How to market your mobile game

Launching a successful mobile game in today's competitive market demands more than just a captivating concept and polished gameplay. It necessitates a strategic approach to marketing, ensuring that your creation enters the market with its best foot forward. In this guide, we'll delve into essential tips tailored specifically for promoting your hyperPad-made mobile game, aiming to elevate it to the next level of success. Importantly, these strategies require meticulous planning well in advance of your game's submission to the App Store. So, let's explore the key steps to ensure your game stands out amidst the sea of mobile offerings.

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1.   Understand and target your audience 

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When you are in the process of making your game and brainstorming ideas, there is a process behind that. Firstly, you come up with a story plot. Then you add your characters and backgrounds. After that, you come up with scenarios and have a general idea of what kind of game you are building - for instance, a puzzle game or a Mario-style game, or maybe your own game creation style! Once you gather all the game design elements, think about who the users and the audience are and who you would like to attract to play your game.

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Your audience can be gathered according to their age, nationality, gender, sex, jobs, and any other characteristics you can think of. The more specific, the better it can be for your marketing strategy. With that, you can adapt your storyline to your targeted audience. For example, if you are making a Pokémon Go game, your age target will be between 16-25 years since this age range watched the show and plays these games (Analysis of Pokémon GO: a Success Two Decades in Marketing, 2016).

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2.   Use Combination of Organic or Paid advertising

Once you understand who your audience is, you can then move on to the next phase of your marketing strategy, which is to growth your channel with organic and even paid advertising. In marketing, it can be beneficial to have both organic and paid advertising. But it must be done in balance. Now let’s understand these marketing terms:

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• Organic channels: These are all social media platforms and anything that requires content creation in different media outlets such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube. These contents can also be blog posts on websites and any other social media outlets that allow you to post for free. This is fundamental to help you be found on Google Search and on any other social platforms that require the use of keywords. These keywords are super important as backlinks to your website, social media, and essentially to the purchase and download of your game.

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• Paid marketing: This also requires content creation for social media, but it is a more strategic process because it involves planning who your target audience is, how much money you are willing to spend, and which social media platform is the best for your product for paid advertising. There are many strategies for this, but the best way is through trial and error. This is something that changes every day, so we can only give you some tips. But the algorithm is constantly changing with consumer trends. Trial and error is how we learn, and most importantly, don't forget to identify patterns and learn from them.

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3.   Use Nostalgic Marketing to your Advantage

Find connections between your games marketing strategy with a nostalgic message. Research has shown that nostalgia marketing can affect consumer behavior. There is also a rising trend of nostalgia marketing. For example, we can use the game Pokemon GO as inspiration. This game reached more than 10 million downloads with the power of nostalgia. It was the fastest mobile game downloaded in a week (Molina, 2016). In 2019, the game was downloaded more than a billion times (Thubron, 2019).

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Another example in the media industry is the TV show Stranger Things, where the whole show plot has a nostalgic message. Thus, when making your game with a nostalgic message, you can also bring positive memories of childhood by letting people relive previous experiences that shaped their identities and personalities (Eloranta, 2022). With that said, games nowadays are directly correlated and influenced by media, and the most successful ones are the ones that bring this nostalgia warm feeling.

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Thus, when building your game, consider building similar story plots that bring a nostalgia effect, like Super Mario style or Zelda. Research shows that in the gaming industry, customers spend more money on products that bring back childhood memories (McCarthy, 2019). In addition, psychology has proved that nostalgia can influence a customer's decision to purchase a product (Eloranta, 2022). It creates a positive impact by bringing back good old memories (Eloranta, 2022). Indeed, marketing your game with nostalgia has been proven to be effective.

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3. Find Marketing Strategies

Marketing is not just about throwing money and praying for the best. It also involves strategy, market research, and identifying patterns. If you want your game marketing to succeed, do the following:

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• Competitor research: There is a saying to keep your enemies close, so look at them and see what they are doing to succeed and adapt to your company's needs and audience. To start, try typing keywords on Google Search to see what comes up and which companies show in the search (your competitors). You can also use social media to your advantage by doing the same - researching keywords on different platforms and seeing what kind of content shows and which businesses are the most found online. Based on that information, you can use it to your advantage.

