Discussion: exploring effective marketing exposure channels in crowded APP trends

This is a tough time.

For the mobile app store, take apple as an example. It is no doubt that the total number of apps in the store has exceeded 0.4 million, and the total number of downloads has exceeded 10 billion. However, for developers, more than 0.2 billion of their itunes accounts are bound to credit cards), more than 0.1 billion of iPhone users and more than 15 million of iPad users are in addition to the super temptation, the question to be considered is how to develop effective marketing channels and seamlessly connect potential users.

This is an extremely difficult problem.

As a developer, you still need to face another problem that is also frowned.

At this stage of the development of social apps or mobile apps, you may find that, in addition to the efforts of developers, the more powerful the reality is the cruel problem that everyone must face. You can stare at Facebook's game rankings, or App Store game rankings. For a long time, there have been only a few situations under special events. The reality is that when Rovio launched Angry Birds Rio, whether the game is good or not, it swept through the rankings of App Store countries and regions around the world.

Mobile apps

According to Metcalfe's Law, this is a terrible process of n × N.

Therefore, it is critical for developers to discover effective marketing channels.

Finding one inch of life in hundreds of thousands of application Stacks is a self-struggling adventure. According to Oxford University's research, in the App age, sticking to the sheephunting theory will be very effective. The first download base is the key factor for your product to be detonated, it determines whether your product is recommended by the App Store, whether it can enter the ranking, whether it can be followed by the media industry and consumers.

Early users are the leader in your product and will help you provide a more reliable download base.

Of course, to seize the lead, you need a proper product release time. When Tiny Wings or Angry Birds Rio monopolizes players' time, you choose to attack the market, even if you have a loud name, even if you have made attractive icons, even if you feel that the product description is amazing, the final outcome may be that your product is just a transitional product.

To this end, we have imagined some effective channels for possibilities, which may also be worth noting.

About publisher Selection

We often use Angry Birds and Cut The Rope to prove The value of The publisher Chillingo. In fact, similar to 6Waves, The popularity of Ravenwood Fair on Facebook is equally indispensable.

Creative R & D seems to be something that many application developers are better at. In fact, good operation can effectively promote the success of their applications. Without good O & M channels and methods, even good works may be drowned in the Application Stack. So when Chillingo tries to force Rovio or EA Mobile to become the best gaming company on ME Awards, it seems to be a good deal. Angry Birds and Cut The Rope have become industry leaders in Chillingo O & M.

In the publisher field, similar to Snsplus, EA Partner integration Chillingo and Playfish), Mentez, I-jet, Viximo, or 6waves all have outstanding performance.

However, it is always a paradox that developers and publishers complement each other. Just like a real question: Without Chillingo, can Cut The Rope continuously win The best head game awards on BAFTA and GDC? Or if The success of Cut The Rope and Angry Birds is not achieved, can Chillingo play an important role in The publishing field like it is now?

There is no doubt that users usually associate game products with product release cards, but developers' efforts are easily ignored. Even if publishers try to increase the exposure of developers' names as much as possible, the developers' position in the industry is still not valued.

For developers, is it a simple behind-the-scenes hero, or is it possible for developers to fight and kill themselves on the first line? This is a problem. After all, games like Tiny Wings become famous overnight are rare.

Cross-promotion

It turns out that cross-promotion is a powerful marketing method, but it is still limited to a few large companies with super resources. For example, Zynga launched an internal cross-marketing game called by Cityville. Note: Based on Farmville, Zynga's subsequent achievements FrontierVille or Cityville have more or less Farmville shadows. These two upgrades effectively help Farmville users in the Early Days to demand both the intimacy and freshness of the game, so they can be more effective in terms of player transfer efficiency ), or Mafia Wars Brazil cross-marketing launched by Cityville and internal collaboration between Disney and Tapulous are typical examples of success.

For developers who do not have enough marketing resources, the other option is not necessarily effective, but it is definitely a last resort. Early on, Applifier launched small and medium-sized developers to forge a rebellious alliance against the galaxy empire in Star Wars in response to strong competition from super companies, that is, the third-party marketing tool alliance we became more familiar with later. Among these products are the prominent Game-PromMyspace products), MindJolt barMindJolt, and VIP Games NetworkDigital Chocolate. Other products include Applifier and AppStrip.

Due to the limited number of franchisees and the limitation of the user base, in fact, the small and medium-sized enterprises that cross-promote are not very effective. Therefore, the reward download policy is often implemented in cross-marketing of apps, in social games, the common way is to watch advertisements or execute certain clicks to get corresponding rewards. on the mobile phone platform, Tapjoy also implements a similar New Mode of advertising reward by operation, these may produce better results than pure advertisements.

Applifier cross-promotion bar

Search and application recommendation

The ultimate goal of marketing is to recommend developers' products to potential users, and finally persuade users to download their work through various techniques.

In fact, many users complain that the retrieval efficiency of each application platform is quite poor. Google has upgraded its search for the Android Market, and GetJar has introduced Yahoo for further improvement. As for the third-party App search tool Chomp, it strives to make some breakthroughs in this regard, in fact, Spotlight retrieval by Aurora Feint Based on the Android Market is also good, And the Applifier mentioned above cannot wait to launch Games on Applifier to help developers better search for social Games. Search is a super channel for developers to target users. Currently, Wooga, a rising social networking game field, believes that good search allows them to discover and attract more users.

What is closely related with retrieval is the recommendation of app stores and third-party display platforms. If you can obtain recommendation applications that become external to Apple in various occasions like Angry Birds, it is very difficult to get attention to them. However, if not, a recommendation platform with a layout similar to Appoke, Applolicious, and Appia is also a channel choice.

