How to advertise an online game
The year before last, I talked about how much it costs to make a browser game . And now one of the games that I mentioned in that article was launched. This is a budget indie project Star Warrior. From its inception to release, a little over a million rubles was spent on its development. Of these, ~ 170K was spent on advertising.
In small volumes, well-known and hitherto unknown advertising methods available to the online gaming project were tested. Increasing budgets, this experience can be transferred to a large project and infuse the very 9-12 million that are necessary for the successful launch of a large game on the market.
In this article, I will share information about each of the methods, indicating the effectiveness and, in my opinion, very important, specific references to traffic sources.
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A well-prepared and widely distributed press release is the basis of the advertising campaign: it gives both direct registrations and the growth of organic traffic. We divide the process into two parts - the preparation of the text and the actual decay itself.
Interesting for the press PR-reason. In the basic configuration, this is the announcement of the launch, the start of the PTA, the start of the OBT and a major update. Depending on the scale of the project between the announcement and the start of the game, you can make a great many other publications. To do this, first of all, you need a good information guide, which can be a story about one of the game features accompanied by video / screenshots / art, special conductors (for example, an action with a draw on the PTA), interviews, etc.
Each infoprovod should contain a zest to better disperse in the press and attract more attention of players. For example, the Star Warrior is:
After the text of the press release is ready with the wow-effect in the title and content, it is necessary to agree with the game portals on its publication. The smaller the project, the more difficult it is to do it. On most resources, you will be asked to pay for this, which varies from one to six thousand rubles, depending on the popularity of the gaming site. It will be necessary to write off a personal agreement about the publication and its conditions with the administration of each resource, to solve controversial issues, to pay, etc. I highly recommend doing this in advance. Otherwise, you risk becoming bogged down only with the rasping of the press release for the whole day.
Under the spoiler you will find a list in which I listed most of the game resources on the runet. For some, I also showed the number of transitions from publication and conversion to registration. I think this information will help you save a few hours of personal time and expand your list of press posts. By the way, this will not find on the Internet. The closest analogue is only one .
A little hint: when you agree on the publication of your press release, ask for a separate post in the VK portal group. They just won't do it, but if you ask, it will be a bonus to the main placement.
Specialized resources can help with the placement, which, for a fee, make for you the distribution of a press release in the editorial board of publications in thematic categories. You cannot fully rely on them, otherwise you will receive a minimum coverage. But as an additional measure, you can use it. On Star Wars, for $ 90, they used the services of SoftPressRelease .
Usually a year or more before the start of the game, its announcement is made and the entry to the PTA is opened. During the whole period of development and testing, the base of registered users is growing. The most important task of operating is to maximize this base before the start of the game, so that on the launch day you can do a newsletter on it and get an audience that is already interested in your game.
There are some simple rules that will increase the effectiveness of mailing.
The above is the very tip of the iceberg, which does not take into account a number of nuances and works just for the promotional link. A detailed description of the features of work with mailings is a separate article.
I want to note that if you are working on the launch of the game, then you most likely already have other online projects, friends in this field with similar startups. Feel free to send a separate newsletter to your other bases, and also ask / exchange bases with friends.
In recent years, affiliate program networks have been gaining high popularity with payment for a specific user action. As part of the Star Warrior tested 3 grids.
Preparation of work with each grid takes about a week, taking into account all technical integration and coordination. So it is better to start in advance.
A popular way of promotion, tied primarily to high-quality landing and properly selected texts / pictures. The Internet is full of articles on this topic, so I will not go into details. On the experience of the Star Warrior, I will only note that it is very important to prepare in advance a good entry point, showing high conversions from switching to registration. Otherwise, all your expenses on advertising of this type may go into void.
The more expensive a dollar is, the less effective it is. If last year it was still possible to reduce the cost of registration from banner advertising to 50 rubles for registration, now it can be done only with an outstanding banner and landing. Otherwise, I recommend not even trying - a net loss of money. For example, a banner on a good portal for $ 180 per week showed results in 2K transitions and less than 10 registrations. Given that the conversion from transfer to registration from the same resource from the press release was more than 25%. If you still want to place banners, then look at the small portals. From them comes quality niche traffic. For example, World-mmo and Gamezet give quite good registration streams for little money.
There is the option of placing banner ads on non-game portals that your target audience visits. These can be various torrents, video hosting sites, file sharing sites, space sites for space games and so on. According to the Star Warrior, there was no such experience. As part of the unverified information "from friends," I heard that this type of advertising is bad "in terms of price-quality ratio."
