Promotion of apps and games on Google Play Store

Promoting games is usually the most difficult part of marketing, this post will make it easy for you to understand.

My games have quite a lot of downloads on Google Play (more than 20 million), which is probably why I am often asked about promotion. If one of the developers writes me a PM or email, I bet it will all come down to the question: “How do you promote your games, dude?”. Everyone thinks I have some secret (no) Okay, let’s try to formulate what I know and hope that it will be useful to someone. At least I can link to this post.

I want to say right away that I do not support the view that the success of the game depends on the amount of money invested in marketing. Well, like, you can promote any garbage, if there was money! No, of course, if you are Nintendo and you can bring Apple directly – then yes, you can even promote such crafts as Super Mario Run. But for mere mortals, trying to promote a bad game is a path to the bottom of the app store. The game should have a “zest”, I will not be able to give useful advice if you are doing a match-3, for example. Here it is necessary to analyze ARPU (and in general to work closely with analytics), look for profitable channels for buying installations, and the like. I’m just a regular developer who just wants to make games for fun and not deal with all this boring stuff.

In general, the first and most important point of promotion is a high-quality, original game with some kind of feature: visual, gameplay, genre – it doesn’t matter.

Application page

Do I need to say the obvious things about the icon? The icon can drag even a not very strong game. Experiment! Change the icon and see the conversion in the Developer Console, now you can do A / B tests – a great thing.

Write a sheet of text in the description. We need to give the search as much material as possible to index. List the features of the game, tell the background, just some game moments. In general, Google is quite tolerant of search spam in the description. Here, for example, “Roll the Ball” – this game could illustrate a bunch of violations of the Mmr boost dota 2 rule clause . And it’s Editor’s Choice! But, of course, it’s not worth it. Do not forget “What is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull.”

And more… Stand out!Use markup in the description, text highlighting, Unicode characters. Did you know that Emoji can be used anywhere in the metadata? Just go to the Console from your phone and voila! I don’t have exact performance data, but I think that any way to make your game page stand out from others would be helpful.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization aka SEO. The most important thing is the keywords in the title . If you’re tempted to give your Google Play game a short, catchy, perfect name, try to resist it. The title should be long with a couple (at least!) keywords. Now we have as many as 50 characters available, so there’s always the option to add a few keywords while still sounding decent.

I do not know how to use professional SEO tools, so I can offer a simple way that is accessible and understandable to everyone. Open the TOP of your category and carefully read the descriptions of those games at the top. At the same time, write down popular and suitable words for your game on a piece of paper. Well, then, it remains only to create your own description using the resulting list.

I want to note that Google indexes user reviews. Accordingly, you can wind them up for certain keywords and reach the first positions in the search (note, I am not a supporter of such methods). They have been struggling with this lately, but I have seen a successful case of such cheating. The legal alternative is to buy AdWords installs based on keywords. However, I did not manage to achieve any visible results in this direction.

By the way, about reviews. Be sure to encourage players to leave them on Google Play. Add buttons, dialogs in the game, most importantly, do not offer rewards for feedback – this is a violation of the rules. The number of reviews affects the position of the game in the TOP, and the quantity is much more important than the quality. Therefore, you should not worry too much if the average score is not high enough.

Localization

When I see games from Russian developers with English text in the description, it bombs me, as it is fashionable to say these days. People, you don’t need free installations at all?!

Localization of a page on Google Play is the most effective way to improve the price/performance ratio.

I understand that to localize a game completely, there are often not enough resources, neither temporary nor financial. I myself am. But translating the description + screenshots into the main languages ​​is not at all expensive. There are many services, you can choose according to your taste / wallet, I personally use Dota 2 Boost.

In my last game, I tried to involve the players themselves in the translation. Wrote on the application page something like: “If you want to help me with the translation of the game into your native language, write to …”. Well, in general, it works! However, basically, I got translations into such languages ​​as Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish … But for free.

