February 27, 2015 at 14:45Lotcat
Hello!
Everyone who works in the mobile application market knows how to promote professionals. Everyone is looking for new approaches, channels, cases in order to “cut through the window” in the top market at the lowest cost. And it seems we managed to come up with something new. Pah, pah, pah! We hope that on Habré there will be many experts who will appreciate our efforts.
I’ll start the story with a small case. Our company is engaged in the creation of mobile games. We have a small subscriber base, which we periodically notify of new releases through sms-mailings. The database was going for a long time, for various reasons, we did not segment it by platform. Therefore, Android users received news that was interesting to iOs users, and vice versa.
“This is an abnormal situation that violates the karma of loyalty of our customers,” we decided. As a result, an idea was born that gradually led to the emergence of a new service, with a different main purpose. They say that with startups this happens quite often.
Meet:
LotCat (http://lotcat.com) - a service that saves money and time on promoting mobile applications.
At first glance, this is the usual shortcut, which combines links to all markets and platforms into one short one. Actually, this was the first idea of our brainstorming.
A single link can be sent via SMS to all users, and the system will already recognize who loves apples and who are green men. We even provided a Desktop link, in case the link would need to be “sown” not only in SMS.
The first version of LotCat had just such a simple functionality, which was written "on my knees" and for internal use. We tested, drew a cute cat (they love cats on the Internet) and went on ...
A few years ago, the QR code was considered a very promising technology for advertising. It is still used in creative marketing solutions. But, unfortunately, many advertisers consider the very application of a QR code to be creative. Although there are original examples.
The pavilion near Red Square, which brought Russia victory at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
At LotCat, we decided to return the practical value of this technology, adding the ability to create a QR code from the resulting single link.
First of all, QR expands the possibilities of advertising a mobile application - from social networks to offline. You can place it in the sand (see photo), in a car, on a banner, on a pole, on a table - yes, anywhere! Thanks to LotCat, a user with any platform will follow the link in the code directly to his market.
The LotCat QR code in the advertisement of one of our projects.
KISSmetrics research shows that photo posts get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more clicks. Visualization today is a trend due to which image-oriented social networks are growing at an unprecedented pace: Instagram, Pinterest (feel where to dig with QR codes?). Large entertainment communities are not far behind, in the description of each of which you will see a recommendation to post content with pictures.
Sand QR code from the Japanese company Japan Trends.
In our case, the QR-code, “sketched” into the image, will replace six links and will definitely attract attention. A certain percentage of readers can not resist scanning directly from the screen - this is a fact.
King of Burgers knows a lot about effective advertising
We ourselves tried to place a QR code with a LotCat link to the game in the public pages of Vkontakte and made sure that a fairly large part of users really scan such pictures and go to the market.
But that is not all…
Any Captain Evidence will tell you that when you conduct an advertising campaign for a mobile application or promote a game, you need to track and understand which channels are the most successful in terms of conversion to installs, which platforms are more in demand, etc. etc. An analysis of the effectiveness of a particular advertising placement of an application offline will also be useful. It’s more difficult with this, although look what we came up with.
We have added statistics to LotCat.
The system collects and displays data on referrals, referrals, browsers, countries, platforms. This is a necessary minimum, which will allow you to see, for example, that your application in the subway is downloaded by more users with Android, and the booklet in the restaurant brings people with Apple. Although maybe it will be different for you?
Finally, we came to the main function of LotCat, for the sake of which the most difficult work was done on writing this post.
The attentive reader most likely already wondered: what to do with users for whose platforms we do not have a suitable version of the application?
Suppose you created an application for the Android platform and posted it on the Google Play Market. A link from the Play Market was added to LotCat and received a short URL and a QR code. Now you place them in advertising, on sites, in reviews, etc. If a user with an Android device comes to you through a link, he downloads the application and is immensely happy. And if this is a person with an iPhone or Windows gadget? And what about Blackberry?
There are enough lovers of rare devices in the world
Previously, we would simply lose such users. But with LotCat, a user with a different platform gets to the pretty page “Coming soon ...” and the ad unit from other applications is already for his platform!
For each user click on this block, you earn credits. For these loans you advertise your application in the same blocks of other LotCat users. Thus, no one else loses traffic from platforms for which there is no application. It is converted to advertising its applications. No more “unnecessary" traffic! “Everything will come in handy, everything will be in the house!”, As my neighbor liked to say, dragging another fragment of an old playground onto the stairwell.
So, we have a product that saves money on promoting applications or games and expands the audience.
Using is very simple:
Do we have plans to make loans? We answer without cunning - yes! But we are still in the process of developing such a monetization model that will be practically invisible to the participants in the system. Perhaps we will make a credit exchange, or maybe we will find some other options?
We welcome feedback, criticism and suggestions from the respected Habr community!
Everyone who works in the mobile application market knows how to promote professionals. Everyone is looking for new approaches, channels, cases in order to “cut through the window” in the top market at the lowest cost. And it seems we managed to come up with something new. Pah, pah, pah! We hope that on Habré there will be many experts who will appreciate our efforts.
