How to do a good job in the market for a new APP: cheating, deceiving, kidnapping, deceiving, stealing

In the mobile game market, if a marketer wants to become a combat-ready warrior, what you need is not strong arms and legs, but wisdom and adaptability, and at the same time, you need some money and food in your pocket as ammunition.

Is there a theory for doing a good job in the game market?

With mobile gaming dominating the market, is there a theoretical system that can be followed in game operations? This is possible. For example, Shanda Games, a non-typical and well-known domestic game company, has summarized the PRAPA theoretical system for online games. A simple explanation is P (promotion) - R (registration) - A (active) - P (payment) - A (ARPU), which is PRAPA. As a Shanda fighter, the author, like many classmates who have worked at Shanda, has understood and even implemented PRAPA. Today, Shanda's products are still implemented and evaluated according to PRAPA in actual projects.

However, it must be pointed out that understanding PRAPA and knowing how to do it are two different things. The implementation of PRAPA theory in Shanda's internal KM is an enormous document of hundreds of pages. What you read are all past project cases, which do not seem to move you to tears, and even those cases are not as successful as imagined. But there are indeed experience summaries in the document. Objectively speaking, the overall role of PRAPA is to enable newcomers who are eager to try to "make fewer low-level mistakes". As a novice tutorial, PRAPA is qualified, but PRAPA will not tell you how to stand out in the market.

The above paragraph means to tell you that theory should be combined with practice. The user's situation can be verified through research, interviews, and background data, but for a marketing plan to be successful, it sometimes really needs some inspiration. Otherwise, what is the point of a company maintaining a marketing plan?

However, here, GameLook is not asking you to find the muse of your dreams, but to find the "gangster's heart" in your heart and become a qualified gangster-level marketer. Only then can you truly understand how to promote the game well.

Don’t just watch, understand yourself and go deep into the users

Before talking about the main points, I must first correct your mindset. Attitude is the most important for success or failure. The game industry has now entered the 21st century. The academic qualifications of our game talents are higher than the previous one. 211, 985, and sea turtles are no longer rare. Even large companies have rigid academic qualifications and school level requirements for recruitment. But no matter where you come from, as long as you work in the market, you must put aside your bookish air. The most undesirable thing in the market is paper talk. Cruelty is the nature of marketers' work, and bandit should be your motto.

One thing that gamelook hates the most is encountering marketing people who have hardly played their own products but still ask the media for resources to promote them. When asked about the game features, they can't tell you anything, and when asked about the progress of the game operations and activities, they have no idea. This includes the marketing directors of some manufacturers. To sell your own products, understanding your own products is the first step. You don’t have to become a top player, but you have to keep up with the majority of players in your own game. Only by syncing with the players can you understand what works for them.

How to do a good job in marketing can be summarized in five words: cheat, deceive, kidnap, defraud and steal.

The reason for summarizing it in these five words is that although PRAPA can be implemented in specific execution links, it lacks flavor and ruthlessness in the key points. Let’s explain them one by one below.

Pitfall: It is the selling point, mainly exploring the IP theme characteristics and gameplay characteristics of the product

In fact, all the market preheating work is to dig a big pit, preferably as big as the picture above, so that enough players can be buried in the pit. But a common problem is that the market doesn’t know how to dig a hole.

There are two types of pits: congenital pits and acquired pits. Digging small holes relies on the market, digging big holes relies on research and development.

Digging a congenital pit. The first key is to find the unique selling point of your own product. If you have a good, scarce and popular game theme, you are already halfway to success. If the planner is smart, you may have obtained some gameplay selling points in the early stage of the product to support your plotting. If your art classmates are more capable, you can even get a visual pit with a very eye-catching effect.

Representative cases include popular games like DOTA, LOL, and anime, which are all inherent user pitfalls. Other games that attract users with their gameplay features include Flappy Bird, which also attracts users with its self-abuse elements; "Dead Slayer", developed by one Korean, has a strong storyline from the developer himself, and the gameplay feature of being an action game without direction keys is enough to pique players' interest. Even though products like the Three Kingdoms have become rampant, you can still see card products like "Let Go of the Three Kingdoms" with a wild and cool art style.

Dig a sky pit. If you encounter a product that is not very satisfying, or one that is difficult to position, you will have to dig holes and look for opportunities on your own. One way to dig high-end acquired pits is to rely on the market's own creativity and user research, which involves hype. For example, endorsements, Weibo hype, event hype, and video clips are often seen. Another way to dig high-end acquired pits is to work with the R&D team, understand their own products, and adjust the features based on player feedback. Working together with R&D can solve some of the shortcomings of products that lack selling points when they first enter the market. However, this often leads to no follow-up because the market cannot hire R&D experts.

Case 1: The acquired pit is beautifully dug, such as Shanda's "Million Arthur". Million borrowed some elements from King Arthur of medieval Britain, but in essence it is a completely fabricated IP by SE itself, and there is no comic or animation as a predecessor. The cards are all animations, and there is not much difference in essence (of course, it must be admitted that the art of Million cards is good), but Shanda chose to give Million a very strong anime two-dimensional concept . This is the clever part. Relying on user surveys to verify its own positioning, it can find out which type of users are most sensitive to this pit and most effective for subsequent viral propagation.

