How to promote mobile applications before the release. Part 1

Chapter 1. Introduction

Thanks to my story “How I Created a Mobile Fighting Game” , I acquired a lasting dependency: every day, opening my eyes, I pick up the phone and first open the cherished icon of the habr.

I observe more and more often how some authors, under the guise of useful material, try to push through their product or raise money from readers. If I can change the current trend, then why not try?

I would like to quote: “When a person engages in altruistic activity, bestowal comes as the strongest emotion of the sense of meaning.” I am inspired and energized by the placement of publications. It gives me strength to achieve a different order. Therefore, I try to generate content that each reader can give exceptional benefits.

I am tormented by insomnia because of the promise to write an article about the promotion and technical aspects of the game that we are developing. But our dear programmer Leonid is now processing the game and does not give me enough material for the article. In this regard, I decided to start with the promotion.

Pour yourself a cup of your favorite hot drink, take a cookie, sit as comfortably as possible and get ready to pump a huge amount, in my opinion, useful information into your brain.
')

Chapter 2. No Idea

Imagine an ordinary developer who started promoting his product, without having the proper experience. He sits down on his soft computer chair, takes a deep breath, looks first at the window, then at an empty sheet, then again at the window, and in my head at this time one thought rushes like lightning - where to start?

Let's move from simple to complex and start thinking about progress, when you have not yet begun to develop. There may be two options:

• You have no decent idea.
• An idea rushes about in my head and requires implementation

Let's shoot the first option, because it is shorter. The captain suggests: if you do not have a valid idea that can be implemented, then you need to find it. To find a suitable idea, you need to go through seven circles of hell through my small questionnaire:

1. Identify trends. In order not to get into prosak, I recommend initially to identify current market trends. Especially for this case, I prepared several questions that will help you in this task:

What is popular now? How long will it be popular? Do you have time to do something similar and get into the jet? What are the trends when you make a project?

It is necessary to track daily TOP shops and read reviews. This may suggest how you can do better. Do not stop wondering WHY? Why is it popular? Why are there no competitors? Why is it implemented that way?

2. We generate. If you have a tumbleweed in your head, it is even good. Imagine yourself an empty glass that is ready to be filled with new ideas. In this creative process, my questions are simply obliged to help:

Is it possible to develop your hobby using a useful application? Can you share with people your sports experience, technique or techniques? What is missing in your phone at work? Can some application help to avoid difficulties in life? What application could simplify the implementation of unloved duties? What application can accelerate the execution of daily affairs? What games did you personally like? Can they turn into a smart app?

Analyzing personal experiences and studying the biographies of other people will help you see the possibilities for creating something truly worthwhile.

3. We formulate. To clearly formulate your idea, use one popular trick: To begin, describe the idea in one sentence. Now describe the idea with a short paragraph. Then briefly describe the idea in a few paragraphs. And finally, a complete description of your idea on one page.

If you easily coped with this task, then your idea will be clear to other people. It is quite possible that she will even be able to interest potential investors or new partners.

4. Determine the target audience. Actually, I wrote a separate article on this topic, “For whom this toy is or how to determine the target audience,” but there is another secret method. You need to divide your potential users into several categories, starting with the narrowest. For example, we did it like this:

1. People who know and love shurikens.
2. Fans of ninja subjects.
3. Fans of fighting games and dynamic games.
4. Fans of multiplayer games more than a single mode.
5. Guys from 10 to 40 years old with a smartphone and good internet at hand.

Recommended not more than 5 categories. Act!

5. Analyzing competitors. Analysis of competitors will help you to avoid many of their mistakes. When analyzing each of the competitors, ask yourself the following questions:

What needs does this app satisfy? Causes buying momentum? How long does it take? How to promote? What is my competitive advantage? Why do people buy it? How to improve this idea? Is the application successful? Will I do better graphics, mechanics, sounds? Would you tell your friends about this app?

Answers to these questions will help you make an application that will have great advantages compared with competitors and the lack of flaws.

Even if you have a cool idea, check yourself and go through the questionnaire will not be superfluous. Questions may make you think and adjust something. Some may call this process a niche choice, but I prefer not to use this stamp, it has become too fashionable lately and has lost its former strength.

Fine! Drive on. You have a worthy idea, ready to see the light and become popular. Before you push the gas pedal to the floor, let's do the final analysis. To polish the idea to shine will help answers to the following questions:

1. How much entertainment value will the app provide? Will it make users laugh? Cause joy and excitement?

2. Is the application intuitive? The most popular applications are easy and simple to use. People can easily figure out how to use it. Try to tell your idea to the child and look at his reaction.

3. How much does it involve people? Remember those applications and games from which you can not tear myself away, when you play, and when you do not play, think about it? This is the very thing you should strive for.