In the past, it was a cool way to launch a project with up to 50 daily registrations formed from dozens of different directories. And everything was free. Now adding to the catalogs has become paid, the traffic from them is less and less every day. But in any case for the new game it is important. It is worth a month after the announcement to monitor, track which directories do not have your game, and communicate with the administration about the placement. In the section about the press release there is a list of game resources, there are directories on most of them.
There is an opinion that YouTube is a good source of traffic to game projects. What is worth negotiating with bloggers about reviews, doing special projects on popular YouTube channels, streaming and releasing your own videos about the game. This is all true for projects with a beautiful visual part (usually client games). There, each new video can also be a good asset for the press release.
In the context of browser games, the costs of this type of traffic are not justified. For example, on the game Star Warrior the following materials were sent to YouTube: KinatVideo , mmorpgua , Simple "DAS" , NestGames , own review . The number of transitions from YouTube for the whole time was 30 people, of which 8 were registered in the game. The organic traffic from search engines did not have any impact on YouTube.
A very interesting way to bring new audiences into the game is cross-promo with celebrities. You can think of many ways: integrating the appearance / voice of Seleb into the game or into the trailer , shooting a music video for the game by a famous musician, just inviting a celebrity to the office to play, interview, and so on. Such projects work very well for attracting new audiences, and also make it possible to cover a wide range of non-game presses that could not be otherwise found with online games.
A natural limitation when choosing this method of advertising is that celebrities are interested in cross-industry only with the largest projects.
Within the framework of the Star Warrior, musicians who are friends of the developers wrote the song for the game. The result was a cross-industry with the Stymphony group.
It did not give a lot of new registrations, but the fact of having a song of its own at the game increases the sense of self-worth.
So much has already been said about it on the Internet that I simply add here with the note “Do not forget about this important element of the project promotion”. Starting to work actively on SEO is desirable immediately when you start the site. As a useful link, I recommend the automated website promotion service Rookie , which allows you to improve your position in search engines.
On Star Wars , test campaigns were conducted on Blogun , Sociate.ru, and other community advertising systems. The result on each of them tends to zero. I do not recommend using such services.
Players are your best allies in the marketing battle for traffic. With the help of in-game mechanics, you can significantly increase the number of new players attracted by everyone already playing. As the most popular measures to improve the coefficient of attraction, I will cite a referral system, posting games from the game on the social network, viral mechanisms such as receiving a bonus for accommodating friends in buildings, contests of reposts and supporting fan activities of players on external resources.
If you have questions on the features of online gaming advertising - ask, I will answer in the comments. I will also be happy to discuss other ways of advertising that you know, and as they appear in the comments I will update the article.
In small volumes, well-known and hitherto unknown advertising methods available to the online gaming project were tested. Increasing budgets, this experience can be transferred to a large project and infuse the very 9-12 million that are necessary for the successful launch of a large game on the market.
In this article, I will share information about each of the methods, indicating the effectiveness and, in my opinion, very important, specific references to traffic sources.
')
Press release on gaming portals
A well-prepared and widely distributed press release is the basis of the advertising campaign: it gives both direct registrations and the growth of organic traffic. We divide the process into two parts - the preparation of the text and the actual decay itself.
Text preparation
Interesting for the press PR-reason. In the basic configuration, this is the announcement of the launch, the start of the PTA, the start of the OBT and a major update. Depending on the scale of the project between the announcement and the start of the game, you can make a great many other publications. To do this, first of all, you need a good information guide, which can be a story about one of the game features accompanied by video / screenshots / art, special conductors (for example, an action with a draw on the PTA), interviews, etc.
Each infoprovod should contain a zest to better disperse in the press and attract more attention of players. For example, the Star Warrior is:
- Announcement of the game . A gift in the form of in-game currency: an amount equivalent to 1,000 rubles for recording an alpha test until a certain time. I would like to pay special attention to the provocative title “Star Warrior: 1000 rubles for 1 alpha test!”, Which made this announcement the most successful of all postings on Star Warrior.
- Spetspovod - launch campaign on Boomstarter . In this racist, the emphasis was on thrash. The name "Revive Stalin in the World of the Star Warrior" speaks for itself. The announcement was the most disastrous of all. As a conclusion, we can say that you need to be careful with trash.
- Start alpha test . We continue to beat the theme of the gift in the game, translated into the equivalent of real money: "Drawing 100,000 rubles on the alpha test of the Star Warrior game!" It works very well. Inspired by the old epic press release of Prime World.
- Start OBT . It was a quality press release with a twist in the form of promotional codes for a gift in the game. But without the wow-effect, unlike the announcement of the game and the start of the alpha, where the emphasis was placed on the "rubles". The result is not bad, but not an outstanding result.
