Promotion of mobile games using social networks Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte
Sources of low-cost installer applications - one of the most discussed topics among developers. Today we want to share with you the experience of promoting your mobile games using social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. This article will be of interest to companies with small marketing budgets for promotion and / or focused on the Russian market. We do not offer to refuse advertising or from reviews and other means of promotion. We will tell you how to “get” the required number of downloads at an affordable price, and not to increase the cost of the instal in networks.
So, when we are faced with the task of constantly promoting or maintaining an application in the Russian top, we make a plan of the n-th number of points. Plan-list of promotion channels. But, constantly re-reading this list from the wave of advancement to the wave, you begin to think about what you need to look for new methods, ways to “reach”, “reach” to your user. After all, not all of them read reviews, not all have a lot of applications in which ad networks show ads. And here the logical idea is that it is necessary to go where our audience almost always happens, and these are social networks on mobile devices: vk and odnoklassniki.
Why on mobile devices?
Firstly, so that the user can download our application with a minimum number of clicks. And secondly, because of the peculiarities of the networks when accessing from devices. Both networks have targeted contextual / banner advertising. But it is visible only in the desktop browser. And on mobile devices it is not. Whether you go through applications, or through a mobile browser to the mobile version - it is not there. But there are groups and public pages in which these same users sit in the breaks, in the evenings, on the way from work / to work, and often at work. And the groups have moderators who, with great pleasure and for a certain fee, will publish in your tape your advertising post.
')
But, for a start, let's see what the network administration has provided for in its rules on this.
Vkontakte: no more than 2 (two) third-party advertisements per week can be posted on the Community wall (with the exception of fixed entries).
Classmates: nothing.
That is, in fact, the administration of Vkontakte allowed the publication of advertising posts. Our experience shows that where there are 2, there are 3, and 4, and 5. Classmates - well, here in general, what is not prohibited, is allowed. Russian mentality FOREVER!
So, we go further.
Deciding that we should try to launch a wave of advertising posts, we concluded that we need the following things:
1. Qualitative groups
2. Adequate cost of accommodation
3. Strong, preferably viral, advertising post.
How to choose a group
It is worth choosing a group by several indicators:
1. The number of subscribers
Undoubtedly, we are looking for the most numerous groups. And we need the members of these groups to be living people, and not accounts, wound bots. It is worth mentioning that there are so many million-million groups in vk, but in odnoklassnikah you will be lucky if you come across a group of more than 200,000 participants.
There are several ways to find such groups:
- Internal search engines.
If we talk about Odnoklassniki, everything is simple there: type a keyword in the search line and get a list of groups.
Vkontakte has a small catch: the internal search engine does not show all groups, but only those that have not violated the rules of Vkontakte so far, well, or have not violated them much and clearly. That is, they did not use bots, did not post obscene nature, and did not fall into the ban. In fact, we can say that these are the highest quality groups with the highest quality traffic.
And here it becomes interesting: very large and popular groups, for example, Borsch and MDK, are left behind.
Therefore, if you are interested in “seeing” and those who are not present in the search, you should go to the stock exchange to sell advertising in social networks. There all these groups are there.
Note: here you can ask why we just did not buy advertising through the exchange? It's all so in one place, easier and easier.
Firstly, we didn’t want to overpay 15% commission, secondly, the statistics of advertising exchanges do not show the rather important item “Feedback” (see below), well, and finally, admins respond to requests made from the exchange longer than on requests thrown in lichku.
Nevertheless, it is possible and necessary to use these exchanges to search for groups of interest to you.
- The second way to find groups: advanced search for Yandex, but here you will have to rummage in the issue to find the number of visitors from a particular group.
2. Theme and CA
Of course, it is worth looking for groups that are directly related to the topics of interest to you, near-thematic and those in which your target audience consists. Here again, you can request community statistics directly from community administrators, or “play” with the search in the same advertising networks and see what it offers you.
3. Statistics
Statistics should always be asked, well, it is clear that if the administrator does not provide it for you, you should not agree to cooperation.
Odnoklassniki statistics is currently in beta testing. From it at the moment only a few sections can be interesting: people (age, gender, geography of distribution), user activity in the group. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people saw your ad.
