you’ll often see AudioCat focusing their attention on groups dedicated to those who are blind and visually impaired. We hope that this does not come across as spammy in these groups, given that there are not too many of them that are active enough to be worth posting in. However, as long as those finding our content are happy to hear from us, we’ll continue to share there!
I’ll finish up this brief blog post by saying that you can, of course, help us. If you know of any avenues that you have not already seen AudioCat trying to penetrate and you think it could help us reach more blind and visually impaired folks — particularly gamers — then please do let us know. As always, you can catch us on social media or in our Discord server!