The field of marketing in the context of the gaming area is very complex, but in this short guide we will outline what we think are the most important elements to develop a product from a sales point of view.
The most important rule to follow when planning promotional strategies for a mobile game is that it cannot be done as if it was any other product. Above all, you need to know that we need to appear in the virtual world where our potential future users are. In our guide on creating target groups for mobile games (we also refer to it), we mentioned an important aspect of game production from a marketing point of view - before we proceed with the project, we need to know who we want to reach and what we need to do to make the selected audience interested in our product.
Social media as a source of acquisition of players
As it is well known, social media generate a lot of traffic in the area of customer acquisition. By properly selecting the channels in which we want to start marketing, we can reach the relevant audiences genuinely interested in our further updates and work on the game. It can be said that in popular marketplaces, such as Google Play, every month there are about 50 thousand new titles, so there is a lot to cut through when we consider strategies for marketing our game. When it comes to the choice of communication channels, we should definitely focus on fewer of them and meticulously develop, for example, 2-3 channels. Scattering to all possible paths we have no chance of marketing success, because in this case it's definitely the quality of the lead that counts, not the number of created accounts.
When you know what your game is going to be like (again, we refer you to the Target group for a mobile game guide, where we explain how to characterize your target audience), you can do some research on your competitors and find out what social media channels they use and what their methods of content presentation look like. Creating social media accounts at the pre-production stage is a very important element of marketing activities, so this is where you should start. Getting your audience interested at this stage will ensure that by posting regularly and reminding them that your team is working on the game will work like the ads we see in public spaces - they will remember themselves, and the very process of associating the topic is already a great achievement in terms of further product recognition.
Marketing and optimization in the online store
In our tutorial entitled App Store Optimization Guide, we described the most important points, the implementation of which boils down to the correct optimization of games in marketplaces. Here, however, we would like to talk more about the compatibility of the topic of marketing and optimization in marketplaces.
In the case of mobile games, title positioning and metadata optimization is actually a long-term marketing strategy for which the right tools exist. If you are an indie game developer, you should be particularly interested in the topic of such tools.
Subsequently, for specific optimization sections useful tools might be:
For keyword searches:
- AppTweak,
- TheTool.io,
- App Radar
- Keywordtool.io,
- Sensor Tower,
- Mobile Action
For audience feedback analysis (understanding player needs):
- Appbot,
- Mobile Action,
- TheTool.io
For A/B testing (analyzing what provides higher download and conversion rates):
- SplitMetrics,
- Storemaven
For search engine ad optimization (when running ad campaigns):
- SearchAds.com
The above, and many other marketplace optimization tools, should be on your must do list if you are aiming for better results for your game.
The latest changes in mobile app marketing
All of the actions we've listed here are very relevant to working on product visibility, but the trends of some operations are changing depending on movements within the metadata stored in marketplaces, and these are worth watching and being aware of how to adapt your existing optimization methods to them. You'll be able to find a more extensive post on marketing trends for mobile games on our blog soon, but we'll outline the basics of this topic here, as it's worth keeping an eye on.
Unfortunately, for some time now we can see that the jumps within keyword positions are not as high as they were in previous years. Now it takes much more time to reach a higher position, and with the help of course come optimization tools that allow you to improve the position of words in the search engine, for example, when it comes to App Store - Apple Search Ads, but this unfortunately generates a lot of costs of audience acquisition. The answer to this problem seems to be creating your own advertising networks (rewarded video ads).
Mobile game marketing is a complex issue, so it is worth approaching it thoroughly and trying to keep up with the changes that concern direct optimization and promotion activities. As a platform for devs, Playstrict conducts promotional campaigns for games at different stages of their lifecycle and depending on your needs, so if you're a game developer and you're not quite sure how to approach the topic of promotion, get back to us and we'll guide you through the campaign path and make your game visible in the gaming world.
