Customized strategies for app marketing

It seems to be clear that there are a lot of developers struggling to get some attention to their apps, me as well. There have also been nice advices in this forum and it seems that there is a lot of knowhow and I’m eagerly hoping to learn from people who are more experienced and wiser on marketing than me.

Currently I think that the key to success could be really customizing your marketing plan. I mean, learning from other developers but really thinking that what could work with my apps and what would make them to stand out. I can share what I’ve been doing with my apps and what I’ve been thinking of doing. Hopefully someone finds it useful!

I have made three games:

  1. Rhythm Sheep
  2. Shape Fitter
  3. Color Match

Rhythm Sheep has the top priority in my marketing efforts and in my opinion it’s the best of those three so I will tell a bit about it’s marketing. The game is about repeating the rhythm you hear as accurately as possible. It should be playable by anyone (there are easy levels in the beginning), but the main target group is people who play some instruments or otherwise are interested in testing and drilling their music skills.

What I’ve done already:
I’ve done some basic stuff for marketing Rhythm Sheep: posted to online forums (android and music -related), told my friends, wrote about the game in twitter, facebook, google plus. These methods have some effect, but getting 5 new installs in a day instead of typical 3 isn’t really what you would hope for a successful marketing? I also made http://www.turskagames.com website to have a showcase of all the games… and to appear a bit more professional.

Ideas for more successful promotion:
The game is about rhythms and music, and I think it might actually be useful (and fun) for people learning music. So, the genre should be taken into account in marketing. Instead of trying… and trying… and trying to get the game reviewed in some popular android-related forum, maybe I should target mainly music related places and bloggers talking about music? I’ve done that a little bit, but with no luck. I am planning also to spread some ads to nearby music schools, but that kind of advertising is very local.

A good game advertises itself…?
Another vision about marketing I have, is that the game should have some built-in mechanics so that it starts to spread as soon as a handful of people are liking it. People who are playing it should have some reason for telling their friends to install the game. First step towards something like that was the Rhythm Sheep Hall of Fame (http://www.turskagames.com/rhythmsheep/hall-of-fame/) Basically players can submit their score and see their name and screenshot on the website, awed by other players. That’s a really light-weight implementation, but I didn’t want to waste a lot of time implementing something advanced only to find out nobody cares. And now I wasted only little time to find out the same thing :wink: So, it hasn’t been a success, but who knows, maybe it will get some more hall-of-fame submitters later.

Future thoughts:
I have also other ideas of features that would make people to spread the word to their friends. For example: weekly/monthly competitions, level editor, more feedback from your progress, more educational content,… But I have kind of decided that I should get at least a bit more installs before I’m willing to spend more development efforts.

So, here were some of my ideas about marketing. Hopefully someone finds them useful even though this was definitely not “How I succeeded big time: follow these 5 easy steps” -kind of post. I have also thought of writing a blog about my experiences of starting android development and marketing (and share install figures etc.), but the same problem remains. If I can’t get people to find (and install) my games, would I be able to get any more than few readers to my blog? So instead of trying to promote my games and website, I would also have to promote my blog somehow.

Any comments, ideas, your own experiences of custom marketing?

I agree in that online forums don’t seem to have much of an effect. I’ve also tried twitter (not Facebook) and have had very little success.

I think they key is getting a lot of installs at application launch time so your rank in the “top new” category increases. Once there, users will easily find your app. This is getting very hard to accomplish for indie devs because there’s a lot of apps.

I agree that getting to the top lists is the way to success… if you happen to get to those lists. I published Rhythm Sheep already in February and the little (and useless) marketing I did was to publish it in some Android forums, so there were no chance to get to “top new” listings. And this is probably the case with hundreds of indie developers.

In addition to still trying to get noticed in popular Android related sites and “top app” listings, my idea now is that I should somehow find the people that are interested in the topic of my app (learning music) and get them to try it (and recommend to friends). I assume that lot of them are not actively following Android news/sites/reviews, so I should find another way to target the marketing to those people.

