10 steps to top paid 25 overall on the App Store
Hi, habrovchane! We recently released Gemibears for iPhone and iPad (no references to the game, no self-promotion post) and got to the top 25 in a paid chart across America in a few days.
It was not easy, but interesting, and we learned a lot. I want to share with you the steps that led us to this result.
(This post is the original of what in a clumsy translation we posted last night on reddit Except for the last paragraph :))
1) Make a cool game and prepare cool marketing.
For a successful launch, you need to spend as much time on marketing as developing a game. Typically, developers spend on creating the game 90% of the time and 10% on marketing. It is necessary that the proportion was 50/50. If you don't know what to do with marketing, then go to the publisher. In all success stories, something is silent. A bad game without marketing can break through to the top and fall into nowhere the next day (as happens with many freemium games that are artificially driven into the top with aggressive advertising). So you need to make a very cool game.
')
2) Everybody on your game
Do not listen to friends and relatives, they are interested people. Do not listen to yourself. The game should be cool not only in your eyes - you initially love it, because this is your idea, your brainchild. And we are not strict enough to our children, so you need to show the game to friends, and even better - unfamiliar people. Do not explain anything, you will not have such an opportunity after sending to the stop. Give a play and look at the reaction, remember what a person likes, and what annoys or just incomprehensible.
3) catch all the bugs
You need to test all versions of the game, on all devices and all firmware. The worst thing that can happen is a cool game with bad reviews in the side because of bugs. Do not release the game until you test absolutely everything, and have a page of those. support (getsatisfaction, for example) to write about bugs to you there, and not to reviews in the store. But if you still missed something - use an expedited review of the update. You can use it only once a year, but in a day the update will be reviewed and the amendments will appear in the stack.
4) Do not make light version
It's boring, the player will have to go through the same levels again if he buys the game. But you need to give the opportunity to somehow get acquainted with the game for free, so think of something original. We made Gemibears Mini - this is a free background to Gemibears, it has completely different planets (level sets), plus an endless game mode - all this is original content and is not in the paid version. Trainyard Express and Hambo Begins are made in the same way. Additional content for free is the best way to introduce a person to a game, because you don’t cut something out of the game, but bring something new into it.
Remember that your paid and free (not light!) Versions are separate products. Promote paid helps free, but you need to promote it, and separately. So plan marketing for both versions.
5) Cross promo and advertising
Do cross-promo with other cool games. Gemibears has banners, buttons and icons that appeared in the games of our friends on launch. There are a lot of games from our compatriots in epsor, with all of them you can talk about cross-promo. On different conditions - from the payment of advertising to the exchange of the number of hits banners. Feel free to write offers by mail, call or even go to another city for a meeting. Support from other cool games means a lot.
If you have already released games - tie them all with an advertising module and make an advertisement for a new game in the old ones. You can make some kind of your own decision or use ready-made, for example chartboost, but ready-made solutions are very inflexible (the chartbust has only one banner format - fullscreen).
Buy paid advertising, but do it wisely. Only ads from other games, no sites, magazines, videos or print press. You can buy game installations via chartboost or put ads directly in games from Backflip, EA or even Zynga, via the Burstly website, but be sure to plan a budget.
6) Give people inside the game the opportunity to bring friends
We have a twitter community in Gemibears. Two tapes - in one there are jokes and stories from the world of bears every day, and the second displays the hashtag #GemiTalk, so that right inside the game people can communicate with each other.
In Gemibears Mini, in addition to twitter integration, there is a Facebook connection. After passing the first planet and getting a unique bear, you can either buy a paid version, or open another unique planet with a bear - to do this, go to Facebok connect and see if 3 of your friends are playing Mini. If not, then you can invite them, because having three friends in the game, you will discover a new planet. This is a good way to attract new players, because Gemibears Mini is free and just telling your friends about it will get even more content for free.
7) Make all marketing efforts in one day
Do not stretch it for a month or even a week. We launched the bears the day before all marketing efforts began and there were few downloads. But applying all possible marketing within 3 days - we took the top 25.
8) Icon, screenshots and trailer
You need a brilliant icon. Most people will decide on a purchase only judging by your icon. We made about 26 different options, until we decided that it is quite good. Great
Another important part is screenshots in epstore. In fact, these are not just screenshots - these are banners. Most people do not read the description of the game, so you need to talk about key features through screenshots. Be concise and persuasive. Not “unique gameplay”, but “match-2” - that in itself sounds clear and attractive.
Official trailer. If you do not do it, then the video will remove some teenager from youtube, shaking hands in poor quality. And people will judge the game by this video. So take care of the original trailer - we decided to show not only the game itself, but also the emotions that it causes.
9) Hype after launch
Do not neglect any free opportunity to further promote your game. If you have Facebook functionality - register the game in the Facebook App Center . Send your icon (it should be unrealistically attractive, remember?) To the gallery of the best icons on iOS . Post to TouchArcade before launch, in the upcoming games section and after launch in the left games section. And there is a section for contests!
Do not expect a feature from Apple, you can’t influence it in any way, so concentrate on creating a cool game and powerful marketing.
Do not wait for press reviews. The press likes to write about success stories, so it’s unlikely that they will write about you before you become famous. iPhones.ru refused our offer to write an exclusive material about bears, they prefer to receive money for writing about a cool game from their compatriots.
But you should try to break through everywhere - be sure to write to all sites. Not just a text letter, compile an html template or at least make a banner picture in the letter header. So we got the TUAW “Game of the Week” editorial selection for our previous game, The Screetch. They ignored the first letter, we wrote a new one, with a beautiful design - the review was the next day.
10) Write a useful post on Habr!