I’ll start the story with a small case. Our company is engaged in the creation of mobile games. We have a small subscriber base, which we periodically notify of new releases through sms-mailings. The database was going for a long time, for various reasons, we did not segment it by platform. Therefore, Android users received news that was interesting to iOs users, and vice versa.
“This is an abnormal situation that violates the karma of loyalty of our customers,” we decided. As a result, an idea was born that gradually led to the emergence of a new service, with a different main purpose. They say that with startups this happens quite often.
Meet:
LotCat (http://lotcat.com) - a service that saves money and time on promoting mobile applications.
At first glance, this is the usual shortcut, which combines links to all markets and platforms into one short one. Actually, this was the first idea of our brainstorming.
A single link can be sent via SMS to all users, and the system will already recognize who loves apples and who are green men. We even provided a Desktop link, in case the link would need to be “sown” not only in SMS.
The first version of LotCat had just such a simple functionality, which was written "on my knees" and for internal use. We tested, drew a cute cat (they love cats on the Internet) and went on ...
QR code to help
A few years ago, the QR code was considered a very promising technology for advertising. It is still used in creative marketing solutions. But, unfortunately, many advertisers consider the very application of a QR code to be creative. Although there are original examples.
The pavilion near Red Square, which brought Russia victory at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.
At LotCat, we decided to return the practical value of this technology, adding the ability to create a QR code from the resulting single link.
What is it for?
First of all, QR expands the possibilities of advertising a mobile application - from social networks to offline. You can place it in the sand (see photo), in a car, on a banner, on a pole, on a table - yes, anywhere! Thanks to LotCat, a user with any platform will follow the link in the code directly to his market.
The LotCat QR code in the advertisement of one of our projects.
KISSmetrics research shows that photo posts get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more clicks. Visualization today is a trend due to which image-oriented social networks are growing at an unprecedented pace: Instagram, Pinterest (feel where to dig with QR codes?). Large entertainment communities are not far behind, in the description of each of which you will see a recommendation to post content with pictures.
Sand QR code from the Japanese company Japan Trends.
In our case, the QR-code, “sketched” into the image, will replace six links and will definitely attract attention. A certain percentage of readers can not resist scanning directly from the screen - this is a fact.
King of Burgers knows a lot about effective advertising
We ourselves tried to place a QR code with a LotCat link to the game in the public pages of Vkontakte and made sure that a fairly large part of users really scan such pictures and go to the market.
But that is not all…
Statistics
Any Captain Evidence will tell you that when you conduct an advertising campaign for a mobile application or promote a game, you need to track and understand which channels are the most successful in terms of conversion to installs, which platforms are more in demand, etc. etc. An analysis of the effectiveness of a particular advertising placement of an application offline will also be useful. It’s more difficult with this, although look what we came up with.
We have added statistics to LotCat.
The system collects and displays data on referrals, referrals, browsers, countries, platforms. This is a necessary minimum, which will allow you to see, for example, that your application in the subway is downloaded by more users with Android, and the booklet in the restaurant brings people with Apple. Although maybe it will be different for you?
The most important thing
Finally, we came to the main function of LotCat, for the sake of which the most difficult work was done on writing this post.
The attentive reader most likely already wondered: what to do with users for whose platforms we do not have a suitable version of the application?
Suppose you created an application for the Android platform and posted it on the Google Play Market. A link from the Play Market was added to LotCat and received a short URL and a QR code. Now you place them in advertising, on sites, in reviews, etc. If a user with an Android device comes to you through a link, he downloads the application and is immensely happy. And if this is a person with an iPhone or Windows gadget? And what about Blackberry?
There are enough lovers of rare devices in the world
Previously, we would simply lose such users. But with LotCat, a user with a different platform gets to the pretty page “Coming soon ...” and the ad unit from other applications is already for his platform!
For each user click on this block, you earn credits. For these loans you advertise your application in the same blocks of other LotCat users. Thus, no one else loses traffic from platforms for which there is no application. It is converted to advertising its applications. No more “unnecessary" traffic! “Everything will come in handy, everything will be in the house!”, As my neighbor liked to say, dragging another fragment of an old playground onto the stairwell.
To summarize
So, we have a product that saves money on promoting applications or games and expands the audience.
Using is very simple:
- Create a single LotCat link and a QR code for your game or application;
- Connect to it links to your product for different markets;
- Promote them all at the same time, analyze;
- Earn loans and spend them on advertising.
Do we have plans to make loans? We answer without cunning - yes! But we are still in the process of developing such a monetization model that will be practically invisible to the participants in the system. Perhaps we will make a credit exchange, or maybe we will find some other options?
We welcome feedback, criticism and suggestions from the respected Habr community!
Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.
By the way, how do you like our kitten?
- 49% Excellent 27
- 10.9% He is the best 6
- 40% I love cats 22