4. Benefit more cost? In the understanding of users, the application should give them more than they spent on it. Try to give them that feeling, and they will forever become your fans.

5. Wide audience? The more people understand the application and will use it, the greater the likelihood that it will become a hit.

6. Will the graphics and sounds be on par? Wrap your candy should match. Meet on clothes.

7. How viral is it? Rumor is a huge advertisement. When people really like the app, they show it to many other people.

There are negative answers in my toy. And this is really an occasion to think and do refinement.

Chapter 3. Strategy

Nowadays, with the current competition, it is already difficult to achieve success only at the expense of Lady Luck. The giant mistake that most developers make - they don’t think at all about how people know about their product. Your product may be infinitely beautiful, interesting and unusual, but if nobody knows about it, then all your efforts were in vain.

I identified several possible strategies:

• Empty pig money box
• I hear coins ringing in the piggy bank
• In the piggy bank rustling bills

You should understand that the choice of strategy depends not only on the amount of money, but also on the specifics of your application and the size of the audience. For example, if you invented a convenient reader for a habr, then you will just have to write an interesting history of the development of your application.

Chapter 4. Pre-Release Preparation

The technical task is written, the prototypes are prepared, the tasks are in the tracker - each participant is busy with his own business. I am rubbing my hands in anticipation of something grand ... Wait a friend, it's too early. Ahead of the darkness of work.

It is generally accepted in society that marketers connect shortly before the release of a product. Having estimated the amount of work, I concluded that it would take me much more time than a couple of weeks before the release of the product. Need to act immediately.

There are two ways - for tough guys and for cowards .



The first is to do what you want. The second is to make a popular clone, a money sucker. We wanted something in between, to implement the obsession so that it would appeal to a wide range of users. Such a path was chosen solely for the purpose of fulfilling a long-held dream - with the incoming revenues to be able to create cool games and useful applications, the ideas of which constantly rush into my head.

We begin preparations for advancement with pre-release preparation. What does a scary set of tasks for pre-release preparation look like? Unfortunately, I do not exaggerate, the list is really scary:

Application. Although our society of mobile developers is developing at a very rapid pace, there is still a very large proportion of people who think that, apart from the application itself, they do not need to make additional efforts on any kind of icon or screenshots there either. Why waste time? I hope after studying my works, the picture will become clearer.

Icon. If your application is not popular enough yet, then the icon has a rather large weight as the first random stranger with your users. Just imagine, you go to a bookstore and see a bunch of books on a topic that interests you. First of all, your attention will be attracted by beautiful covers that are not similar to others. So in the app stores, people pay attention to the quality and unusual icons.

Many people talk about the variety of sizes of icons, but the most urgent ones are better to look for in the guides of the platform on which you are preparing the release. The data there is updated before other sources. What should it be? You are on the right track if your icon:

Reflects the essence of the application. Give your users the opportunity to understand the purpose of your application.

Attractive Your main task is to make the user want to install the application without reading the description and without viewing the screenshots.

High quality. You know, there is such a technique in the shops you look at, and it creates the feeling that it is very high quality and will last for a long time. Here, when looking at your icon in comparison with others, the same sensations should arise.

Often, people make blunders: they write texts on an icon, shove a bunch of different objects, use all the colors of the rainbow. The simple rule is one large object that a person with poor eyesight can see at a decent distance.

When several variants of our icon were ready, I could not decide which of them should be chosen. I decided to entrust the adoption of this decision to our potential users by voting.



With a colossal margin won the first option. Although in our team I insisted on the second.

If you have a small budget and you want a cool icon, do not look for among those who offer you to make a cheap icon. Usually they use template approaches. Using my advice, refer to a good artist who, for relatively little money, draws a good illustration. It will be more profitable and at times steeper. Here is the icon to the right, I drew a good artist for $ 50. I still consider it very cool.

Title. What do you tell your friends when they ask you, what are you playing or what cool new applications will you recommend? Very often there is something like “well, this is how it is ...” or “schA look in the phone.”

The name is one of the key elements in promoting an application. How can a couple of words have that weight? In fact, more than a couple - you have as many as 255 characters in the name, and each word is indexed by a search. Indexed even better than keywords. But there is a trick - the more words and the further they are in order, the less the indexation of each of them and each next after the first one. Main criteria:

A short. Universal for all languages. The basis is short, the rest are keywords.

Simple. It should just be pronounced and written to make it easy to remember.

Original and captures the essence.

If you suffer in convulsions when inventing a name, ask yourself the following questions:

What are the functions? What benefits will the user bring? Key features? What is different from competitors? What makes the application unique? Can you beat a popular word or phrase?