Raspost on the press
After the text of the press release is ready with the wow-effect in the title and content, it is necessary to agree with the game portals on its publication. The smaller the project, the more difficult it is to do it. On most resources, you will be asked to pay for this, which varies from one to six thousand rubles, depending on the popularity of the gaming site. It will be necessary to write off a personal agreement about the publication and its conditions with the administration of each resource, to solve controversial issues, to pay, etc. I highly recommend doing this in advance. Otherwise, you risk becoming bogged down only with the rasping of the press release for the whole day.
Under the spoiler you will find a list in which I listed most of the game resources on the runet. For some, I also showed the number of transitions from publication and conversion to registration. I think this information will help you save a few hours of personal time and expand your list of press posts. By the way, this will not find on the Internet. The closest analogue is only one .
List of game resources
A little hint: when you agree on the publication of your press release, ask for a separate post in the VK portal group. They just won't do it, but if you ask, it will be a bonus to the main placement.
Specialized resources can help with the placement, which, for a fee, make for you the distribution of a press release in the editorial board of publications in thematic categories. You cannot fully rely on them, otherwise you will receive a minimum coverage. But as an additional measure, you can use it. On Star Wars, for $ 90, they used the services of SoftPressRelease .
Newsletter
Usually a year or more before the start of the game, its announcement is made and the entry to the PTA is opened. During the whole period of development and testing, the base of registered users is growing. The most important task of operating is to maximize this base before the start of the game, so that on the launch day you can do a newsletter on it and get an audience that is already interested in your game.
There are some simple rules that will increase the effectiveness of mailing.
- The name . It contains the name of the game, the call sounds, a gift is mentioned. For example, “Take your presents in the Star Warrior game”, “Inside is a surprise in honor of the launch of the Star Warrior! Rather, open it! ”,“ Star Warrior: a gift in honor of the launch. ” It is also good to use the character's nickname in the name of the mailing list.
- The mailing itself . The smaller the text list, the better. Ideally, these are just a few words included in the design of the newsletter. The transition to the landing is carried out by clicking on any distribution site. In the design, it is desirable to have the art of a sexy female, the presence of a picture of a gift, the button “Pick up a gift”, “Play” or another call to the user. Moreover, the button is needed despite the fact that the entire newsletter is one big link.
The above is the very tip of the iceberg, which does not take into account a number of nuances and works just for the promotional link. A detailed description of the features of work with mailings is a separate article.
I want to note that if you are working on the launch of the game, then you most likely already have other online projects, friends in this field with similar startups. Feel free to send a separate newsletter to your other bases, and also ask / exchange bases with friends.
Partner Networks
In recent years, affiliate program networks have been gaining high popularity with payment for a specific user action. As part of the Star Warrior tested 3 grids.
- PlanBMedia . Probably the most efficient mesh. As the action chosen to achieve the third level of the Citadel (done in one day). The cost of the action was set at 40 rubles. As a result, 250 test offers skated in 4 days. Conversion of those who remained in the game after the fulfillment of the conditions of the offer amounted to more than 30%.
- Admitad and Cityads . It is now one of the largest players in this market. You can always meet them at the thematic exhibitions, such as KRI. As part of the Star Wars experience, I can’t share specific statistics yet. I can only say that it is better to immediately agree on payment for the actions you are interested in, and not for registration. And also immediately put not underestimated, market price. The rate of 13-25 rubles for registration is not quoted by webmasters, and your test advertising campaign for a thousand registrations can go on forever. The quality of traffic when paying for registration with them is normal, the conversion to effective registration is ~ 13%.
Preparation of work with each grid takes about a week, taking into account all technical integration and coordination. So it is better to start in advance.
Contextual advertising and targeted advertising in VK
A popular way of promotion, tied primarily to high-quality landing and properly selected texts / pictures. The Internet is full of articles on this topic, so I will not go into details. On the experience of the Star Warrior, I will only note that it is very important to prepare in advance a good entry point, showing high conversions from switching to registration. Otherwise, all your expenses on advertising of this type may go into void.
Banner advertising on gaming portals
The more expensive a dollar is, the less effective it is. If last year it was still possible to reduce the cost of registration from banner advertising to 50 rubles for registration, now it can be done only with an outstanding banner and landing. Otherwise, I recommend not even trying - a net loss of money. For example, a banner on a good portal for $ 180 per week showed results in 2K transitions and less than 10 registrations. Given that the conversion from transfer to registration from the same resource from the press release was more than 25%. If you still want to place banners, then look at the small portals. From them comes quality niche traffic. For example, World-mmo and Gamezet give quite good registration streams for little money.