About third-party app stores

Let's take a look at Rovio's Android version of Angry Birds in Getjar, And the popularity caused by the Android version of Angry Birds Rio in Amazon Appstore. It's not just an authentic App Store that is awesome, third-party platforms can also perform well.

You know that the best Store winner of ME Awards last year was not an Apple App Store, nor an Android Market owned by Google, but the Mafia Wars of GetjarZynga, which is the preferred choice for Android, is also adopted by many developers ).

Therefore, there are better reasons to believe that third-party platforms are always worth a try. Including Opera Mobile Store, Amazon Appstore, Mocospace, Papaya Mobile, Plus +, OpenFeint, and Scoreloop.

About viral marketing channels

We should believe that it is the most effective way for users to disseminate data spontaneously.

So when Facebook compresses the viral distribution channel Game state Note: for example, by default, News Feed is only a regular friend, and Game Stories is independently generated from News Feed Story) when Facebook repositioned the launch of Discover New Games, it was equally effective to spread viruses.

Discover-New-Games-IF-Module

Although mobile gaming platforms have been considered to lack functions similar to Facebook virus distribution channels, however, the recently launched mobile game sign-in application of Heyzap has been considered to be capable of spreading viruses like Facebook's Discover New Games. Unlike the free mode of Facebook games, mobile games, especially IOS games, have a large portion of the benefits from paid downloads, which may weaken the virus propagation efficiency.

Now, the most important question is how to maximize the efficiency of user spontaneous sharing in your game design mechanism?

Brand Strategy for games

Brand Strategy, as its name implies, is to stick games and brands together to improve user identity. brand strategies such as relying on Celebrity effects, authorizing games, movies, and TV programs ).

So you will see Mike Tyson, a boxer, and Chomp's famous Hollywood superstar investor Ashton Kutcher ), singer Snoop Dogg will appear in Zynga's marketing campaign for Mafia Wars.

In most developers' eyes, the brand means that potential users can be predicted in advance. Angry Birds has millions of fans waiting for Rovio's social edition on Facebook, similarly, 8 million of the TV series Gossip girls launched Gossip Girl: Social Climbing), and the NBA also imagined that they would have a great influence on Facebook to launch the NBA legend Social games ).

Of course, the brand does not mean The protection of users. the Playboy Party suffered a great battle, and The super TV series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena-The Game also suffered a poor performance, in addition, Ubisoft and Columbia's CSI: Crime City were not as expected.

Media Efficiency

Without the help of media in marketing, we may not be able to see the current landscape of those dominant games.

You can see that media marketing is almost accompanied by every successful game. Taking Cut The Rope as an example, Chillingo advertised The game as The fastest-selling game in history when it was somewhat effective, then Chris Byatte explained to The public why they chose Cut The Rope because it may become Angry Birds second. Then ZeptoLab will detail the game production process.

If you want to give a more appropriate case, you can see that Zynga has published a major advertisement in New York Times Square for marketing the latest Farmville English Countryside, even in the bustling Wall Street financial district, Park Avenue and Times Square, a group of sheep appeared to show users farm scenes with British pastoral styles, or to marketing Mafia Wars Las Vegas, they also invited Snoop Dogg to detonate an armored vehicle in Nevada. These are all topical event marketing, which are sufficient to occupy the core positions of major media.

About group buying Mode

Group Buying is now the most popular marketing method, and is a channel for advertisers and direct users to win.

EA/playfish should be the first to be involved in the group buying model. They participated in Groupon's big group buying on the GAP nationwide in the United States, and had a good influence on the gaming industry. Note: This is not really a group buying model, only virtual game coins are included in group purchases ).

The real group buying in the game was initiated by OpenFeint. They then launched the Fire Sale group buying activity to mobile game players. Then, in order to promote Facebook Credits, Facebook also entered the Group Buying mode Buy with Friends.

Both of them share the same thing: using the low-price group buying model to facilitate user participation. For example, in the Fire Sale mode, players can buy games that are originally expensive at a lower price.

User feedback

One of the important differences between social games/mobile games and traditional game development is that a small shift can reduce market risks at a low cost, and applications can be updated continuously based on user feedback.

Brian Renault believes that user feedback has made game design more targeted to drive the gaming experience. For example, when FrontierVille's initial cabin construction reduces the difficulty, the user retention level has soared; john Romero launched Ravenwood Fair, which said he was always staring at AppData to view the game's user trends. 3. Blocks studio John Passfield believed that the social game design was open and could be adjusted in time from feedback; noah Falstein, president of The Inspiracy, believes that social game R & D is not only about interaction between designers, but also about obtaining effective information from users that can improve ARPU.

Maybe from the perspective of a game designer, a game designer is like a player named "game design.

About pre-installed Market

If the game can enter the pre-installed market, it can basically ignore the many links we mentioned above.

Patrick Mork, chief marketing officer of GetJar, said pre-installation should be an important option for Developer Marketing.

In a previous survey, GR Research showed that random pre-installed applications can bring more benefits to developers. 2/3 of users think that pre-installed software is an important factor to weigh when they buy mobile devices. In terms of channels, research shows that 48% of users understand the application through pre-installed software.

Currently, typical pre-installed cases include: mobile game publishers Gameloft have signed agreements with South Korea's LG companies to put the Gameloft flag under a variety of games Note: such as N. o. v. a) pre-installed to LG's new 3D smartphone; Foursquare and KDDI work together to implant the latter's Android mobile phone; OpenFeint works with At&T, an American carrier, to implant the latter's Android mobile phone.