Community

Play with your players! What I mean? First, don’t be serious, humor is everything. Again I slip into banality, but never use phrases such as “we, our company, present to you”, etc. Write all the texts from yourself, as if you are telling something to an old friend. If a player initially addresses you as “you”, feel free to say “thank you bro!” in response. Second, don’t write formal updates. Beat them, given the setting of the game. For example, it’s bad to write “5 new tanks added”, it’s better to write “Fighters! In our factory, in the depths of the Siberian forests, 5 incredible combat vehicles were developed and they are coming to the front with this update!

Everyone is doing this: off. applications of banks, “Bearded” all sorts, myself. A successful impromptu somewhere in the text of an update or in a response to a review is a great option for a “viral” promotion. Here’s a good example:

And this is my review of one of the comments on Google Play. Of course, everything is on the verge of a foul here – the developer, formally, is bound hand and foot by the rules when answering. But on the other hand, I have not yet heard about the application of sanctions for this.

Also Read: Style is a recent fad that is regularly utilized

This screenshot then went well on entertainment sites. On YAP-e, only the discussion turned completely the wrong way. Someone immediately posted a link to the flash version of the “Tower of Hanoi” and everyone began to measure who, how smarter the monkey is. But there’s nothing to write about…

Sites

Okay, you are probably already mentally asking yourself “And where is the list of sites on which you need to post the game in order to get so many downloads ?!”. I have to disappoint you, I don’t have such a list. Everything is very, very individual. It depends on the game, on the material you want to share, on how it’s presented. What works for me may not work for you and vice versa. I propose to treat this philosophically: your task is to increase the reference mass. If you managed to find accommodation somewhere, even if a couple of downloads came from the resource (conditionally), it’s already good.

The idea is that it’s a constant search.Read, google, come up with options, texts, pictures, gifs, try it! It is important to try to focus as much marketing effort as possible in a short period of time. I would say from a week to a month.

So that it is not “water”, here are the main directions for drawing up a marketing plan:

• Entertainment sites (Peekaboo, YaP, 9gag, d3 and others like them)
• Geek resources (here Habr, of course, is out of competition. But you need suitable material)
• Indie sites (itch.io, SlideDB, GameJolt – here you can leave a link to the Store everywhere)
• Forums (largest: w3bsit3-dns.com, XDA, TouchArcade, TIGSource, etc.)
• Reddit
• Social networks
• Cross-promo (there would be traffic)
• Gamedev community
• YouTube reviewers (a couple of times posted on small channels, it makes sense as one of the points of integrated promotion)
• Places where the TA of the game can hang out (for example, for a puzzle, these are communities of puzzle lovers)

Money

Of course, in 2k17 you cannot promote the game using only free methods. The good news is that with a modest marketing budget, this is also possible. I set a limit of $1,000 for myself. If this amount is not enough, then the problem is in the game itself, you need to put up with losses and move on.

What exactly to spend the budget on, I suggest looking at the situation. I repeat, everything is individual. I tried buying ads on AdWords, News on w3bsit3-dns.com, incentivized traffic on Tapjoy, a pinned post on Peekaboo, ads on Reddit, inclusion in YouTube reviews, you can’t remember everything! With absolutely zero result, I, perhaps, ordered the distribution of a press release. Here you need to look for an approach, the right channel for communication, and not fill out forms on sites semi-automatically. But again, this is my IMHO, you may have a different result.

Instead of a conclusion

I have simple games, no multiplayer, only ad monetization, little replay value. The last two are essentially one-time quests. The cost of attracting a user is obviously higher than income for me. So the last point is luck . To everything that I wrote above, you need to add a little luck. In order for the game to “go” to the players, then there will be organic installations and everything will work out!

That’s what I can say about the promotion. I personally do not have any magical way to launch the game in the TOP. You need to find your niche, experiment and just make good games, no matter how hackneyed it may sound. Thanks for reading, share your opinion in the comments!