App marketing advice FREE

Hi guys,

I decided to move what’s going on on this thread: http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/marketing-methods/17272-app-over-6-months-marketing.html because the title is misleading to what was happening.

And what was happening was basically, people started posting links to their apps so I could tell them what they are doing wrong and how can they improve. That was fun for me and helped them better their app marketing so a nice win-win.

In this thread describe what marketing you did and share link to your app/game on google play and I’ll do what I can to help. Others can join in feedback as well.

Proof of him helping me :slight_smile: Where it starts increasing is where I listened to what he told me.
Link to my app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=vn.ibit.AppLocker&hl=en

Gyazo - 291b175238e79dd8d3429da36439596f.png

He told me to change the app name.

Hey, can you give me a hand here?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whiterabbit.checkers

It has > 40k downloads, but only 2k active. I recently rewritten it, changed icon, design, and promo video. I released the new version 2 days ago.

There we go:

  1. The icon is nice, nothing to change here
  2. Screens are ok, but could be better - you could add text explaining fun parts of the game
  3. Description is definitely too short, no aso - this is your weakest spot, let me know on skype if you need help with that (bronsoner.x)
  4. Is there no music in video? Video itself is really nice, but why no music? Made me check my speakers twice :slight_smile: There is plenty of great free music out there, use it.
  5. For this number of downloads you got a very small number of reviews and g+

Guess that’s it - do good aso and nice, clear description and it should improve things, but game as it stands today is pretty strong, not much to improve.

Hello.

Could you check out my game? It’s been up for few months now but not doing as well as I hoped.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.morsakabi.totaldestruction.android

  1. Icon is not bad, but could use a better border
  2. Screens show what game is about well, but overall colors don’t grab attention
  3. Description is pure aso, no nice stuff for anyone that actually reads it. Making first 3 sentences really well and describing game would help.
  4. Ratings are bad in overall for so little downloads

Generally game graphics are the main problem here - apart from this there are some things you can improve, but don’t expect huge bump in downloads.

Thanks for advice!

Hi Bronsoner,

Regarding the app review from the other thread.

As you requested for additional info and moving it here. Here they are.

Initially launch on Jun 30th 2014, marketed the app with AppBrain CPC on a budget of $100. Regretted it, because it was very expensive, which I think I should have went with facebook CPM, might have better install, maybe 2-3impressions/install ? And a wider user base. No idea about the facebook CPM rates though, heard it’s only for big players.

ASO, didn’t really know much about ASO, but I did tried my best on making a better screenshots and icon than my earlier failed game.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.crytrine.avoidgeometry

Hope I provided sufficient informations. Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Kevin

  1. Your icon sucks :slight_smile: Truly, that icon makes people run away from your app. It’s far worse than your screens. I can make you better one for $5 or a pretty nice one for $15 - check my portfolio: http://ksiadzyna.pl (I know I’m advertising my stuff a bit, but you got to forgive me :wink:
  2. Screens are actually not that bad. Sure they are small and not enough of them, but they look nice and give a postive vibe.
  3. Description - proper english is the basis. You don’t have that. It’s also way too short and no ASO - again I can help with that, talk to me on skype: bronsoner.x
  4. You got very little downloads and ratings, that does affect new downloads a bit, but not much you can do about it - time will do it’s magic here.
  5. App size is pretty significant for such game. You could probably reduce it a lot. Not many people notice this when downloading, but a lot uninstall bigger apps first.

Basically you have a simple game, made quickly here, like many out there, so it’s not like it’s gonna get superpopular overnight. You might get nice return on invested time despite that if you have a killer icon and do some aso - if people see 10-20-50 similar games they will pick the one with best icon more often than not.

Hi Bronsoner,
I have a memory game in google play since october.
Currently, total installs is only 200 and daily installs is < 10.
I tried to search “Memory Game” in google play and realised that my game was not listed in the search list.
My find differences game has a better result compared to this.
Any way to improve it?
Please find the link as follow:
Thank you for your help.

Ok, I’m not gonna get into detail here, because you did one thing extremly wrong and it won’t matter if you fix other stuff untill you fix this one thing - you want to rank on an extremely competetive word with a medicore game and did absolutely no marketing. There is no force in the universe that would allow you to succeed under such circumstances. Choose a nice little niche thats not too competetive and do some marketing and you will get downloads.

I know how it is - I have apps that stuck at 200-300 total downloads that way.

Btw. your find differences games look waaay better and are niche-oriented, so you know what to do :slight_smile:

Hey Bronsoner, thanks for this thread, you give great advices :wink:

I would like to hear your opinion regarding Color Fill 2 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.leodesol.games.colorfill2

The game was released August 20th, total downloads 60k and it is currently getting 250 downloads a day and going down, despite the fact that people seem to like the game a lot: Rating of 4.25 (almost no friends/fakes reviews), 17 min average session, ARRPU of $9 and ARPU of 10c for US users and 8.5c for UK users. General ARPU = 6.3c.

