Building your own mobile game from the initial idea to app store publication is a complex and sophisticated process. Once you’re done with it, you still have one more challenge to meet: promoting your mobile game to ensure it attracts a loyal audience of engaged players. In today’s oversaturated market, this is often a tricky task, though. With vast variety of mobile game development platforms accessible to everyone, new mobile games are being released on an almost daily basis. Moreover, increasing the number of indie releases is a growing trend. It’s no secret that large game development studios spend millions in US dollars on game promotions: obviously, developing a great game doesn’t guarantee its success.
This doesn’t mean you can’t succeed with your promotional activities and attract engaged audience. In a bid to guide you through game promotion process, we have assembled these tips you can start acting on even before you have finished developing your mobile game.
1) Know Your Audience
Who is your game targeted at? Before you even started off with drafting the game idea, you should have envisioned your key audience quite clearly. Is it kids? If so, which age categories do they fall into? If it’s adults, ask yourself who they are, what is their typical income level, age, gender, profession, etc. It’s ok if your key audience concept is broad from the very start: you can work on more detailed targeting later, as you leverage data analytics. Knowing your target audience will ensure you take correct further actions, though.
If you’re not exactly sure, look at your competitors. Where do they apply their marketing efforts? This should give you some ideas and set you on the right track.
2) Work on Pre-Launch Campaign
Your pre-launch marketing campaign should take place in parallel with game development, while your future mobile game is still in the works. If you start off later, you will lose precious time. There are two basic steps you have to take, to ensure pre-launch publicity:
– Identify the release date
– Plot a story your audience will find captivating.
Do approach these steps carefully and responsibly. You don’t want to let the players down by announcing incorrect release date, and how interested they are will depend on how successfully you tell your game story.
3) Create a pool of potential users
This is easily achieved with a basic landing page. Build a simple, yet attractive web-page with your game info and release date, urge users to subscribe to get updates, and collect their emails. This is a great place to start attracting core users, since you know, if they have come as far as your landing page, they are already interested enough. Needless to say, these should be the first people you inform about your game release.
The info you collect on subscription will give you a plethora of useful insights. Leveraging data analytics could help you get a clear picture on your audience age and demographics and use it for more accurate targeting of your promotional activities.
4) Use social media
But how will all these people access your landing page in the first place? Today’s best game promotion practices engage users through social media. Focus on the most popular platforms and see which ones attract more followers. Furthermore, you will have to draft your social media strategy. Start with identifying the types of game-related content you are going to share: game graphics, storyline previews, promo videos, etc.
In terms of data analytics and target audience demographics social media will give you even more insights. Moreover, it will enable you to address each potentially interested user personally and create more involvement.
5) Share videos and multimedia
Speaking of videos, they are, arguably, the key elements of your promo campaign. Engaging, captivating and spectacular, they act as newshooks giving you something newsworthy to post on your social media and landing page. A basic game-trailer is a must have, but you can keep heating up your users’ interest by releasing more trailers. Sharing some pieces of your game soundtrack and screenshots is also a good idea. Great music can can act as major attraction factor, it can even help your game go viral.
6) Get game reviews
There are over a hundred game review websites on the web. Of course, some of them are more reputable than others, but you can try to get the best ones review your game. Talking to game bloggers and opinion leaders is also a good idea. Publish the best reviews on your social media pages and on your game websites.
Mobile gaming is a team sport – not only in terms of game genres, but also in terms of a pack mentality. Once popular bloggers say they like your game, they are sure to attract a great number of followers looking for something fresh and new.
Streaming is another popular cultural trend. By broadcasting the gameplay in the real-time on platforms like Twitch.tv, popular streamers can appeal to a great number of users simultaneously, and easily promote your game.
7) Analyze your campaign
With so many advanced analytic tools available right now, marketers are no longer blindfolded and forced to rely on mere luck while creating their campaigns. Analysing your landing page traffic, your social media and analytic campaigns can help you fine tune your efforts and achieve better results through accurate targeting.
Big data analytics, NLP and data mining can give you even more insights though. Natural language processing can measure emotional response and help figure out how your potential users actually feel about your game, and predictive analytics can give accurate forecasts of their future behavior and actions.
Surely, your game in itself should stand up to advertised standards and meet users best expectations. Not only great music and design are important, but also the quality of the gameplay, ensured, by large extend, by solid backend.
At VARTEQ we have built Festi Cloud Platform – a mBaaS solution for building social multiplayer games, to meet your demand for powerful and scalable backend modules. Made exclusively for mobile developers, it lets you focus on your product by providing a fast, flexible, and easy-to-use backend platform.
To make sure Festi Cloud Platform has all it takes to support your mobile gaming projects and bring your boldest ideas to life now, request a free trial.