PS We wanted to give out promotional codes here, but in iTunes Connect something broke - there are codes, but instead of them it gives some error. We look forward to when repaired.
It was not easy, but interesting, and we learned a lot. I want to share with you the steps that led us to this result.
(This post is the original of what in a clumsy translation we posted last night on reddit Except for the last paragraph :))
1) Make a cool game and prepare cool marketing.
For a successful launch, you need to spend as much time on marketing as developing a game. Typically, developers spend on creating the game 90% of the time and 10% on marketing. It is necessary that the proportion was 50/50. If you don't know what to do with marketing, then go to the publisher. In all success stories, something is silent. A bad game without marketing can break through to the top and fall into nowhere the next day (as happens with many freemium games that are artificially driven into the top with aggressive advertising). So you need to make a very cool game.
')
2) Everybody on your game
Do not listen to friends and relatives, they are interested people. Do not listen to yourself. The game should be cool not only in your eyes - you initially love it, because this is your idea, your brainchild. And we are not strict enough to our children, so you need to show the game to friends, and even better - unfamiliar people. Do not explain anything, you will not have such an opportunity after sending to the stop. Give a play and look at the reaction, remember what a person likes, and what annoys or just incomprehensible.
3) catch all the bugs
You need to test all versions of the game, on all devices and all firmware. The worst thing that can happen is a cool game with bad reviews in the side because of bugs. Do not release the game until you test absolutely everything, and have a page of those. support (getsatisfaction, for example) to write about bugs to you there, and not to reviews in the store. But if you still missed something - use an expedited review of the update. You can use it only once a year, but in a day the update will be reviewed and the amendments will appear in the stack.
4) Do not make light version
It's boring, the player will have to go through the same levels again if he buys the game. But you need to give the opportunity to somehow get acquainted with the game for free, so think of something original. We made Gemibears Mini - this is a free background to Gemibears, it has completely different planets (level sets), plus an endless game mode - all this is original content and is not in the paid version. Trainyard Express and Hambo Begins are made in the same way. Additional content for free is the best way to introduce a person to a game, because you don’t cut something out of the game, but bring something new into it.
Remember that your paid and free (not light!) Versions are separate products. Promote paid helps free, but you need to promote it, and separately. So plan marketing for both versions.
5) Cross promo and advertising
Do cross-promo with other cool games. Gemibears has banners, buttons and icons that appeared in the games of our friends on launch. There are a lot of games from our compatriots in epsor, with all of them you can talk about cross-promo. On different conditions - from the payment of advertising to the exchange of the number of hits banners. Feel free to write offers by mail, call or even go to another city for a meeting. Support from other cool games means a lot.
If you have already released games - tie them all with an advertising module and make an advertisement for a new game in the old ones. You can make some kind of your own decision or use ready-made, for example chartboost, but ready-made solutions are very inflexible (the chartbust has only one banner format - fullscreen).
Buy paid advertising, but do it wisely. Only ads from other games, no sites, magazines, videos or print press. You can buy game installations via chartboost or put ads directly in games from Backflip, EA or even Zynga, via the Burstly website, but be sure to plan a budget.
6) Give people inside the game the opportunity to bring friends
We have a twitter community in Gemibears. Two tapes - in one there are jokes and stories from the world of bears every day, and the second displays the hashtag #GemiTalk, so that right inside the game people can communicate with each other.
In Gemibears Mini, in addition to twitter integration, there is a Facebook connection. After passing the first planet and getting a unique bear, you can either buy a paid version, or open another unique planet with a bear - to do this, go to Facebok connect and see if 3 of your friends are playing Mini. If not, then you can invite them, because having three friends in the game, you will discover a new planet. This is a good way to attract new players, because Gemibears Mini is free and just telling your friends about it will get even more content for free.
7) Make all marketing efforts in one day
Do not stretch it for a month or even a week. We launched the bears the day before all marketing efforts began and there were few downloads. But applying all possible marketing within 3 days - we took the top 25.
8) Icon, screenshots and trailer
You need a brilliant icon. Most people will decide on a purchase only judging by your icon. We made about 26 different options, until we decided that it is quite good. Great
Another important part is screenshots in epstore. In fact, these are not just screenshots - these are banners. Most people do not read the description of the game, so you need to talk about key features through screenshots. Be concise and persuasive. Not “unique gameplay”, but “match-2” - that in itself sounds clear and attractive.
Official trailer. If you do not do it, then the video will remove some teenager from youtube, shaking hands in poor quality. And people will judge the game by this video. So take care of the original trailer - we decided to show not only the game itself, but also the emotions that it causes.
9) Hype after launch
Do not neglect any free opportunity to further promote your game. If you have Facebook functionality - register the game in the Facebook App Center . Send your icon (it should be unrealistically attractive, remember?) To the gallery of the best icons on iOS . Post to TouchArcade before launch, in the upcoming games section and after launch in the left games section. And there is a section for contests!
Do not expect a feature from Apple, you can’t influence it in any way, so concentrate on creating a cool game and powerful marketing.
Do not wait for press reviews. The press likes to write about success stories, so it’s unlikely that they will write about you before you become famous. iPhones.ru refused our offer to write an exclusive material about bears, they prefer to receive money for writing about a cool game from their compatriots.
But you should try to break through everywhere - be sure to write to all sites. Not just a text letter, compile an html template or at least make a banner picture in the letter header. So we got the TUAW “Game of the Week” editorial selection for our previous game, The Screetch. They ignored the first letter, we wrote a new one, with a beautiful design - the review was the next day.
10) Write a useful post on Habr!
PS We wanted to give out promotional codes here, but in iTunes Connect something broke - there are codes, but instead of them it gives some error. We look forward to when repaired.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/146341/
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