As for the statistics of Vkontakte, it can show a lot:
Group audience (age and gender). You need to look at this data in the Coverage section, since it is there that you can see who enters the group, who views the tape, and who simply signed and forgot.
The number of visitors , those who visit the group page. Do not be surprised if a group with the number of participants equal to 2 million, only 70 thousand people go to the page itself. The rest read the news in the tape. And we can see these others in the Coverage section.
Coverage will also be many times less than the number of subscribers of the group. A good indicator is considered to be 500 thousand people reaching the same 2 million subscribers. But then you can calculate how much it will cost your ad to show 1 active user group.
Surges of group activity . You can determine at what time of the day and on which day of the week the audience of the group is most active. This is important, since usually your post is placed for 1 hour at the top of the group, and then over the next 23 hours it will go down under the influx of new posts.
Feedback . In other words, how many reposts, likes and comments were made in a group per day. So you can evaluate the activity of the group and how good the traffic is.
4. The number of posts, both advertising and non-advertising.
Your post is usually fixed for 1 hour at the top of the tape, then for another 24 hours it gradually goes down under the new published posts. Therefore, of course, if publications are held every 30 minutes, then after 3 hours after publication you will already be on the 5th place in the tape, and in 6 - at 11. And if every third new post is an ad, then there is nothing to say.
Here is an example of the data you need to have in order to decide whether to advertise in a group or not:
Group "Beauty School":
- the group is present in the issuance of an internal search engine on the 1st place
- number of subscribers: 2,700,000 people, per day - 70,000 people.
- coverage of 500,000 people. / day
- 82% women
- 35 posts / day, 1 advertising post / day
- 16 000 reposts, 82 000 like'ov, 6 000 comments
5. Administrative adequacy
Quite an important factor, since payment takes place without a contract, e-currency. Therefore, of course, I would like to reduce the risks of working with social networks.
Vkontakte large groups are moderated either by agencies or by fairly advanced students / housewives. When referring to the latter, you will receive a detailed price list, the time of possible publications. Work is usually performed on time. But this concerns precisely large groups. Small communities are often moderated by amateurs or children. Here you have to decide for yourself whether the game is worth the candle or not.
Moderators on Odnoklassniki are usually amateur gardeners, who created a page for the soul. Therefore, do not be surprised when you receive a refusal to publish, or permission to do it for free.
Adequate cost of accommodation
1. Price issue vk.com
The table shows some of the largest communities of the social network. As you can see, the cost of a user of the Beauty School group is higher than that of the same Borsch. This is due to the fact that the group
- is in the issuance of an internal search engine,
- its audience consists mainly of solvent women aged from 18 to 35 years,
- users of the group are very active.
But the advertising post in the “In Joke” group will cost you only 1725 rubles, since the group fell out of the internal search, its main subscribers are under 18 years old.
2. Issue price (odnoklassniki)
Unfortunately, we are forced to state the fact that we did not succeed in making normal progress in Odnoklassniki for the following reasons:
- small groups;
- unorganized administrators;
- weak extras;
- unsuccessful structure of the formation of the news feed, in which most of the posts from the groups do not fall into the user's feed.
But, if you are interested in this particular social network, you can publish a post for 150-250 rubles per week.
Your post
For ourselves, we have identified several factors of a “successful” advertising post.
So, your post should be:
- brief. The easier and more succinctly you will be able to state the basic idea, the better. (In social networks, long texts are read only in the case when they are sentimental stories about hedgehogs);
- it is desirable not to look like an advertisement;
- must contain photo / video;
- should be maintained in the style of the group;
- it must contain a link to download.
Our game belongs to the Tamagotchi genre, so we advertised it in groups in which women and children are the main audience.
Here is what our post looked like:
What has been achieved
- The estimated cost of the installer was $ 0.10- $ 0.40. It is very important to choose the right publication time. The most expensive installations were on holidays. Then we did not take into account the fact that on holidays in good weather, people simply go for a walk instead of sitting on social networks.
- Approximately 4,000 downloads for 1 wave of promotion. By wave, we mean the nth number of posts for three days, usually 6-10 posts in three days. We promoted the project only on one platform - iOS.
