Superhero Tricks for Mobile Product Growth
Marketing and promotion of a mobile application as a whole consist of a series of activities that together will help any developer to achieve success with their product. Andy Carvell made very cool step-by-step instructions on what is definitely worth doing. Delee - rewrite translation of The Mobile Growth Stack article with my observations and developed solutions. The author offers a kind of "growth map". It represents the mandatory activity, which in the complex act as a catalyst for the growth of the product. The methods indicated in it are universal and applicable to any mobile application or game.
It cannot be said that all these methods are equally necessary, but at certain stages of work on the application, each of them matters.
Some infographic items, such as ASO, push-notifications, may apply exclusively to mobile. Some are for the web or cross-device products or services.
Infographics consists of three main levels:
ASO is an effective tool for attracting organic downloads. Competent selection of keywords can give an increase of 300-500 settings per day. It is also worth noting that ASO is actually the window dressing of your application. The steeper it is, the richer the client will go.
Push-notifications can return back to the game up to 5.57% of users / day.
Localization and retargeting apply to all points of the scheme, multiplying their effectiveness at times. Effective retargeting is to unobtrusively push users who are stuck at one stage of the funnel to buy within the application .
Unfortunately, there are currently no solutions for effective mobile retargeting. Nevertheless, some developments in this direction are offered by Adroll, TradeMob, Vizuri, Facebook.
In general, with sufficiently competent retargeting, you can expand some funnel bottlenecks by 75-100% and reduce your advertising budget by 30-40%.
“Three Whales” on which application analytics stands. The
strong foundation of your application is its constant analytics based on the “three pillars”: “ test-measure-scale" Any changes that occur with your product, whether it be an update in the application store or an advertising campaign on Facebook, should be monitored using special tools to measure the effect of each action and optimize work processes to meet your goals. Lack of organization in tracking and analytics will lead to unnecessary costs.
Retention & engagement
Despite the fact that the Retention & Engagement card is in the middle, it is on these elements that you should focus first. To assume that the product itself will become attractive to the user is a big mistake of arrogant people in love with their business. You can significantly increase engagement by working on UX (user experience), backed by analytic data and user testing. Properly designed welcome letters and interesting tutorials will help to effectively “process” a newcomer user.
Creating a communityaround the product it will unite and captivate existing users and attract new ones. Competent event marketing based on carefully thought-out tools of socialization and viralization can double your in-game sales. Sales promo and all kinds of contests / tournaments are especially effective.
The main task of various contests and distributions on Facebook or other social networks is to increase the page’s volatility. If you connect the mechanics of the competition in social networks with the gameplay of the game, you can significantly increase the retention of the game itself. Such contests, for example, in the game Sword vs. Sword, gave page engagement growth by 3-5 times, and retention during the period grew by 30% - 40%. You can learn more about our work on this game by downloading the case.
Reactivating Passive Usersin the mobile era is not an easy task. Uninstalling the application from the device is simple, finding a similar one is even easier. Of course, it is much more efficient to concentrate on maintaining and maintaining the activity of your users, but in some cases, re-activating a passive user may be more economical than acquiring a new one.
CRM(Customer Relationship Management) is a separate huge topic with many ready-made solutions in the product market. Services such as Kahuna, Localytics, AppBoy, Capptain, etc., are aimed at simplifying the process of obtaining the target user and communicating with him. The risk of annoying him with constantly annoying messages is very high, so try to make each message personalized and useful. If you allow the user to customize the type and content of notifications, this will increase the likelihood of his retention and involvement and reduce the risk of his leaving.
Deep linkingadvertised as “next big thing” to engage the user. In some cases, this is the case, for example, if the structure of your application is based on binding to individual units of content (an online storefront application). But deep-linking is not a kid.
Acquisition is not only a purchase of a user, but also ...
The term user acquisition is often understood as a direct purchase of users. Paid user acquisition is becoming an important component of the application promotion strategy and can significantly affect its success. It can also be an expensive lesson about the importance of attractiveness of an application and turning it into a user's habit.
Without exception, all users make the final decision about downloading the application on its page in the application store, therefore ASO is the main activity both for finding the application by the user and for obtaining high conversion.
