Best Mobile Game Marketing Techniques for Android in 2020

Mobile Game Marketing for your Android and iOS App has developed to be just as important than the development and design of the user interface. With over 3.600.000 Apps in the Google Play Store alone, the marketplaces for your apps are more competitive now than ever before. Even Big Development Studios are going out of there way and spend more and more money on Influencer Marketing, Celebrity Endorsements, TV ads, and even print.

Are you struggling to find new users for your mobile game? Comment below!

Read on, here you will find detailed steps on a solid marketing campaign to acquire new mobile game users. With the best marketing techniques and strategies, you will be able to lay a great foundation for your app, future successful promotional campaigns and with all of it, more game players so that your game and your hard work gets the attention it should get.

Guide to create a mobile game marketing strategy in 6 steps

In this article, we want to discover the keys to create a mobile marketing strategy. Especially to promote our mobile games or either to promote our application or any other digital project. Our team of professionals helps us to create a guide in five steps to create a good mobile marketing strategy for this purpose.
Take special note of these recommendations. A mobile marketing strategy is not only important for apps, but for web pages and even for offline businesses. This need arises from the boom in the use of mobile devices on a day-to-day basis.

” Marketing is not the art of selling what one produces, but of knowing what to produce. ” Philip Kotler

Steps to follow in your Mobile Marketing Strategy

Although as you progress and execute your mobile marketing strategy, you will have to make it more complex, with more elements and much more dynamic, these points can serve as a starter. In the end, an app without a mobile marketing strategy is doomed to failure, so take note and start with the first step.

1. Study your audience

As in any mobile marketing strategy, you have to study and know what your target audience is, your competence and the situation it is in. How your target audience and how your competition is going to depend on whether you decide or focus your efforts towards one channel or another when establishing your final mobile marketing strategy.
In this sense, it is imperative to define a typical user, generically, for example, a young man between 18-40 years old in case you have a car racing game. Although in reality, you will have users who do not fit into that profile, it is necessary to have this audience clear when you want to promote your business.
It is also fascinating to provide that user type of qualities and values and reflect this information in your mobile marketing strategy. It is possible that users who identify with certain values and qualities (adventure, passion for brands, fans of cars, medium-high purchasing power) are more valuable than others since they will generate more income in your app.

2. Define your business model

Be clear about the business model of your App, depending on it you will articulate one or another type of monetization strategy. This is a subject that you should be clear about when carrying out the mobile marketing strategy. But it is also in the definition phase of the idea. In case you want to include in-app purchases or spaces for ads, the developer must know in advance. You will have to include these parameters when developing the app, and better know it as soon as possible.
Let’s see what are the main business models for Apps:

a) Freemium Model.

It is the business model par excellence in the Spanish market. In 2018 the freemium apps model was the one that obtained the best results. The heart of this model is to offer a limited version of the application for free with the aim of achieving the maximum amount of downloads possible and for users to become familiar with their functions. Once this has happened from the free version, users are offered the functionalities of the paid version, which can be obtained by going to the indicated Market Place.

b) Payment model by content.

It is similar to the previous one. The concept depends on an application where part of the content is limited and where users can expand it by downloading add-ons from the application itself without necessarily going to the Market.

c) Subscription Model.

Within this model, the user agrees to make a subscription to an app, which provides content regularly. The difference between this model and the content is precisely the level of commitment acquired from the beginning.

d) Sale of product.

In this model, the download of the app is free with the subsequent intention that the user makes a purchase of a product or service through the application — very used by e-commerce app as a way to increase your income.
Although there are applications that opt for all the models we have cited, the truth is that in 2020 a clear tendency to implement different monetization strategies is being seen. And especially a mobile marketing model related to the freemium model. As an example, we can mention the Spotify application (available for all types of devices, not only mobile). Here a free version with limitations and announcements is offered. But that for a monthly subscription ‘Premium’ allows listening to music without limitations or interruptions even without connection to the Internet.