Social networks Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte, of course, cannot be the main way to promote mobile games, although for poor companies and indie developers they can become one of the independent and fairly budget ways to promote their own games, or the ability to “get” inexpensive installations.
So, when we are faced with the task of constantly promoting or maintaining an application in the Russian top, we make a plan of the n-th number of points. Plan-list of promotion channels. But, constantly re-reading this list from the wave of advancement to the wave, you begin to think about what you need to look for new methods, ways to “reach”, “reach” to your user. After all, not all of them read reviews, not all have a lot of applications in which ad networks show ads. And here the logical idea is that it is necessary to go where our audience almost always happens, and these are social networks on mobile devices: vk and odnoklassniki.
Why on mobile devices?
Firstly, so that the user can download our application with a minimum number of clicks. And secondly, because of the peculiarities of the networks when accessing from devices. Both networks have targeted contextual / banner advertising. But it is visible only in the desktop browser. And on mobile devices it is not. Whether you go through applications, or through a mobile browser to the mobile version - it is not there. But there are groups and public pages in which these same users sit in the breaks, in the evenings, on the way from work / to work, and often at work. And the groups have moderators who, with great pleasure and for a certain fee, will publish in your tape your advertising post.
')
But, for a start, let's see what the network administration has provided for in its rules on this.
Vkontakte: no more than 2 (two) third-party advertisements per week can be posted on the Community wall (with the exception of fixed entries).
Classmates: nothing.
That is, in fact, the administration of Vkontakte allowed the publication of advertising posts. Our experience shows that where there are 2, there are 3, and 4, and 5. Classmates - well, here in general, what is not prohibited, is allowed. Russian mentality FOREVER!
So, we go further.
Deciding that we should try to launch a wave of advertising posts, we concluded that we need the following things:
1. Qualitative groups
2. Adequate cost of accommodation
3. Strong, preferably viral, advertising post.
How to choose a group
It is worth choosing a group by several indicators:
1. The number of subscribers
Undoubtedly, we are looking for the most numerous groups. And we need the members of these groups to be living people, and not accounts, wound bots. It is worth mentioning that there are so many million-million groups in vk, but in odnoklassnikah you will be lucky if you come across a group of more than 200,000 participants.
There are several ways to find such groups:
- Internal search engines.
If we talk about Odnoklassniki, everything is simple there: type a keyword in the search line and get a list of groups.
Vkontakte has a small catch: the internal search engine does not show all groups, but only those that have not violated the rules of Vkontakte so far, well, or have not violated them much and clearly. That is, they did not use bots, did not post obscene nature, and did not fall into the ban. In fact, we can say that these are the highest quality groups with the highest quality traffic.
And here it becomes interesting: very large and popular groups, for example, Borsch and MDK, are left behind.
Therefore, if you are interested in “seeing” and those who are not present in the search, you should go to the stock exchange to sell advertising in social networks. There all these groups are there.
Note: here you can ask why we just did not buy advertising through the exchange? It's all so in one place, easier and easier.
Firstly, we didn’t want to overpay 15% commission, secondly, the statistics of advertising exchanges do not show the rather important item “Feedback” (see below), well, and finally, admins respond to requests made from the exchange longer than on requests thrown in lichku.
Nevertheless, it is possible and necessary to use these exchanges to search for groups of interest to you.
- The second way to find groups: advanced search for Yandex, but here you will have to rummage in the issue to find the number of visitors from a particular group.
2. Theme and CA
Of course, it is worth looking for groups that are directly related to the topics of interest to you, near-thematic and those in which your target audience consists. Here again, you can request community statistics directly from community administrators, or “play” with the search in the same advertising networks and see what it offers you.
3. Statistics
Statistics should always be asked, well, it is clear that if the administrator does not provide it for you, you should not agree to cooperation.
Odnoklassniki statistics is currently in beta testing. From it at the moment only a few sections can be interesting: people (age, gender, geography of distribution), user activity in the group. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people saw your ad.
As for the statistics of Vkontakte, it can show a lot:
Group audience (age and gender). You need to look at this data in the Coverage section, since it is there that you can see who enters the group, who views the tape, and who simply signed and forgot.