It is difficult to recreate the illusory concept of virality artificially, since steady viral growth is rooted in a quality product and / or viral content. Despite this, paying enough attention to the distribution of content, gifts, the distribution of invitations, you can cultivate the right conditions for the formation of virality.
We wrote about many user acquisition myths on Megamind earlier.
Partnershipswith brands and networks are mutually beneficial. They will help to get new users and your affiliate brand. A good example is the character exchange between Angry Birds and Puzzle & Dragons. The Japanese from GungHo Online and the Finns from Rovio for 2 weeks gave players the opportunity to observe each other's characters in the game and even go through thematic levels. Thus, companies are moving among the new audience, attracting new users and not scare away old ones.
Additional informational background created by social media, PR channels, content marketing, etc., it is usually difficult to measure in terms of direct impact on the growth of the application, therefore, “growth-hackers” often forget about it. However, such an activity can give a measurable brand awareness to a potential audience, which in itself leads to an increase in user acquisition.
Do not think about monetization down ...
Even if your company is in the growth stage and you are thinking about creating a user base more than monetization, at some point you still want to make money. especially if you invested your own money in the product. Nuances such as application monetization methods, payment methods, etc., can lead to a fundamental review of positioning and the product and its advantages.
Once users start spending money on / in the application, LTV modeling becomes critical and lets you know when and how to scale UA performance.
To emphasize the relationship of spots on the map, consider the effect of introducing aggressive banner advertising inside your application:
Paid apps still exist, but the freemium model is quickly becoming a must have. Virtual goods are an easily regulated way of monetization if you manage to pick up something relevant to your audience and if you are not limited to the game. Line, for example, is monetized using custom stickers . The use of virtual currency will simultaneously complicate control over the economy of the application and facilitates experiments with prices due to dynamic pricing. Despite the fact that virtual currency is usually considered the prerogative of games, there are vivid examples of its use in applications. For example, Skype Credits , which make it possible to call landline and mobile numbers from your Skype account, are sold in huge quantities.
Source of inspiration:https://medium.com/@andy_carvell/the-mobile-growth-stack-3ffa6856f482
It cannot be said that all these methods are equally necessary, but at certain stages of work on the application, each of them matters.
Some infographic items, such as ASO, push-notifications, may apply exclusively to mobile. Some are for the web or cross-device products or services.
Infographics consists of three main levels:
- User engagement.
- Involvement and Retention.
- Monetization.
ASO is an effective tool for attracting organic downloads. Competent selection of keywords can give an increase of 300-500 settings per day. It is also worth noting that ASO is actually the window dressing of your application. The steeper it is, the richer the client will go.
Push-notifications can return back to the game up to 5.57% of users / day.
Localization and retargeting apply to all points of the scheme, multiplying their effectiveness at times. Effective retargeting is to unobtrusively push users who are stuck at one stage of the funnel to buy within the application .
Unfortunately, there are currently no solutions for effective mobile retargeting. Nevertheless, some developments in this direction are offered by Adroll, TradeMob, Vizuri, Facebook.
In general, with sufficiently competent retargeting, you can expand some funnel bottlenecks by 75-100% and reduce your advertising budget by 30-40%.
“Three Whales” on which application analytics stands. The
strong foundation of your application is its constant analytics based on the “three pillars”: “ test-measure-scale" Any changes that occur with your product, whether it be an update in the application store or an advertising campaign on Facebook, should be monitored using special tools to measure the effect of each action and optimize work processes to meet your goals. Lack of organization in tracking and analytics will lead to unnecessary costs.
Retention & engagement
Despite the fact that the Retention & Engagement card is in the middle, it is on these elements that you should focus first. To assume that the product itself will become attractive to the user is a big mistake of arrogant people in love with their business. You can significantly increase engagement by working on UX (user experience), backed by analytic data and user testing. Properly designed welcome letters and interesting tutorials will help to effectively “process” a newcomer user.
Creating a communityaround the product it will unite and captivate existing users and attract new ones. Competent event marketing based on carefully thought-out tools of socialization and viralization can double your in-game sales. Sales promo and all kinds of contests / tournaments are especially effective.
