How to find effective marketing exposure channels

This is a difficult time.

In the case of mobile app stores, the total number of applications (in Apple, for example) is more than 400,000 and the total number of downloads over 10 billion times is certainly exciting news. But for developers, more than 200 million of itunes-specific accounts (bundled with credit cards), more than 100 million of iphone users and more than 15 million of ipad users have to think about how to develop effective marketing channels and seamless docking with potential users.

This is an extremely difficult problem.

Because as a developer you also need to face another equally frowned problem.

In the current phase of social applications or mobile apps, you may find that, in addition to the efforts of the developers themselves, the stronger the reality is the brutal problem that everyone needs to face. You can stare at Facebook's game charts and stare at the App Store rankings, which have long been a handful of special events. The reality is that when Rovio rolled out angry Birds Rio, it swept the world rankings of App store countries and regions, no matter how good the game was.

Mobile Apps

According to Metcalfe's act, this is a terrible process of N.

So for developers, how to find effective marketing channels is the key.

Looking for an inch of life in the hundreds of thousands of application heap is a journey of self struggle. According to Oxford University research, in the app age, sticking to the sheep theory will be effective, the first download base is the key to your product can eventually detonate, it determines whether your product is recommended by the App Store, whether to enter the rankings, whether the media and consumers ultimately attention.

The upfront user is the leader in your product and will help you get a more reliable download base.

Of course to seize the initiative, you need a suitable product release time. When tiny wings or angry Birds Rio monopoly player time, you choose to attack the market, even if you have a loud name, even if you have made a tempting icon, even if you feel the product description is quite amazing, the final outcome may be that your product is just a transition product.

The game state has conceived some effective channels for the possibility, and perhaps it deserves attention.

About the choice of publishers

We often cite angry birds and cut the rope to prove the value of the publisher (Chillingo), in fact similar 6Waves to Ravenwood Fair on Facebook.

Creative research and development seems to be something that many application developers are better at, and the fact that good operations can effectively drive the success of their applications. There are no good ways and means of operation, and then good works are likely to drown in the application heap. So it seems logical when Chillingo the Rovio or EA Mobile as the best gaming company in me won. Angry birds and cut the rope also became industry leaders under Chillingo's operation.

In the Publisher field, similar snsplus, EA Partner (Integration Chillingo and Playfish), Mentez, I-jet, Viximo, or 6waves all have a decent performance.

But it is a paradox that the developer and Distributor are the only people who have achieved it. It's like a real question: Is there no chillingo,cut the rope can win the best Handheld Game award on Bafta and GDC? or no cut the rope and Angry Birds's success, Chillingo can be as beautiful as it is now, Have an important influence in the distribution field?

There is no doubt that users will often link game products with the issue of the brand, while the developer's efforts are easily overlooked. Even if the publisher tries to increase the exposure of the developer name, the status of the developer in the industry is still not valued.

For developers, is to be a relaxed behind the hero, or their own shirtless to the forefront of the fighting? This is a problem. After all, it's not uncommon for a game like tiny wings to become famous overnight.

About Cross Promotion

Cross-marketing is proving to be a powerful way to sell, but for the moment it is limited to individual large companies with super resources. For example, Zynga's internal cross-selling campaign for marketing CityVille (game State Note: On Farmville basis, Zynga's subsequent launch of the FrontierVille or CityVille more or less Farmville shadow. These two upgrades effectively divert the early Farmville user's dual need for game friendliness and freshness, so they can be more effective in the player's transfer effectiveness, or the Mafia Wars initiated by CityVille Brazil cross Marketing and the internal collaboration between Disney and Tapulous are typical examples of success.

And for developers who don't have enough marketing resources, another option is not necessarily effective but certainly a last resort. Applifier has long launched a rebel alliance with small and medium-sized developers to mimic Star Wars against the Galactic Empire in response to strong competition from the super firm, the Third party marketing Tool Alliance that we later became more familiar with. Among these types of products are the more prominent Game-prom (MySpace launch), Mindjolt Bar (Mindjolt) and VIP Games receptacle (Digital chocolate), Others include Applifier, Appstrip and the like.

Because the number of franchise developers Limited and the user base itself limitations, in fact, cross-promotion of small and medium sized enterprises is not significantly effective, so in the marketing of the app is often introduced incentive download policy, in social games is often the way to see ads or perform certain clicks to get the corresponding rewards, and on the mobile phone platform, Tapjoy has also launched a similar ad-operated advertising model, which can produce better results than simple ads.

Applifier Cross-promotion Bar

About Search and application recommendations

The ultimate goal of marketing is to recommend developers ' products to potential users and finally to persuade users to download their own works with a variety of skills.

In fact, many users complain the most is that each application platform retrieval efficiency is quite ineffective. Google has upgraded its search for Android harsh, Getjar has also introduced Yahoo for further improvements, and the Third-party app search Tool Chomp has sought to make a breakthrough in this area, led by Aurora Feint based on Android Harsh search spotlight In fact, the Applifier company mentioned above can't wait to launch games on Applifier to help developers better retrieve social games. The search is a super channel for developer products to be user-oriented, and the Wooga, currently climbing in the social gaming arena, believes that good searches allow them to discover and attract more users.

And the search is inseparable is the application store and Third-party display platform recommendations, if you can get like Angry Birds as the same as the Apple outside the recommended applications, it is difficult to get attention. But if not, layout similar to Appoke, Applolicious, Appia recommendation platform is also a channel choice.