Here is a little update on my marketing efforts lately. I think that in addition to making a customized marketing plan (so it fits especially your applications), I think it’s also important to make it personal. Personally I like reading about other android developers (experienced/beginners/successful/not-so-successful/…) and their background. Well, my personal contribution to this was made public today, when I was lucky enough to interviewed by PrePayAsYouGo mobile technology blog.

If you are interested, check out the article here: http://blog.pre-pay-as-you-go.co.uk/2012/10/21/interview-with-lasse-hakulinen-android-game-developer-and-founder-of-turska-games/

Here’s another update on my attempt to making a customized marketing plan to my games and to Rhythm Sheep especially.

In addition to the developer interview, I also got Rhythm Sheep to be reviewed in PrePayAsYouGo blog: Rhythm Sheep - The Listen and Repeat Review

Rhythm Sheep was also reviewed in Piano Pronto blog: Android App Alert: Rhythm Sheep | Piano Pronto Blog

I think both of these have been beneficial to me, but it’s hard to know the real effect. I didn’t get any significant peaks in installs on the publish days of the reviews. However, I’m sure having more visibility is always a good thing and also having quotes from qenuine reviews in the Google Play description is also valuable. Still no silver bullets though…

Happy New Year everyone!

During the holidays, I decided to try something a bit different for marketing. Before Christmas, I launched a “Free sheep present” campaign. Well… it wasn’t quite a success, but it didn’t cost anything and it was fun to do. I also decided to keep the campaign alive also after Christmas. If you want to know what it is about, it’s best if you check it out here: Turska Games - Free present but simply put, I will draw a handmade picture of a sheep to anyone who asks for it.

I tried to promote it in Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and got a couple of comments, retweets and favorites, but nothing special. Then yesterday I posted it to reddit: Weirdest campaign ever? : funny and got a lot of traffic to my site (in my scale), but no sheep requests. I don’t know yet if it had any effect on the install numbers, but anyway that was kind of a little success for me to get so much attention to Turska Games, even though my 15 minutes in fame seems to be over already. Here is a Google analytics screenshot about the traffic in my site so you get the point:

I don’t have that much experience, but I think there is a bit of (as with most things entrepreneurial):

  • randomness (being at right-time/right-place)

  • having idea that is novel

  • having idea that sticks out as different from others (since you are competing for eyeballs)

  • conversely you can also target a genre that is known (from Google Play stats) to be something that always attracts eyeballs

  • none of these address the question of how to have an initial app get big or noticed (esp. in the first month where Google tries to be extra kind - or basically it’s ranking algorithms move apps up in the rankings - perhaps with the intention of finding the place where they will naturally fit i.e. if they are really good they will go up and then stay there).

But regarding marketing, probably the GREATEST impact is to begin with an idea that has an advantage to begin with (because of novelty etc. as above).

I say this because developers often start off wanting to make something THEY want to make (after all this is the motive behind wanting to make apps for a living as an alternative to a full time job). So presumably they would want some more independence.

However if you make something that you want, that is not a guarantee of success - or even of breakthrough of a new idea (that the market is not ready for) - for those types of ideas you need marketing (and even then the first mover may not be the beneficiary of eventual market acceptance), OR you need apps in your portfolio of apps which can drive users to the new app.

It also helps if you have an audience pre-aligned to download your app - so you have some initial downloads - for example if you are a high school student then you have an advantage that you can get your whole school to download the app by marketing it to them first - then time your release on Google Play so you don’t waste days out of that 1 month that Google gives you (to rise in the rankings).

After the first month is over, Google will bring down your app in the rankings - for this reason the first month seems to be essential - so you don’t want to be wasting days.

This suggests that app should not have many bugs to begin with - else get bad ratings and lower downloads/higher uninstalls (which I am assuming Google may include in how it ranks the app …).