The main task of various contests and distributions on Facebook or other social networks is to increase the page’s volatility. If you connect the mechanics of the competition in social networks with the gameplay of the game, you can significantly increase the retention of the game itself. Such contests, for example, in the game Sword vs. Sword, gave page engagement growth by 3-5 times, and retention during the period grew by 30% - 40%. You can learn more about our work on this game by downloading the case.
Reactivating Passive Usersin the mobile era is not an easy task. Uninstalling the application from the device is simple, finding a similar one is even easier. Of course, it is much more efficient to concentrate on maintaining and maintaining the activity of your users, but in some cases, re-activating a passive user may be more economical than acquiring a new one.
CRM(Customer Relationship Management) is a separate huge topic with many ready-made solutions in the product market. Services such as Kahuna, Localytics, AppBoy, Capptain, etc., are aimed at simplifying the process of obtaining the target user and communicating with him. The risk of annoying him with constantly annoying messages is very high, so try to make each message personalized and useful. If you allow the user to customize the type and content of notifications, this will increase the likelihood of his retention and involvement and reduce the risk of his leaving.
Deep linkingadvertised as “next big thing” to engage the user. In some cases, this is the case, for example, if the structure of your application is based on binding to individual units of content (an online storefront application). But deep-linking is not a kid.
Acquisition is not only a purchase of a user, but also ...
The term user acquisition is often understood as a direct purchase of users. Paid user acquisition is becoming an important component of the application promotion strategy and can significantly affect its success. It can also be an expensive lesson about the importance of attractiveness of an application and turning it into a user's habit.
Without exception, all users make the final decision about downloading the application on its page in the application store, therefore ASO is the main activity both for finding the application by the user and for obtaining high conversion.
It is difficult to recreate the illusory concept of virality artificially, since steady viral growth is rooted in a quality product and / or viral content. Despite this, paying enough attention to the distribution of content, gifts, the distribution of invitations, you can cultivate the right conditions for the formation of virality.
We wrote about many user acquisition myths on Megamind earlier.
Partnershipswith brands and networks are mutually beneficial. They will help to get new users and your affiliate brand. A good example is the character exchange between Angry Birds and Puzzle & Dragons. The Japanese from GungHo Online and the Finns from Rovio for 2 weeks gave players the opportunity to observe each other's characters in the game and even go through thematic levels. Thus, companies are moving among the new audience, attracting new users and not scare away old ones.
Additional informational background created by social media, PR channels, content marketing, etc., it is usually difficult to measure in terms of direct impact on the growth of the application, therefore, “growth-hackers” often forget about it. However, such an activity can give a measurable brand awareness to a potential audience, which in itself leads to an increase in user acquisition.
Do not think about monetization down ...
Even if your company is in the growth stage and you are thinking about creating a user base more than monetization, at some point you still want to make money. especially if you invested your own money in the product. Nuances such as application monetization methods, payment methods, etc., can lead to a fundamental review of positioning and the product and its advantages.
Once users start spending money on / in the application, LTV modeling becomes critical and lets you know when and how to scale UA performance.
To emphasize the relationship of spots on the map, consider the effect of introducing aggressive banner advertising inside your application:
- monetization is likely to increase in the short term, but due to the outflow of users and a decrease in virality;
- cost $ 1.99 / application can significantly reduce user acquisition, but lead to even higher returns in exchange for more moderate growth.
Paid apps still exist, but the freemium model is quickly becoming a must have. Virtual goods are an easily regulated way of monetization if you manage to pick up something relevant to your audience and if you are not limited to the game. Line, for example, is monetized using custom stickers . The use of virtual currency will simultaneously complicate control over the economy of the application and facilitates experiments with prices due to dynamic pricing. Despite the fact that virtual currency is usually considered the prerogative of games, there are vivid examples of its use in applications. For example, Skype Credits , which make it possible to call landline and mobile numbers from your Skype account, are sold in huge quantities.
Source of inspiration:https://medium.com/@andy_carvell/the-mobile-growth-stack-3ffa6856f482