Michael Powers of Mplayit gives practical tips to mobile application developers wishing to use social media to promote games and applications. Slides were part of a session presentation at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco March 2101
4. The Gold Rush is Over
Going live on the App Store is not
a marketing strategy.
You are going to have to take your
marketing into your own hands.
5. The Problem:
Long Tail isn’t long enough
Physical
limitations to
discovery.
Screen size, bandwidth, patience.
Feature phones.
95% of game sales to Top 20
iPhone
is better
(but not by much)
Top 200 is the new Top 20
8. The Opportunity:
Cross Platform Demand
iPhone Android BlackBerry
Game Interest 3X 2X
Audience 2X
Register 2X 2X
Revisit 3X 2X
Apps per Visit 2X
Share per App 2X
Download Rate 2X
9. The Target:
Casual Online Gamers
Mobile Games = Casual Games
This isn’t news.
Casual Demographics
More female than male; 20s/30s/40s.
Plurality: married women.
Hassle adverse
Not going to work hard to get content
10. The Target:
Casual Online Gamers
They’ve seen the prime time ads:
Their next phone will be a smartphone
11. The Solution?
Three Ways to Go
Schmooze
Cozy up to Apple, Google, et al
Spend
Drop ~$50K on Admob
Sweat
Goguerrilla to maximize exposure
using web and social marketing.
12. Solution:
Web Discovery
It’s where the users are
7
out of 10 casual gamers go on the
web at least once a day
They’re wasting time already
Notchecking Facebook ten times a
day to stay productive
Frictionless discovery
Highbandwidth, low latency,
no hassle
13. Web Discovery
Frictionless Discovery
66% of our traffic is outside Top 50.
Allows great content to bubble-up.
Android BlackBerry iPhone
Top 10 14% 12% 19%
11 to 50 21% 21% 15%
The Rest 65% 67% 66%
14. Web Discovery
Playable Discovery
More than 50% click to play a video
More than 50% watch the whole thing
Most Played Top Performing
The Sims 3 Photoshop.com
73% 5.1x
T T
iPeePee Finger Physics
69% 3.0x
Pocket God Cooking Mama
60% 2.5x
15. Solution:
Social Discovery
Peer-to-peer is powerful
53% of app discovery is via online
buzz or word-of-mouth (AdMob)
Vectors
Link
sharing via
Facebook, Twitter, and Email
Transmitters
Bloggers
and reviews, Organic, and
In-Game traffic
18. Step One:
Web Landing Page
Make it Easy
Easy to share, cross-promote apps,
Easy to find, search engine optimized
Optimize for Desktop and Mobile
Web means both; and users clicking
social links are increasingly on device
Measure, Measure, Measure
Track
the analytics and
Optimize for conversion
19. Step Two:
Embrace Video
“Playable discovery”
50%+ of page views play the video,
2X conversion on average.
Do It Yourself
Hire
a firm if you can afford,
otherwise DIY is better than nothing.
Video Review Sites
Ifyou can get them to review, and
if the review is good, use it.
20. Step Three:
Learn to love PR
Hire some PR if you can afford it
Alot of PR firms now have
budget-minded app launch programs.
Or, Do It Yourself
Cheap to release on PR Web et. al.,
Keep it short and sweet.
Build an SEO Trail
Each release increases the value of all
the releases that came before it.
21. Step Four:
Chase the Review Blogs
Make a List
Dothe work and build a contact list
and work it aggressively.
Promo Codes
Nosurprise, but promo codes are the
currency of choice.
Make Friends
Personaltouch matters with these
guys; no site is too small.
22. Step Five:
Connect Your Users
Integrate Social Network APIs
Implement Facebook Connect,
Twitter, et. al; more the better.
Use Community Frameworks
OpenFeint,Score Loop, Playhaven,
and others make the hard stuff easy.
Make sure you Drive Traffic
Driveeverything back to your web
landing pages.