3. Do ASO

Yes, it is essential. If you do not know much about the world of apps, you may not know what the ASO is. But it is necessary that before the launch of your App you optimize the mobile marketing strategy and perform a good ASO (App Store Optimization).
But… What is ASO? The SEO of mobile applications. This includes all the necessary steps to optimize your application. The objective is that it appears in the first results when a user searches in their respective application store as every SEO project is based on the selection and optimization of keywords. In this way, the ASO keywords that a user uses when searching to find an app are identified. The main objective is to emerge above the competition in the search results of mobile application stores.
As data, we must take into account a couple of things. More than 80% of application downloads are achieved organically. That is, through searches within the app stores. If you do not appear among the users’ search results, they will never download your app. Do you already know why you should include the ASO in any marketing app strategy?

4. Invests in CPC campaigns

There are several options available to you in terms of investment campaigns in display networks. Here you will have to define the bid model for which you wish to bet either model to CPC (cost per click), to CPL (cost per Lead), to CPI (cost per installation), etc.
Define a minimum initial investment and from there test, analyze your competition and measure your results to increase or decrease your investment in favor of the results obtained.
You can also start an investment campaign under Facebook Ads. It may help you both promote your app and get the most downloads. You can directly opt for ads from the newsfeed or user’s homepage.
The possibilities are endless with a good budget for advertisements and advertising. However, most apps invest a lot of money in development and leave little for mobile marketing. It’s a mistake! But if you’re late, you’ve created your app, and there’s little budget left, you’ll always be creative and try. And, above all, analyze to the millimeter the small efforts that you are making. And bet on what works best!

5. The influencers in marketing for mobile games

The influencers and their weight in the marketing of mobile games are quite impressive. In fact, its weight in marketing in general, because this method of advertising is increasingly widespread among brands.
In a sector as saturated as that of mobile games, developers have to look for any formula to stand out from the competition, we know that advertising no longer has as much influence as before, basically because people do not like it, however a Nielsen’s recent study found that two-thirds (66%) of consumers trust the opinions of other consumers posted on the Internet.
Given this situation and the birth of youtube and social networks was expected the considerable increase in popularity and therefore effectiveness that these influencers have. In the specific case of video games, a Google study ensures that 90 percent of players watch YouTube videos related to games, looking for recommendations or simply know if it is worth the game or not
And there is the key when one of these influencer shows a game uploads the downloads of this, it is not even necessary to “sell” it because the more natural, the better result is.
This marketing strategy has spread like wildfire to the point that it is increasingly difficult and expensive to get the “collaboration” of these influencers, not only because of the demand they have but because they must choose very carefully what games they advertise or not, since their reputation is played with each video, photo or Twit.
You already know friends the next time you see your social idols showing a specific product you know that you are facing the latest in advertising.

6. Do not forget the traditional channels

Last but not least for your mobile marketing strategy… Remember to use other different channels you will find at your fingertips! A powerful campaign is one that uses all the means at its disposal. Therefore, combining both online and offline media to carry out your mobile marketing strategy will give you the key to success.
Online: your website, your Social Networks, strategies with bloggers dedicated to the Apps sector, influencers, e-mail marketing, etc. You have at your disposal plenty of online media at your disposal that you can not stop using.
Offline: if you have sufficient means, launch promotional campaigns on radio, television, print, etc.
And you What strategies do you use to promote your App?
Here are the key techniques to promote an app after applying the marketing strategies as explained above.

6 Key Techniques to Promote an App

Currently, smartphones and tablets are essential tools to keep us informed, communicated and entertained. One of the activities carried out most with mobile devices is to interact with different mobile games that can be found in the App Marketplaces. This makes Mobile Game Marketing so important.

Maybe you know from yourself how much time you spent on mobile games?

Big companies already know that the trend is to go with mobile gaming, thus making things like advergaming, the use of video games to promote new products, services or ideas that the brand wants to bring to the market, increasingly important.

