Promotion of a mobile application on real experience in numbers

Below we will talk about my interesting experience in promoting a mobile game.

1. Introduction

I have never let go of the thought that everyone around is talking about the high profitability of iOS applications compared to Android (I think every one of you heard about it), so I could not resist such attractive prospects and began to actively work out the iOS version so that it would not ashamed to promote.

Let's talk on the example of the game Quick Brain. The Android version is released first, so it differs significantly in its capabilities from the iOS version. During my experiment, I found out that the iOS version is capable of generating revenue 3-5 times more for Russia!

2. Rules of the game

Google play

Google play this year, at least made two major changes that directly affect your applications.

• Updated design of the mobile version of the store
• There have been changes in the search and ranking algorithms of the store, and some failures in Google play

Judging by the comments of experts, all of June, Google Play conducted experiments with ranking and search. Many developers began to notice an unusual drop in installations.

App Store

Getting into the TOP App Store is not so easy. This is a reality for many developers, as for me. I told about this in the last article . While your application is not in the "top", the cost of creating it is difficult to repel. You can go ahead by buying motivated, unmotivated traffic, conducting your own advertising campaigns, reviews, optimizing keywords, descriptions, screenshots, you can get to Apple’s featured trading, but all this requires certain skills.

An important factor is the profit of the application. For myself, I decided that I needed to conduct an advertising campaign in order to assess the payback and potential of the project.

3. How I promoted the iOS app

I will tell you how I promoted the iOS app, and how I did it before with the Android app you can read here .

purpose

You need to clearly understand what goal you set for yourself. Our budget was limited to 2,000 euros. The primary goal is to launch advertisements in several countries (Germany, Russia, USA) in order to find a country in which it will be easy to bring an application to the tops, and then remove the excess, in order to concentrate efforts on one thing.

The goal was: to get to the top as quickly as possible in order to test the growth of organic plants and understand how long the effect of advertising will last in the long term.

Application Preparation

First of all, I started with the preparation of marketing materials and texts in order to improve the effect of advertising. Updated screenshots in the store, prepared the necessary version in the AppStore. Throughout the user's journey, you should improve every part of his journey to reduce your losses.

Place of advertising

I was comfortable using the familiar Facebook Ads Manager tool for me, because it was there that I managed to achieve low CPI, especially on Instagram.

Below are two options for the post that I used to advertise:



People are beginning to actively discuss such posts, which raise a question that requires user response, this increases the relevance of advertising and CPI becomes cheaper! To climb quickly in the top you need to get as many installations as possible. And for this you will have to increase the maximum installation fee you can give, or improve your advertising posts and marketing materials of your page in the store so that they can attract more people at the same costs.

It is important to understand that the user at first impression makes the decision to go through advertising, and then decides the installation issue on the store page. On this way, it is important not to have weak spots that lead to large losses in traffic.

Take care of your icon, screenshots, description in advance.

I did not manage to achieve good CPI results for the USA and Germany, so it was decided to turn them off and concentrate on Russia.

The result of an advertising campaign on Facebook Ads Manager.



Within 12 days, the Russian top began to grow rapidly, as can be seen on the graph. During the advertising campaign, the top managed to hold for some time. After the end, the indicators began to quickly subside. The graph clearly distinguishes the beginning and end of the campaign.



Number of active user per month.



In my experience, I concluded that success requires a combination of the following factors:

For applications with a good return of users

After advertising, users will continue to use your application for a long time and bring you income in some perspective, perhaps - this will translate into profit

For applications with low user returns

In this case, you should think about how to make the most appropriate way to earn money from the user at the very beginning. Interested users will continue to use the application, even with tight monetization, but you have a chance that paid advertising will pay off immediately, then you can continue advertising for a long time. This is of course if you want to profit from your project. In this case, negative reviews are provided to you!

Result

• 1720 euros were spent, 18,000 users were attracted (Russia 90%, Germany 6%, USA 4%) for 12 consecutive days with a uniform distribution of installations by day.
• Russia turned out to be the cheapest in attracting a country from the list (Russia CPI - 0.09, Germany CPI - 0.18, USA - 0.19), taking into account indicators of profitability per 1000 ad impressions.
• For Russia, the result is achieved: Trivia games 1 place, Puzzles - 5 place, Games - 15 place, All - 69 place. For the USA and Germany there were not enough users to get organic plants.
• During the advertising campaign of organic installations 20 000 + 18 000 due to advertising. Consequently, 52% of organic plants are due to an advertising campaign.
• The payback is 60% from the moment of the advertising campaign, the costs are not paid off at the moment, however, based on the calculations, this can happen in 3-4 months.
• After the end of the advertising campaign, the number of active users increased by 5 times compared with the period before advertising. From 200-300 to 1000 - 1400 active per day.
• Interstitial AdMob in Russia for iOS brings 3 times more revenue than Android, while the CPI differs by about 1.4 times.

Thank!

Sincerely,
Alexander