It is imperative that your name bears the function that your product performs. In this case, I remembered one example. I do not remember where he saw him, but nonetheless. There is one company with a very complex name. And if the founders of the company called the application as they call themselves, they would have lost a lot of potential customers. For the common man, the name doesn’t mean anything. An empty sound. Therefore, they called the app with the books “Read”, and with the audiobook “Listen”. Short? - undoubtedly. Simply? - and how. Original? - compared to other heaven and earth. Reflects the essence? - in combination with the icon perfect.

If your mind is nimble enough and you are tracking trends, then you can count and name the game “Flappy cat of clans in 2048”. The rules do not prohibit, but may reject, if it is too explicit. And do not forget about the basic taboos - violence, sex, drugs. Do not hurt the fragile minds of kindergartners.

I would like to distinguish himself and give advice, which is usually silent about. Be careful with names that have a completely different meaning in other languages ​​or insult a group of people. If you complain, you kapets.

Well, the control check for the road: your application has a clear name? does it describe its functionality? are keywords used?

Keywords. Valuable advice - choose the words not by the numbers of various assessment services, but how you would look for your application yourself - by what words and phrases. How would your potential customers look?

When I began to explore the topic with keywords, it seemed to me that this is a salvation for developers who have no money for promotion. In fact, it is a great helper, but only if you have already advanced your application well. Why? Because it is an illusion of services that help find words, that they say they are looking for a lot and there is no competition. It is profitable for them.

All good keywords are highly competitive. If you want keywords to provide you with real support, then pick up popular words that match your application and which can be searched, promote your application and go up the popular keys.

Life hacking - when your application only appears in the store, it immediately rises to the TOP in many keywords. So choose the most popular and glow in the tops.

Questions you should ask yourself:

What words are entered by users need an age group to search my app? What keywords do competitors use? What other suitable words can I try? Am I using all the space allocated for keywords?

Tips:

Do not repeat the keywords from the title. I did not notice the growth of positions from repetitions.

Do not use words not related to the application.

Do not put spaces after commas when listing keys.

Build keywords for each language.

Description. The attention of the user after the icon and screenshots draws the description. If the screenshots do not sufficiently reflect the essence of the application, the user can perform 3 actions: close the application, install, read the description. If you are tracking statistics and have noticed a large percentage of the transition to the application, but a low percentage of installations, look for the problem in the screenshots and description.

If you do not know where to start, see descriptions of other applications. Even better, if you look at the descriptions of applications that are similar to yours. Do not copy! Your task is to analyze and draw the right conclusions.

If there are reviews about your application that deserve the attention of potential users, include them at the end of the description.

Some use an interesting trick. Immerse the potential user in the game already in the description. They tell a piece of the plot. Here is an example of several options for describing our toy:



You must remember that now is a time when people use Twitter, look at pictures and do not read long texts. Therefore, if I were you, I would have forgotten about spoilers on several pages. First of all, you must convey to the user how much he will benefit from your application. If the user came to find a solution to the problem of excess weight, you must say that he will become slim and beautiful. But if you cheat, do not expect mercy.

Zadite user. Let him experience at least some positive emotions from reading. Do not be afraid to experiment and try different versions of the description. Do not forget to update the description when you add a new functionality. In google play, the description is indexed in the same way as keywords.

Questions to help you write a good description: how can I make the description more orderly and easier to read? How can I better explain the functionality of the application? how do i make it more interesting? Does it call for action?

Screenshots Screenshots of the second most important design element after the icon. After the user has clicked on the awesome icon, he should be even more surprised to see unreal screenshots. Usually, people squeeze all their creativity on the icon, and slaughter the screenshots. Ideally, all who clicked on the icon should see the screenshots and go on to download.

In our game, the conversion varies from source, but on average is 20-30 percent. I do not know how good or bad it is, because there is no data on ideal indicators. 1000 people became interested in the icon and only 200-300 downloaded the game, can you imagine? It seems to me that there should be something close to this 1000 downloads.

Show the merits of your application in all its glory. Let screenshots be as informative as possible. Add effects if your application is not too emotional. Translate screenshots into each language. Do not overload them with unnecessary information. Place them in a logical sequence.

Questions to help you bring the screenshots to mind: can I make the screenshots look more impressive? Do the icons and the whole application match their themes? How to make screenshots less loaded and easier to understand? Can I improve the text so that more properties and more important properties are mentioned?

I advise you to read the requirements for screenshots in the App Store and Google Play

Application site. Why is it needed?

Attract search traffic. On the page you can conduct search engine optimization, and then, even before the release of the project, you can collect loyal users. There are no applications yet, but there are plenty of those who wish.

Collect feedback and subscriptions. Actually, we collect user base and, perhaps, some interesting suggestions.

For the press and new partners. Want to get reviews? Here for the press just here and you can place all the materials. In the so-called press kit.



How to do it?

