Promotion of games on Google Play

My games have quite a few downloads on Google Play (more than 20 million), which is probably why they often ask me about promotion. If someone from the developer writes me in a personal or mail, I bet, it all comes down to the question: "How do you promote your games, dude?". Everyone thinks that I have some secret (no). Okay, let me try to formulate what I know and hope that it will be useful to someone. At least I can give a link to this post.

Just want to say, I do not support the view that the success of the game depends on the amount of money invested in marketing. Well, like, you can roll out any garbage, there would be money! No, of course, if you are Nintendo and can directly bring Apple - then yes, you can even unleash such a hack as the Super Mario Run. But for mere mortals, trying to promote a bad game is the way to the bottom of the app store. The game should be a "highlight", I can not give useful advice if you are doing a match-3, for example. Here it is necessary to analyze ARPU (and generally engage in analytics), to look for profitable purchase channels for installations, and the like. I am an ordinary developer who just wants to make games for his own pleasure, and not to do all this boring stuff.

In general, the first and most important point of advancement is a high-quality, original game with some kind of chip: visual, gameplay, genre is not the essence.
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Application page

Do I have to say the obvious things about the icon? The icon can drag even a not very strong game. Experiment! Change the icon and see the conversion in the Developer Console, now you can do A / B tests - a great thing.

Write a sheet of text in the description. We need to give the search as much material as possible for indexing. List the features of the game, tell the background, just some game moments. In general, Google is quite loyal to search spam in the description. For example, “Roll the Ball” - this game could illustrate a bunch of violations of the rule item Metadata . And this is the "Editor's Choice"! But to bend, of course, not worth it. Do not forget "What is permitted to Jupiter, not allowed to the bull."

And more ... Stand out! Use markup in the description, text selection, Unicode characters. Did you know that you can use Emoji everywhere in metadata? Just go to the console from your phone and voila! I do not have accurate performance data, but I believe that any way to make the page of my game different from others will be beneficial.

SEO

Search engine optimization aka SEO. The most important thing is the keywords in the title . If you are tempted to give your game on Google Play a short, catchy, perfect name - try to overcome it. The name should be long with a pair (at least!) Of keywords. Now we have as many as 50 characters, so there is always the opportunity to add a few keywords, while maintaining a decent sound.

I do not know how to use professional SEO tools, so I can offer a simple way that is accessible and understandable to everyone. Open the TOP of your category and carefully read the descriptions of those games that are above. At the same time, write out the popular and suitable words for your game on a piece of paper. Well, then, it remains only to create your own description using the resulting list.

I want to note that Google indexes user reviews. Accordingly, you can wind them up for certain keywords and go to the first positions in the search (note, I am not a supporter of such methods). They have been fighting with this lately, but I have seen a successful case of such cheating. Legal alternative: buy installs in AdWords by keywords. True, I was not able to achieve any visible results in this direction.

By the way, about the reviews. Be sure to encourage players to leave them on Google Play. Add buttons, dialogs in the game, the main thing is not to offer rewards for feedback - this is a violation of the rules. The number of reviews affects the position of the game in the TOP, and the number is much more important than quality. Therefore, it is not necessary to particularly sweat, if the average score is not high enough.

Localization

When I see games from Russian developers with English text in the description, I’m bombing, as it is fashionable to say now. People, you don’t need free installations at all ?!

Localizing a page on Google Play is the most effective way to move in price / result.

I understand that to localize the game completely, often there are not enough resources, neither time nor financial. I myself am so. But to translate the description + screenshots into the main languages ​​is not at all expensive. There are many services, you can choose for your taste / wallet, I personally use OneSky .

In my last game, I tried to involve the players themselves in translation. I wrote something like: “If you want to help me with the translation of the game into your native language, write to ...”. Well, in general, it works! However, basically, I had translations into languages ​​such as Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish ... But for free.

Community

Flirt with your players! What I mean? First, you don't have to be serious, humor is our everything. Again, I roll into banality, but never use the turns "we, our company, presents to you", etc. Write all the texts from yourself, as if you were telling something to an old friend. If a player initially appeals to you on “you”, do not hesitate to say “thank you, bro!” In response. Secondly, do not write formal update texts. Beat them, given the setting of the game. For example, it is bad to write “Added 5 new tanks”, better - “Fighters! In our factory, in the depths of the Siberian forests, 5 incredible combat vehicles were developed and they arrive at the front with this update! ”

This trades all: off. bank applications, "Bearded" all sorts, I myself. A successful impromptu somewhere in the text of the update or in response to a review is a great variant of "viral" progress. Here is a good example:



And this is my review on one of the comments on Google Play. Of course, everything is on the verge of a foul - the developer, formally, is bound by the rules on the hands and feet when answering. But on the other hand, I have not heard about the application of sanctions for this.



This screenshot then went to a good entertainment sites. On the JP, only the discussion turned the wrong way. Someone immediately posted a flash-version of the Tower of Hanoi link, and everyone began to measure how smarter monkeys are. But you can't do anything about it ...

Sites

Okay, you probably already mentally ask yourself "And where is the list of sites on which you need to post the game in order to get such a number of downloads?". I have to disappoint you, I have no such list. Everything is very, very individual. It depends on the game, on the material you want to share, on the method of presentation. What I get may not work out for you and vice versa. I propose to treat this philosophically: your task is to build up the reference mass. If you managed to stay somewhere, even if a couple of downloads came from the resource (conventionally), this is already good.

The idea is that this is a constant search. Read, google, invent options, texts, pictures, gif-ki, try! At the same time it is important to try to concentrate as much marketing effort as possible on a short period of time. I would say from a week to a month.

So that it is not “water”, here are the main directions for drawing up a marketing plan:

• Entertainment sites (Picaboo, PL, 9gag, d3 and their ilk)
• Geek resources (here Habr, of course, out of competition. But you need suitable material)
• Indie platforms (itch.io, SlideDB, GameJolt - here you can leave a link to Store everywhere)
• Forums (largest: w3bsit3-dns.com, XDA, TouchArcade, TIGSource, etc.)
• Reddit
• Soc. network
• Cross promo (would be traffic)
• Gamedev community
• Youtube reviewers (a couple of times placed on small channels, it makes sense as one of the points of integrated promotion)
• Places where CA games can hang out (for example, for a puzzle, these are communities of puzzle lovers)

Money

Of course, in 2k17 you cannot promote the game using only free methods. The good news is that with a modest marketing budget this is also possible. I set a limit of $ 1000 for myself. If this amount is not enough, then the problem is in the game itself, you need to accept losses and move on.

What exactly to spend the budget, I propose to look at the situation. I repeat, all individually. I tried to buy ads on AdWords, News on w3bsit3-dns.com, Tapjoy motivated traffic, a post on Picaba, ads on Reddit, inclusion in reviews on YouTube, and I don’t remember everything! With a completely zero result, I, perhaps, ordered a press release. Here you need to look for the approach, the correct channel for communication, and not semi-automatically forms on the sites to fill out. But again, this is my IMHO, maybe you will have a different result.

Instead of conclusion

I have simple games, without multiplayer, with only advertising monetization, with a small replayability. The last two, generally essentially disposable quests. The cost of attracting a user for me is obviously higher than income. Therefore, the last point is luck . To all that I wrote above, you need to add a little luck. So that the game "went" to the players, then there will be organic installations and everything will work out!

Here is what I can say about the promotion. There is no magical way to push the game in the TOP, I personally do not. You need to search for your niche, experiment and just make good games, no matter how bad it sounds. Thanks for reading, share your opinion in the comments!