Attracting users to a mobile game

Many novice developers fall into a rather naive misconception: we will make a game that is interesting to play, and earn money on it. Unfortunately, the mobile games market is oversaturated, hundreds of new titles come out every day, the player is able to evaluate the “interest” from the strength of a dozen games a week. And it is unlikely that your project will be in the top ten, if you do not take extra effort.

Besides the fact that you are capable of making an excellent game or have already done, it is important that someone finds out about the very fact of the existence of your game. Despite the fact that Google and Apple called their catalogs an app store, this is more likely not a store where the goods are on the shelves and have a chance to catch the eye of buyers, but at best a warehouse where the buyer will never see the goods. And you have to try to show your application to customers. There are many channels.

Press, reviews, reviews

There are a fairly large number of thematic resources that live by telling their readers about interesting games, if your game is just that, you have good chances to get publications by simply sending letters to the journalists of these publications. But do not wait for miracles, the publication of an absolutely laudatory review on iPhones.ru brought me only $ 1,500.
In addition, some publications publish development stories from the studios themselves, do not be lazy and compose interesting material about how your seven-year-old son took an active part in the development, such a story is likely to be published.
Do not disdain popular forums, an interesting topic there can also give some stream of users.
In general, S. Galenkin wrote excellently about interaction with the press. Worth reading.

Virality

It’s very effective and completely free for you when the players themselves tell you how interesting your game is.
Conditionally viral mechanisms can be divided into two parts: when a player posts information about your game through their social networks. accounts, and when a player simply tells your friends about you in person.
Let's go in order.

Social networks

Sometimes you can see that the developers are betting that the player wants to brag about their achievements in the social. networks (everyone loves to brag). This is actually not the case. The desire to brag is caused only by those events that can cause admiration among others. Being a member of the top clan in Clash of Clans is an occasion for boasting, getting the next level in the "New Rainbow Ant Farm" is not.
The player will spam only when he realizes that it is profitable for him. In the simplest case, give the player a spam reward in the game, it is even better to implement mechanisms when the presence of friends in the game creates significant advantages for the player, gives additional energy, strengthens the army, speeds up the processes. You can also give the player the opportunity to ask for something from friends through the social. network, everyone knows "Need a level 10 hammer drawing."

Word of mouth

They tell friends about good games, you just need to give an excuse, the game should have a wow effect, something that will set it apart from the masses, make the person who sees it talk about it.
On the other hand, you can bring in mechanisms to make it profitable for the player to talk about you. And this, perhaps, is primarily multiplayer with friends. The ability to play on the same device together at the same time is excellent.

Fichering

Mobile players are not a core, but a casual audience, most of them don’t go to themed sites, don’t talk to friends about games, but simply go to the store and buy what they see on the first page. Recommendations in this sense are no worse than tops.
Fichering team, evaluating your game, will not play it for several days, most likely the decision will be made within half an hour, so the amazing storyline will not be a plus in this process. It all depends on the graphics, sound, adequacy of core gameplay. Look at the projects that are featured now, if your project looks no worse, you can fully hope for this channel.

It is especially worth noting that not only the first version of the game, but also every update can become obnoxious. It may well happen that the first version does not get anywhere, and the third update will be the game of the week in dozens of countries.

Significantly reduce the likelihood of negative feedback from previous versions, so think before you release full alpha bugs.

Buying traffic, banners, offers

Hundreds of articles have been written on this topic from mobile marketers, CPM, CPC, CPI, and so on, for example, here is a good article: What is the best way to buy users?

The problem is that they, as a rule, do not write that the main buyers of traffic are applications from the top, they determine the demand, and the traffic costs exactly so much that the application from the top makes a profit.

Therefore, science does not know games that would pay for the purchase of traffic without being placed in the top.
The fact is that if you bought 1000 installations in Russia, you have 1000 users in the game for $ 1,620 or $ 1.62 per user, and if you bought 50,000 installations and the application became top 1 free, then it was also downloaded for free for you 50,000 of the top, total you have 100,000 users in the game for $ 81,000 or $ 0.81 per user.
So if you have $ 1000 to buy traffic, you can recoup them only by buying traffic on them in Nigeria and reaching the top of Nigeria.
Buying traffic without going to the top is the failure of a marketing company.

Top traffic

In general, almost all users are here.
The number of jumps depends on the position in the top exponentially, the position in Overall brings orders of magnitude more than the position in the categories and subcategories.
Position in the top is a reward for an excellent product and activity on other channels.