Game development is fun but selling the game, not so much. Mobile game marketing is an art that every mobile app developer must master in order to be successful. Mobile and other platforms have a lot of things in common when it comes to marketing. The first question that comes to any game developer after making the game is how to market your mobile game?.
In this post we will cover how to do marketing for your mobile game step by step. At the end of this post you will have the idea of how to market your mobile game. Also you will know what you should do and what you shouldn’t to be successful.
1. The detail page:-face of mobile game marketing
This page must be made before your development process starts and after the planning phase. The page should include what the game is about, the concept, what players will experience, some arts and videos.
The page needs to have a progress session where you update the latest screenshot and current state of your game. You can make this page in Facebook or make a website for it. That choice is yours. Only thing to remember that this page is going to be the face of your marketing campaign so it must look attractive. You can use Canva to make free page banners and logos.
2. Collecting email: Learn how to market your mobile game with email.
After you are done with your “detail page”, next thing is to let people know that a new game is on the way. The most common mistake developers do in this phase is they share their game with fellow developers. No that other developers don’t play games ,it’s that they will be busy with their projects.
The main people to Target here is the players. You must gather a list of facebook groups ,sub reddits where your players hang out. Tell them about your game, when it’s expected and link to your details page. Have an option for people to follow your page. Another important thing is don’t start spamming the group with your game post. Keep your post limited to one per week and post only if you have any progress to share. If possible have a email follow option to get the emails of interested people. Remember this is a slow process, so don’t rush.
3. Pre launch marketing
Once your game is complete, you must make ready some marketing materials. By marketing materials I mean posters,gameplay videos and trailers. You must not share these very early or people will forget about your game by the time it launches. The optimum time is to tell them anywhere between one week to 2 days before launch.
Don’t just share in one group and leave it. Share in all places you can think of. Reddit is a very good place to get good players who give real feedbacks. This will buildup traction for your game.
4. Launch offer
Launch offer is very important. A game with launch offer has much better sales than the game with no launch offer. Including a deadline for the launch offer is also important. The deadline shouldn’t be too short or to long. One week must be a good time.
One good example of launch offer is, giving 50% discount on the launch week. You can be more innovative and come up with your own launch offer. Just remember the offer must be attractive for the players.
Remember that the game should be bug free before launch otherwise, all your launch offer effort will be worthless.
5. Getting Feedbacks and testimonials
After the game launch you must concentrate on getting customer feedbacks and sharing the good once along with the promotion materials. Also try to address the bad feedbacks immediately.
Post the testimonials and feedbacks on your game page so more players will download your game. You can also have a built in feedback system that asks users to give feedback on your game but be very careful as disturbing the player experience might lead to loss of players.
6. App store optimization
Initial rush to download your app is important, but getting free traffic is not something that you should look away. App store optimization is the heart of mobile game marketing. Doing App Store Optimization will help people find your game organically and if your game is good then it will automatically boost the downloads.
Find out more on App Store Optimization.
Following these main steps must give you a lot of advantage over the new games that are published. If you have money to spend for marketing then you must consider paid advertising also. You need to learn Google ads to efficiently run paid ads or you will end up loosing money. Here is a recommended course on Google ads that will help you.
All the best on your game.