About Third-party Application Stores

Look at the Rovio in Getjar's Android version of Angry Birds, the hot scenes from the Amazon App Store on the Android version of angry Birds Rio know that it's not just authentic app stores that give power, Third-party platforms also perform well.

The best store winner at last year's me won is not the Apple App Store, or Google's Android harsh, but the getjar that many developers have chosen to put on Android (Zynga's mafia Wars is also walking this channel).

So there are better reasons to believe that a third-party platform is always worth a try. This includes opera Mobile Store, Amazon, Mocospace, Papaya Mobile, plus+, OpenFeint, Scoreloop, and so on.

About viral marketing channels

It should be believed that allowing users to communicate spontaneously is the most effective transmission.

So when Facebook tightens the viral spread (game Bang Note: For example, by default news feeds to regular contacts, and game Stories out of the News Feed story), it's a source of complaints from developers And when Facebook relocated again to launch Discover New Games (the same virus-spreading performance), developers seemed to be able to cheers.

Discover-new-games-if-module

While the mobile gaming platform has long been considered a lack of functionality similar to the Facebook virus-spreading channel, recent Heyzap's mobile gaming check-in has been thought to have the ability to spread the virus as Facebook's discover New games. Just unlike the free mode of the Facebook game, mobile games, especially for iOS, have a significant part to pay for by downloading, and may weaken a lot in the effectiveness of the virus.

Now, the key question is, in your game design mechanism, how to maximize the efficiency of the user's spontaneous sharing?

About the brand strategy of the game

Brand strategy, as the name implies is the game and brand, improve user identity brand strategy (such as relying on celebrity, licensing games, movies and TV programs).

So you'll see Mike Tyson and the mobile game, Chomp also has a famous Hollywood superstar Investor (Ashton Kutcher), singer Snoop Dogg will appear in Zynga's Mafia Wars marketing event.

In most developers ' eyes, branding means potential users that can be predicted upfront, Angry birds has millions of of Facebook fans waiting for Rovio's social version, and the same TV Gossip Girl has 8 million super fans (gossip girl:social Alecks), and the NBA also envisions that they will have a decent impact on Facebook (the introduction of the NBA's legendary social game).

Of course, the brand does not mean that the user's protection, the Playboy party met the Super Waterloo, the Super TV Spartacus:gods of the Arena–the game also poor performance, as well as the expected performance of Ubisoft and Columbia works CSI: Crime City.

On the effectiveness of media

Without the media in the marketing of the fuel, we may not see now those who dominate the game can have today's scenery.

You can see that media marketing is almost accompanied by every successful game. Take cut the rope, for example, when the game was a bit of a success, Chillingo branded it as the fastest-selling game in history, followed by Chris Byatte out to explain to the public why they chose cut the rope because it could become Angry Birds second. And then zeptolab out the detailed analysis of the game production process.

If you want to cite more pertinent cases, you can see that Zynga advertised the latest Farmville 中文版 countryside in New York Times Square, and even drove a flock of sheep to the bustling Wall Street financial district, Park Avenue and Times Square showed the user an idyllic farm scene in the UK, or, for marketing Mafia Wars Las Vegas, they also invited Snoop Dogg to detonate an armored vehicle in Nevada. These are the topic of the full event marketing, are enough to occupy the core position of the major media.

About Group Buying mode

Group buying is now the most popular marketing way, belong to the advertising and direct user win the channel.

The first to participate in group buying mode should be ea/playfish, they participated in Groupon about Gap National (US) big group purchase, and the impact is not very well (game state Note: This is not really the sense of group buying, but in the purchase of the game is attached to the virtual currency).

The real group in the game is launched by OpenFeint, they launched a fire sale group buying activities to mobile gamers. Then, in order to push Facebook Credits,facebook also entered the group buying mode with Friends.

The common denominator between the two is to use the low price model of group buying to promote user participation. For example, fire sale mode, players can use a lower price to buy some originally high-priced game.

About user Feedback

Social games/mobile games and traditional game development is a very important difference is that the ship small good turn, low-cost can reduce market risk, while the user feedback based on the application of continuous updates.

Brian Reynolds that user feedback makes the game design more specific to promote the game experience, such as FrontierVille the first hut built to reduce the difficulty after the user's retention degree straight up; John Romero launched Ravenwood Fair said he was always staring at AppData the user trend of the game; 3 blocks studio John Passfield believes that social game design is open and can be adjusted in time from feedback information; The inspiracy president, Noah Falstein, believes that social game development is not just about the interaction between designers but also about the ability to get effective information from users to improve ARPU.

Perhaps from a game designer's point of view, a game designer is like a player named game design.

About pre-installed Market

If the game can get into the pre-installed market, we can basically ignore the large number of links in our previous article.

Getjar chief marketing officer Patrick Mork says pre-installed should be an important option for developer marketing.

A previous survey by GR research showed that random preinstalled applications could bring more benefits to developers, with two-thirds of users considering pre-installed software as an important factor in their buying of mobile devices. Channel, the study showed that 48% of users were aware of the application through pre-installed software.

In the current typical pre-installed cases include: mobile game publisher Gameloft and South Korea LG signed the agreement, the Gameloft flag of the next variety of games (game Bang Note: such as N.O.V.A) pre-installed into the LG new 3D smartphone; Foursquare and KDDI were implanted in the latter's Android handsets, openfeint with U.S. operator At&t to implant the latter's Android handsets. (This article for the game state/gamerboom.com, reprint, please specify the source: Game state)