The number of visitors , those who visit the group page. Do not be surprised if a group with the number of participants equal to 2 million, only 70 thousand people go to the page itself. The rest read the news in the tape. And we can see these others in the Coverage section.
Coverage will also be many times less than the number of subscribers of the group. A good indicator is considered to be 500 thousand people reaching the same 2 million subscribers. But then you can calculate how much it will cost your ad to show 1 active user group.
Surges of group activity . You can determine at what time of the day and on which day of the week the audience of the group is most active. This is important, since usually your post is placed for 1 hour at the top of the group, and then over the next 23 hours it will go down under the influx of new posts.
Feedback . In other words, how many reposts, likes and comments were made in a group per day. So you can evaluate the activity of the group and how good the traffic is.
4. The number of posts, both advertising and non-advertising.
Your post is usually fixed for 1 hour at the top of the tape, then for another 24 hours it gradually goes down under the new published posts. Therefore, of course, if publications are held every 30 minutes, then after 3 hours after publication you will already be on the 5th place in the tape, and in 6 - at 11. And if every third new post is an ad, then there is nothing to say.
Here is an example of the data you need to have in order to decide whether to advertise in a group or not:
Group "Beauty School":
- the group is present in the issuance of an internal search engine on the 1st place
- number of subscribers: 2,700,000 people, per day - 70,000 people.
- coverage of 500,000 people. / day
- 82% women
- 35 posts / day, 1 advertising post / day
- 16 000 reposts, 82 000 like'ov, 6 000 comments
5. Administrative adequacy
Quite an important factor, since payment takes place without a contract, e-currency. Therefore, of course, I would like to reduce the risks of working with social networks.
Vkontakte large groups are moderated either by agencies or by fairly advanced students / housewives. When referring to the latter, you will receive a detailed price list, the time of possible publications. Work is usually performed on time. But this concerns precisely large groups. Small communities are often moderated by amateurs or children. Here you have to decide for yourself whether the game is worth the candle or not.
Moderators on Odnoklassniki are usually amateur gardeners, who created a page for the soul. Therefore, do not be surprised when you receive a refusal to publish, or permission to do it for free.
Adequate cost of accommodation
1. Price issue vk.com
The table shows some of the largest communities of the social network. As you can see, the cost of a user of the Beauty School group is higher than that of the same Borsch. This is due to the fact that the group
- is in the issuance of an internal search engine,
- its audience consists mainly of solvent women aged from 18 to 35 years,
- users of the group are very active.
But the advertising post in the “In Joke” group will cost you only 1725 rubles, since the group fell out of the internal search, its main subscribers are under 18 years old.
2. Issue price (odnoklassniki)
Unfortunately, we are forced to state the fact that we did not succeed in making normal progress in Odnoklassniki for the following reasons:
- small groups;
- unorganized administrators;
- weak extras;
- unsuccessful structure of the formation of the news feed, in which most of the posts from the groups do not fall into the user's feed.
But, if you are interested in this particular social network, you can publish a post for 150-250 rubles per week.
Your post
For ourselves, we have identified several factors of a “successful” advertising post.
So, your post should be:
- brief. The easier and more succinctly you will be able to state the basic idea, the better. (In social networks, long texts are read only in the case when they are sentimental stories about hedgehogs);
- it is desirable not to look like an advertisement;
- must contain photo / video;
- should be maintained in the style of the group;
- it must contain a link to download.
Our game belongs to the Tamagotchi genre, so we advertised it in groups in which women and children are the main audience.
Here is what our post looked like:
What has been achieved
- The estimated cost of the installer was $ 0.10- $ 0.40. It is very important to choose the right publication time. The most expensive installations were on holidays. Then we did not take into account the fact that on holidays in good weather, people simply go for a walk instead of sitting on social networks.
- Approximately 4,000 downloads for 1 wave of promotion. By wave, we mean the nth number of posts for three days, usually 6-10 posts in three days. We promoted the project only on one platform - iOS.
Social networks Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte, of course, cannot be the main way to promote mobile games, although for poor companies and indie developers they can become one of the independent and fairly budget ways to promote their own games, or the ability to “get” inexpensive installations.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/297002/
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