One alternative we have discussed here - but no conclusive proof that it will work (well more likely no conclusive proof that it will NOT work - since it SHOULD work) - is that of making an app - getting all bugs out - then releasing an “App 2” version - which has ironed out all the bugs - and now you get a month AGAIN from Google to rise in the rankings - and will do much better than the first time (when you were plagued by bugs or user interface issues as you were tuning your app).

But again it seems that to retain whatever ranking Google takes you to - you eventually need to have users WANTING to use your app. Which means it should not be something that the developer only wants, but that many other people want as well.

All these issues are also related to “discovery”. Fortunately, the numbers (for android) as huge - and the issue is not the absence of users, but how wil users find your app from among thousands of apps.

This suggests there MAY be some value to making apps which target a niche or specialized section of users - because IF it gets known that such and such app is providing this essential service for that niche - then that info will spread through the channels used by that sub-group - and your app could become sought out by those folks - which may be a pretty big group.

So even if the niche is small - the universe of users is (now) so big - that even targeting niches may be of value.

Once one has enough apps out there that have moderate viewership - one could use house ads or in-app advertising/announcements (using perhaps AppBrain Remote Settings to set a flag which tells the app that some new app is available from the publisher etc.).

Conceivably if you have a lot of apps - you have the ability to drive high installs right in the first month of appearance on Google - and this has the potential to make your app rise during this very crucial period.

However an independent developer needs to perhaps think 50% of the time on the code and 50% on marketing - what will work (should I start this project or with that other project be “better” now).

Another thing to consider is efficiency - what amount of effort will get the same bang for the buck type of thing. Because the mobile world is odd in that way - many users may like a SIMPLE but clean idea better than some complicated one.

I have seen some pass-the-time type of games sometimes which include a number of different types of games - this is generally not where the mobile model is going (from my reading) - i.e. on mobile the users tend to want specialized apps which may do one thing well as opposed to all different sort of things (once you have app developers making swiss army knife type apps which do lot of different things - then they wind up being not that good in everything - and user is faced with 10 apps which are similar but each has different quirks). Contrast that with a situation where your app does ONE thing but does it better than all the others - this means users who want that feature will consider your app essential (to keep on the phone) - while the other (more complicated and more time spent by developer) will be seen as replaceable by another app of the same genre.

Marketing may also be difficult for coders/developers who are unaware of those types of issues - but it is possible that releasing holiday season-specific apps could get you noticed as well. Actually that is what I thought around Halloween when I saw a pumpkin carving app in the top charts (check out appannie for charts, ranking graphs). However it is not that simplistic - as a search for pumpkin or Halloween showed that there were TONS of other similar apps which were NOT in the top lists … so the analysis here is not that clear …

PLUS another area to really think about is monetization (if you want to earn some money from your apps as well - which always helps).

And some research (talking here about it) maybe helpful.

But I agree that if that is an issue which will have to be handled esp. if the app becomes big.

One thing to think about also is the possiblity that you include all the ads you want to in the first version of the app - so users are not pissed off at the worsening ad situation for your app - or if users will be unwilling to update to new version if the new versions have drastically worse ad nuisance.

Though some may suggest that worrying about this is over-thinking and if the app is successful one can always monetize it then (true - that for MOST users the old version of the app will not be available anymore or harder to get - so perhaps this issue is less relevant).

In fact thinking there is a STATIC base of users for your app maybe a misconception as well - as practically speaking you may see 50% of lower retention (i.e. 50% to 75% of new downloaders may uninstall the app within a short period).

Incorporate Flurry statistics - you can see the retention ratio graph i.e. how many users uninstalled by day 2, day 3 etc. …

A high exodus from the app (after initial download) winds up making the “retained users” (or “active user” base as reported by Google Developer Console) essentially wind up being dependent on the RECENT download numbers - rather than total downloads.

So you can see apps which have 1M downloads - HOWEVER their 'active user" base (or more practically their “Daily Active Users” - which is what affects ad revenue etc.) may not be going up that fast (because there is constant outflow from uninstalls).