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• Identify patterns: With the information that comes up, start identifying patterns such as hashtags, content design, and anything else you can also use in your content. This is not about copying what others are doing, but finding strategies that are working and adapting them to your game marketing campaign in a unique way. Inspiration is needed in everything in marketing, and game design requires that. The same goes for identifying what does not work - for example, social media in the gaming industry has more attraction on YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. However, that does not mean you should not have other social media like Instagram and Facebook, but choosing the right approach of which ones you should spend more time and energy on is fundamental information to have when planning a new marketing campaign. It can facilitate the correct approach, specifically with paid advertising.

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5.   Amazing Content  

Research shows that mobile advertising is the most personalised approach because each phone has a person, which can lead to a positive or negative response from customers (Mittal et. al, 2022). Therefore, it is important to identify your target audience strategies and implement the best content to attract customers to play and purchase your game. When marketing your game, it is crucial to identify trends and do research to come up with a plan for consistent content. Specifically, the organic channel should be consistent and focus on useful posts, such as tips, inspirational quotes, reels, and memes.

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It is a trial and error process, so see what works for your audience and the growth of your game. In addition, if you are planning to do paid advertising, create a video with a call-to-action message. Video content that is short and sweet is most effective in attracting gamers and audiences in the digital media world. The video should show your product, be authentic, and convey a message with a call to action. For example, at the end of the video, show a button that says "download today." Research shows that advertised video should bring instant emotional engagement or it might turn off potential influencers and customers (Mittal et. al, 2022).

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Reward Your Customers            

When building your marketing campaign, consider rewarding your customers with giveaways, discounts, and any other rewards. Research shows that this strategy can reduce customer irritation and bring a positive response, as well as viral marketing (Mittal et. al, 2022). Rewards can also be gamified, meaning that your game can add a reward point when first downloaded. This can also be done organically on social media, such as making a post with a giveaway, like an iPhone or headphones, to attract attention. After the giveaway, introducing the winner to followers can also bring attention to your social media.

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The Take Aways

These are a few steps to take when thinking about how to properly market your game. First, consider your audience by asking the "who, what, where" questions to be as specific as possible. Then, understand concepts like paid and organic advertising and how to properly run both campaigns. Once you understand these key terminologies and use consistency in both strategies, you will have a great advantage in your campaign. After that, use nostalgia marketing to your advantage by creating a game with a familiar plot or using a familiar message in your marketing campaign. As an example, Nintendo sold more than 10 million retro units since relaunch (Abrams, 2019) by connecting the product to the past, which can lead to customer attraction.

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Once you have your nostalgic product and message, focus on finding strategies for your campaign, such as identifying patterns and analysing competitors. Create tailored content with better quality, preferably visual content, since videos are more favourable in the gaming industry. Finally, don't forget to add rewards to your marketing campaign as customers love discounts and the psychological feeling of receiving gifts. These are just some tips based on research and general knowledge to market your game. However, marketing is about trial and error, so your best bet is to try as many strategies as possible and see what works for your game and audience.

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Download hyperPad today and start creating your mobile game with your marketing ideas! 

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References

Abrams, A. (2019, February 1). Nintendoand the magic of Nostalgia Marketing. FM Magazine. Retrieved September 23,2022, from https://www.fm-magazine.com/issues/2019/feb/nintendo-nostalgia-marketing.html

Eloanta, J. (2022). Marketing inthe Streaming and Gaming Industries: A Study of the Nostalgia MarketingStrategy and It’s Effectiveness. Metropolia. Retrieved from https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/749891/Eloranta_Joona.pdf?sequence=2

Mittal, S., & Kumar, V. (2022).A strategic framework for non-intrusive mobile marketing campaigns. InternationalJournal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 13(2), 190.https://doi.org/10.1504/ijemr.2022.121819