At this point in time, I'm not doing a lot of promotion because my game is still a WIP.
I have done some promotion on a Discord server for a similar game (with permission from the dev and server staff) before which gave me a bit of an audience to get some feedback from, and I do post occasional updates about the game on my Discord and Mastodon, but that's about it.
My game is aimed at a fairly specific audience, which is a blessing in some ways because there's a lot less competition, but it also means I'll never have the mass appeal to make it to the front page. But that's not what I want anyway - I am fairly content just expressing myself to the audience I have.
So, honestly, I don't have any good advice here, except: you should understand that there are a lot of games, and a lot of them get overlooked purely by necessity. Even if you do everything right, you still can bellyflop completely. So don't tie your self-worth to your analytics, don't quit your day job and go all-in on making a career as an indie dev, and make your game *for yourself*, first and foremost.
Probably not the answer you want. Sorry.
Also, a game absolutely *can* promote itself by word of mouth, once it has gotten enough momentum. Most games do *not* get that momentum, because a lot of games are competing for attention at any given time. Of course, you *should* make a good game - but that is no guarantee for success.