Easy, with a minimal set of elements. Your task as soon as possible to redirect the user to download the application. Ideally, the text should fit in one screen.

Bright and juicy. It's like in the store - I saw a beautiful bun and wanted to eat.

Less texts - more pictures. Watch and admire.

Constructive. Tell the user immediately where he went and what you want from him.

Adaptive. On any device, the site looks equally good.

Video. Don't forget the trailer for the very lazy.

Buttons. On a subscription, on downloading and on your accounts in social networks.

Press kit Make a link to dropbox, and there is a folder with your application.

In my opinion, our team has a website that meets many requirements. He is not perfect, but for this you can not blush.

Social networks. Well, it's pretty simple. You already have graphics and lots of interesting information. Create accounts in popular social networks and post there your existing content. Attract friends and acquaintances or make a couple of posts in large public places to get the most loyal audience that will help you with advice during the development process and will be ready to download your application at launch. Extra traffic and free testers as a nice bonus.

Localization. To begin with, I recommend everyone to thoroughly study this post , draw the right conclusions and begin to localize their application. What we have localized:

Screenshots and texts on them. In total, we got 12 languages ​​with 20 screenshots on each.

Interface. I made a special table in which I threw all the screenshots, noted on each screen a word for translation and filled this table in all languages ​​with the help of translators.

Keywords. I also prepared a separate table and made keywords for all countries and languages.

Name and description. It goes without saying that users feel comfortable when they open my app in the store.
Site. They did it in two languages ​​in order not to spend much time on it, which was not enough anyway.

Advertising campaign. You must develop your own unique and memorable style, which will be the basis of the entire advertising campaign. A single style will reduce the total development time of all materials. Our style is fully consistent with the game. Maybe I’m saying absolutely obvious things now, but the designer should be warned about this, because the flight of their imagination is usually unlimited, and it can fly to the wrong steppe.

Texts for reviews. Written texts for reviews are often written by site authors in order to somehow justify the overestimated cost of a review from them. If you want to save, then write the text of the review themselves. Include the following information in the review:

Description of the application. Just a few sentences that convey the essence and uniqueness.

Key features. List the most basic of your messages that you want to convey to the reader in the format of "title and description."

Information for readers. Describe what you want the review author to tell to the readers.

Desirable information. What desired information you want the author to include in the review.

Useful links to the site, screenshots, videos and press kit.

Wishes to the title of the article and avatar.

General information: release date, platforms, device requirements, languages ​​and price.

Describe the shortcomings. This is done so that they do not have to invent them for the review.

Information about the company.

Future plans.

A set of banners. For any review or advertising need banners. Each site has its own requirements for materials. Find out the requirements in advance and prepare all the necessary materials. A plus to this is that they can be included in the press kit.

What you need to consider when creating banners:

The user should immediately understand what it is about. “Do you want to have fun?” Find a suitable place nearby through our app. ”

Immediately shove in the eyes of user benefit. You have very little time to be noticed and interested.

Short text no more than 40 characters.

Readable, neutral sans serif font.

Do not forget your name or logo.

It can be placed on different sites, consider this when creating a background banner.

Track the effectiveness of banners and disable poorly performing.

Selection of sites and clarification of requirements. Your task is to find thematic sites where you can post information about your project. Clarify the requirements for materials and prepare them in advance.

I got a table with three tabs: social networks, websites, video reviews. In each of the tabs, I added relevant data interesting to me and began to search for sites. As a result, I got a whole list on each of the tabs. My main task was to find the most efficient sites for the price and possible return.

Then I began to write to contacts that I collected, and tried to agree on the placement. What came of it, you will learn in the next section. In the meantime, brief recommendations:

Check the text for punctuation and spelling errors.

The text should be logical and understandable. The contact must understand from the first lines what the principle is about, what kind of service, what he can do, for what and for whom he is.

Be brief. No need to insert direct speech in letters for a couple of three paragraphs.

Try to write in a lively language.

Already in the subject line go straight to the point.

Be specific. What you have and what you need.

Post links to the site and press kit.

Take the letter as a sale.

Solve the problem of the person to whom the letter is addressed, not yours.The task of contact is to get good material that will be read, discussed and retweeted.

Give try the version of the game.

Connecting analytical systems. Well, everything is quite obvious. You connect free analytical services, collect data and draw conclusions. Questions that can help you with this: how to automate the tracking of numbers? what numbers to track? What results does the app show and how can I adjust them to increase sales? What were the results of previous adjustments? is the rating of the application growing or falling and why is the number of downloads growing or falling and why? sales grow or fall and why? Is it possible to use feedback from reviews to the application to improve it?



In the next part I will tell in detail:

- Where I placed the advertisement and what it gave.
- Which sites are effective and which do not work at all.
- What is the result achieved and how much spent.

See you!