We are not making any marketing efforts right now, except for periodically updating it with more stages. We are currently working on a Christmas update. Waiting to get lucky and get featured i guess…

What would you recommend?

thanks

  1. I honestly can’t tell whats exacly wrong with your icon (it shows quality, is related to game), but I get a bad vibe from it. Your icon doesn’t stand out at all. Just look here: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=color%20fill&c=apps everything here looks almost the same (lots of red, yellow, green, blue and orange) - I understand colors are important in this case, but perhaps something more simple would work better and make your app stand out? Check this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nerdyoctopus.gamedots - no fancy stuff and 10M+ downloads. ‘You want to be good? Do what others do. You want the be the best? Do the opposite.’
  2. Screens look very cluttered and chaotic. Make one design for text and stick with it, don’t paste it in random places. Also don’t use the same font ingame and for screen text - it looks confusing.
  3. Description - ‘Color Fill 2 is a fun, simple and addictive puzzle game and the awaited sequel to Color Fill. It outdoes its predecessor in every possible way: New curved pieces, colorful graphics, improved gameplay, hints, and more! Color Fill 2 is the funniest and easiest way to put your gray cells to work!’ - thats bragging, not helping me understand what your app is about. Open with clear statements what your game is, how is it unique and why I’m gonna have fun, you can brag later. Why is how to play included? Is there no tutorial ingame or is game hard to play? Stars make impression of trying too hard. As for ASO - you really could do a better job there, your practically not positioning on anything important, while having the strenght to compete there.
  4. On facebook you got this amazing graphic thats not in google play at all Leo De Sol Apps | Concepción why?
  5. Review as movie is low investment on your part, but also a bit risky - you can see the ad banner in the top (a small turnoff), movie takes time to pick off (I want to invest 10 seconds into deciding if I want to download or not, not 180). Easy way to fix this would be adding short showoff of gameplay with nice music before the review itself.
  6. As time progresses, your initial campaign will wane and you will get mainly google play organic downloads - if you havent ranked in anything popular by that time, you will feel it and I believe thats whats happening here.

In overall a nice game, it shows you put effort into it and has great avarage rating, but I think you could do better (Tap the Box shows much higher quality in every aspect of presenting the game).

baksai:
just few words: your game graphics and icon looks like it was made 10-20years earlier. I dont know about the gameplay but I think graphics is your weak point. I wouldnt even click on icon like that.
I think you can work sth out by yourself, you dont have much graphics there. Do you have someone who takes care of it on your team or you are doing it yourself? if it is someone he better do better or you have to find a new guy

Great advises, thanks!, will make some changes and see how it goes ;-). Any suggestions on Keywords i can compete on?

To answer that I’d have to make ASO reasearch and I don’t feel like doing that for free :wink: Just look for keywords that are popular and bet on if you can beat no5 app on this keyword.

Hi Bronsoner,
First of all, thanks a lot for your time and effort to help! This means a lot to us, developers.

I would also like your opinion on our game app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Hut_Beach.Sgt_Pogohops&hl=en_GB

This is our first app, me and my cousin put together.
I did not invest in any marketing campaigns, paid reviews or anything involving money investment. Posted on many different gaming and development forums, FB groups, created FB group and shared updates through it, e-mailed review websites and youtube channels. Tried my best with the app description, but seems it doesn’t really work.

Please have a look and let me know what you think could help this baby increase downloads.

Thanks in advance.

Whats wrong:

  1. App name - unless your EA or Disney, try to name your game with some keyword (and hell even they know better to do it). You will lose huge amount of potential downloads if you have no-keyword app name. This is your weakest point
  2. First two screens look the same, add text describing your game and change sequence to add veriety of screens. Also at least make the guy hold duck in every other screen.
  3. Description start is nice, than you got lazy. Write long long description with aso optimiziation like this and your golden.
  4. 42MB? Thats a lot! Any way you can reduce size?
  5. Icon is nice quality, but looks like military solitare (why the ace card?). I experimented with nicer icons with less relevance to app content and it failed. It’s not bad, just could be better if it were more related to game conetent itself.

Guess thats it - sure you could add a promo movie, add reviews and promote more, but generally your games name is the main problem here.

Thanks a lot Bronsoner,
That is some solid feedback.

Well I guess I like to imagine myself among those big names in the game. :smiley:

Will get on those changes as soon as, hopefully in time for the winter/Christmas update.

Thanks man, thats really nice of you :wink:

Gotta love bots.