There is the option of placing banner ads on non-game portals that your target audience visits. These can be various torrents, video hosting sites, file sharing sites, space sites for space games and so on. According to the Star Warrior, there was no such experience. As part of the unverified information "from friends," I heard that this type of advertising is bad "in terms of price-quality ratio."
Accommodation in catalogs
In the past, it was a cool way to launch a project with up to 50 daily registrations formed from dozens of different directories. And everything was free. Now adding to the catalogs has become paid, the traffic from them is less and less every day. But in any case for the new game it is important. It is worth a month after the announcement to monitor, track which directories do not have your game, and communicate with the administration about the placement. In the section about the press release there is a list of game resources, there are directories on most of them.
YouTube Reviews
There is an opinion that YouTube is a good source of traffic to game projects. What is worth negotiating with bloggers about reviews, doing special projects on popular YouTube channels, streaming and releasing your own videos about the game. This is all true for projects with a beautiful visual part (usually client games). There, each new video can also be a good asset for the press release.
In the context of browser games, the costs of this type of traffic are not justified. For example, on the game Star Warrior the following materials were sent to YouTube: KinatVideo , mmorpgua , Simple "DAS" , NestGames , own review . The number of transitions from YouTube for the whole time was 30 people, of which 8 were registered in the game. The organic traffic from search engines did not have any impact on YouTube.
Crosspromo with celebrities
A very interesting way to bring new audiences into the game is cross-promo with celebrities. You can think of many ways: integrating the appearance / voice of Seleb into the game or into the trailer , shooting a music video for the game by a famous musician, just inviting a celebrity to the office to play, interview, and so on. Such projects work very well for attracting new audiences, and also make it possible to cover a wide range of non-game presses that could not be otherwise found with online games.
A natural limitation when choosing this method of advertising is that celebrities are interested in cross-industry only with the largest projects.
Within the framework of the Star Warrior, musicians who are friends of the developers wrote the song for the game. The result was a cross-industry with the Stymphony group.
It did not give a lot of new registrations, but the fact of having a song of its own at the game increases the sense of self-worth.
SEO optimization
So much has already been said about it on the Internet that I simply add here with the note “Do not forget about this important element of the project promotion”. Starting to work actively on SEO is desirable immediately when you start the site. As a useful link, I recommend the automated website promotion service Rookie , which allows you to improve your position in search engines.
Advertising services in social networks, blogs and communities
On Star Wars , test campaigns were conducted on Blogun , Sociate.ru, and other community advertising systems. The result on each of them tends to zero. I do not recommend using such services.
Unusual advertising
- Posts on Gohe with a funny signature . Oddly enough, the working way. It is enough to make your signature bright, funny, with a picture, animated emoticons and a link to your website. You need to troll in different sections on topics not related to your project. It is advisable to do with 5-6 pumped accounts. The easiest way is to ask friends who have long been hanging on Goha to change their signature. According to the results, it gives up to 50 transitions per day with a good conversion to registration. A small stream, but together with a number of others, they merge into a broad river of traffic. Works only on Goch. Similar experiments on other gaming forums and torrents give practically nothing.
- Spam in the chat rooms of other games . Many years ago it was almost the main source of traffic to indie projects. I suppose that now, like many other old ways, has become less effective. We didn’t set up such an experiment on Star Warmaster, as they considered it too messy to attract players.
- Publications on literary resources . This could be the plot of your game on samizdat or poems by a famous poetess about your game on PoetryRu . It does not give direct traffic, but I see no reason to deny myself this little joy as one of the campaigns to increase brand awareness. By the way, after such postings you will receive many letters with proposals to join various literary clubs and publish your works.
- Funny announcement on Avito . As an experiment on the unusual advertising of the Star Warrior, this funny announcement on Avito was posted. In a few days, until it was removed, several thousand views gained. And even independently migrated to Pikabu .
- Participation in various awards . For example, in the Runet Prize . It is made easy and free.
- Actually, the article on Habré . For the time that has passed since the publication of my last article , from Habr to the Star Warrior website there were more than 7.8K transitions.
Traffic generated by the players themselves
Players are your best allies in the marketing battle for traffic. With the help of in-game mechanics, you can significantly increase the number of new players attracted by everyone already playing. As the most popular measures to improve the coefficient of attraction, I will cite a referral system, posting games from the game on the social network, viral mechanisms such as receiving a bonus for accommodating friends in buildings, contests of reposts and supporting fan activities of players on external resources.
If you have questions on the features of online gaming advertising - ask, I will answer in the comments. I will also be happy to discuss other ways of advertising that you know, and as they appear in the comments I will update the article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/249993/
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