For example from Flurry stats you maybe able to see that after 1 month of first install, only 2% to 10% of your users still have your app installs - if the attrition rate is that high, then the “active user” base will essentially be a moving average over say a 30 day period over your daily download numbers … or something like that.

It is conceivable you could have 1M installs, but only 40K “active user base” (for example if uninstall rate is nearly the same as install rate (and net user adds are very low per day).

Thanks for the good points adforandroidapps! I definitely agree that the main thing is to have such a good app that the users genuinely want to use it.

I’ve been doing different kinds of marketing things lately. Overall, I’ve just been active in social media, mainly in Twitter, but Facebook and G+ as well. It’s hard to say what exactly is the cause, but in few weeks, both my apps have had a significant increase on their installs. You can check the “last 30 days” graphs yourselves: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=turskagames.rhythmsheep.free https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=turskagames.shapefitter.free

So what have I done? I’ve done different fun campaigns that are more or less related to my games or Turska games. In addition to the things already mentioned in this thread, I made some (sarcastically) modified inspirational quotes with sheep images (see them here: Inspirational images | Facebook) and I’ve been spreading them in Twitter when appropriate by answering to peoples’ tweets with them. This doesn’t actually promote any game, but it’s just something to give Turska Games some visibility.

I also made a clay animation about a sheep and posted it to youtube: How to make a sheep? 82 simple steps. - YouTube and Funnyordie: How to make a sheep? 82 simple steps. from turskagames

And the latest campaign is a little birthday contest for Shape Fitter’s 1 year journey: Turska Games: Shape Fitter birthday contest!

None of these have been a huge success by themselves, but I believe that all this has definitely been worth it. Also, my motivation to do stuff like this is to do something that (at least some) people would find funny or interesting regardless of the fact whether they play my games or not.

I haven’t been that successfull on getting many followers in social media as you can see:
https://twitter.com/turskagames
http://www.facebook.com/TurskaGames
https://plus.google.com/112288933234292416890/posts
Turska Games
User turskagames channel - YouTube

However, Twitter is the media I’ve been most active with and there are the most followers also.

In one of my games I made multiple level packs. The game is free to download and the first level pack (30 levels) is free to play. The other 3 level packs you can buy with an in-app purchase. Last year at Christmas I started a marketing idea to allow the players to “unlock” the second level pack just by liking my developer facebook page. Then on the page I gave them a code to unlock the level pack instead of them buying it with an in-app purchase. After one year my facebook page has over 500 likes. Now when I release a new game I post a status about it on facebook.

For music/rhythm app - have you posted on some music-related websites - children’s learning websites/teacher websites/forums ?

If it can be a tool for children learning rhythm etc. or something.

If you have a tool which is good for a niche you could push it to the folks who deal with such stuff.

That sounds like a good idea!

Yes I have, but not with much luck (but of course I could be doing more that). One fortunate exception is the Piano Pronto review: Android App Alert: Rhythm Sheep | Piano Pronto Blog

you mentioned you are being active on Facebook and Twitter - i’m starting a tread about my experiences with addmefast.com - check it out if you wish:) i’m not going to post here to avoid double posting

Marketing an app is bright idea I’ve come when I read this post. Thank you very much folks.

I read all the comments and must say - the information was very useful for my job! Great, thank you, guys, for sharing your experience with us.

@turskagames
Fantastic strategies for app marketing you are shared here. The given ideas regarding the marketing are definitely useful for not only newbies but also for experienced. Good job and I hope you will keep to share such kind of threads.

Stop bumping old threads. Start a new one with some quality info if you want to help out

… You just bumped an old thread

When it comes to app marketing I like follow a sort of Mantra here. I call them the vowels of App Marketing. Here we go:
A- Analyse, not through hypothesis but with data,
EEngage with your target audience via social media channels,
IIterate, don’t be afraid to try out new variations,
O- Optimize your app, making sure its evolving with time and
U- Understand what your peers are doing and why they are doing it

Or you can also read 3 blogs I wrote about step by step formulating a successful app marketing plan- before, duringand afterapp release.