The Idea of advergaming is actually coming from the movie industry. They already use advergaming for a long time to promote their franchise to a wider audience. One of the most successful cases in this regard is the video game Iron Man 3, developed by Gameloft, which has received excellent reviews from users, as can be seen in the reviews of Google Play and App Store. However, advergaming not only sticks to the world of cinema. Any company can use this modality of mobile marketing to reach its target audience.

There are many methods and techniques to promote an app, as many as types of apps. But how we mix, plan and execute the strategy will be the key to success in the campaign. Here we will summarize some of the best practices and strategies that will help you increase your popularity and the number of downloads. Using these techniques will make you differentiate yourself from competitors.

Your User Persona: Identify the target audience for your mobile game

1 – Enter your keyword in the naming and description

Investigate or ask yourself what your users will look for and use these keywords as you can in the name and description (even in the comments of your ratings). Using one of the keywords or keywords in the name of the app has shown significant increases in positioning since this field (the title of our app) takes on greater importance than the description.
Regarding the use of keywords, we must bear in mind that once repeated 5 times, it will no longer be important and it will be better to focus on others to promote an app correctly. Test new keywords and search for synonyms of the main searches can bring us higher positions in the rankings. In summary, it is better to appear in the top 5 of infrequent searches than in the top 50 of the main search.

2 – Update your icon with apps design trends

It is important to remember that the icon of the app is the first opportunity to attract users from the list of results to our page. Mainly because this is the first impact that a user receives on our app, so it is very important to integrate into the design and express in this “what is our app for”. If we manage to transmit with the icon the essence of our app (and that is not just a logo), we will have managed to differentiate ourselves from the competition.
An interesting resource is to use 100% of the surface of the icon (the rounded square shape at the tips) as it brings a sense of design “custom” efficient and effective. Another will always be to follow the design trend, as easy as it is now to design an icon in “material design” (platforms like up work or Fiverr can help us find freelance designers at reasonable prices).

3 – Add context and text to your screenshots

Users will look at our screenshots before reading anything, so making these attractive images is one of the most important aspects from a conversion and sales point of view. Some basic tips are: Add a functionality or value proposition by the screenshot, no more than one and abbreviating as much as possible. Place the screenshot in the context of use of the app; if you add a hand holding the Smartphone, it will help you to transmit empathy as the user can imagine in the use situation.

4 – Prepare three press releases

Planning news and optimized press releases will help us chart a path to where we are going. It will save us management time, and we will get to ‘tell a full story’ to our contacts in the media (at least during the first months of the app’s life). The classic milestones are: “The birth or the history of the app”, “The launch and rise to the stores”, “The success in reception by the public”, “A case of use and ideal” and “The new functionality “.
It is worth highlighting the previous research work on influencers (reporters or referents in general) to promote an app. If we do not plan to devote much time, it is better to choose 10 people (there is always a person behind a newspaper, blog or company, we do not establish relationships with legal persons) and focus on creating a link with them. Reading their contents, sharing them and showing them that we care, beyond our interest is their attention to the app.

5 – Uploading our app in alternative stores

More and more users for different reasons choose different stores to the usual ones (App Store and Google Play) where to find the apps they want. Uploading our app in these, we will be reaching new users who in a certain way seek to discover innovative apps. Some of them are the Amazon store, the Softonic store, Samsung, AppBrain, 1mobile, Opera, Aptoide, SlideMe, Andapp. Among others.

6 – Exchange advertising with other developers

Exchanging mobile advertising between apps is a logical solution to grow without having to pay. In fact, it is natural if we put it between our apps, but in the end, we would always reach the same users. Tappx is the best example, in fact, it is the largest open community of exchange of publicity between app developers. It works equitably, by joining the community we insert adverts of our app to other applications of other members. For each Click that we generate, we will obtain another one in return. In this way, we will exchange with more than 4,000 developers. Even with famous applications like Soccer Runner (from U-Play Online) or Questions (from Etermax) that promotes your apps in return.

Best Mobile Game Marketing Techniques for Promoting Mobile Games