Case 2: "Baozou Wuxia", a martial arts novel based on Jin Yong, was represented by Kunlun. The reason is well known, as Changyou and Perfect World hold the copyright stick. At this stage, any product that attempts to directly adopt Jin Yong's themes will be subject to tragic rights protection incidents. The inevitable problem of de-Jin Yongization of "Baozou Wuxia" is the reduction of the theme's recognition and user acceptance. Since the change is unavoidable, how to enhance the attractiveness of this theme? Kunlun's distribution team found "Baozou Comics". Since the cultural sense of the theme has been weakened, why not find folk masters to make up for it? This brought about a strong spoof of the "Baozou" martial arts, using another means to dig deeper into this pit. Although the results of "Baozou Wuxia" have not yet come out, this way of strengthening the subject matter is indeed a very rare case in the industry.

Meng: It’s packaging, showing various materials and worldviews, landing at the user conversion point

Regarding Meng, there is an idiom called "A Meng man meets a tiger". The classics say that there was a Meng man who covered himself with a lion's skin, and the tiger ran away when it saw him. He thought the tiger was afraid of him, so he went back and became very conceited, thinking himself very great. The next day, the Mondi people went to the wilderness wearing clothes made of fox skins and encountered the tiger again. The tiger stood there looking at him. He was annoyed that the tiger didn't run away, so he scolded it and was eaten by it.

This idiom actually tells us two misleading truths.

1) If you want to deceive people, you have to be ruthless. Users are like tigers. You should wear the skin of a lion instead of a fox, otherwise it will not work.

2) Don’t be complacent. Your tricks might not work next time. You need to understand the user’s current status and make adjustments accordingly.

Although both of them involve good product packaging, what is the biggest difference between mobile game promotion and PC game promotion? Mobile games have a set of standard elements for presenting products: product name, icon, poster screenshots, text, and video on Google Play. These are the points of contact that users have on the store before conversion.

I don't know which expert once said this, "Before players download your mobile game, your product is not a game." Players only see the above-mentioned materials. At a time when the current marketing efforts of mobile game companies are generally weak and mainly rely on channel recommendations, you must understand that it is these materials that determine the user's conversion rate in the first place.

How to use a bunch of materials to explain clearly whether you are a good game or a great game? Gamelook believes that the packaging team needs a deceptive "dream team", which is usually composed of "jokers + original painting masters + video experts + data analysts", people with special skills or outsourced teams.

Naming is an art and also a technique.

Which game name is most effective and can best reflect the characteristics of your product? You may need to test players' reactions first before deciding. How you write the suffix of the name also shows your deep understanding of the game users. A classic example is "Dream One Piece". On 360 Mobile Assistant, its full name is "Dream One Piece (Send Luffy)". The "Send Luffy" is very insidious, and the name has dug a pit for users to jump into.

Posters and screenshots need to be individual, perfect, and moderately misleading.

Taking "Wuxia Q Legend" as an example, the original paintings of its materials were completed by a Korean team. The Korean original painter was originally the original painter of "Dragon Nest". The original painting packaging work of the materials of many Kunlun products was performed by Korean painters. What is the reason? Compared with domestic painters, Korean painters' style is more recognizable. Another thing to note is that if you use original paintings for packaging, you must be moderate. For example, the game itself is a realistic product, but the original painting is made into a Q version. There is no doubt that users will have a huge psychological gap after entering the game. Users will become tigers and may leave your game in anger.

At the same time, as a media, GameLook would like to remind the following mobile game marketers to pay attention to the art materials used in the manuscripts during the preheating process, and not to use random screenshots to fill the numbers. Even if you take screenshots, they must be of high quality. Whether it is the media, industry insiders, channels, or users, they all lack patience for the product, and a bad look may cause the product to fail inexplicably.

Video should have feeling

Video is actually the most effective media tool to highlight the theme and gameplay of the game. The most important function of the world view presented when entering the game is to increase the user's sense of involvement in the game. If it is an IP product, it is very important to create a strong sense of the original work. Which atmosphere of passion and mystery, sexiness and heaviness is suitable for your product? This requires thinking, and making a packaging video itself is not expensive, and even if it is outsourced, there should be no flaws here.

Icons, materials, etc. need to be constantly adjusted

Icons need to be optimized and compared continuously. Similarly, poster materials also need to be replaced regularly according to versions. Regarding icon optimization, domestic cases, such as Kingsoft Network's "Everyday Journey to the West", tried multiple solutions and finally selected the "Q version yellow-faced little monkey" because this monkey has the highest click-through conversion rate.

As for icon optimization, the most abnormal case gamelook has seen is the extreme research of Sato Kouyang, chairman of Japan's Metaps company. Based on 450,000 data statistics, his research on the relationship between the design and conversion rate of various APP icons has reached the level of theoretical research. Gamelook will not go into details here. Students who are interested can read gamelook's earlier reports .

Finally, gamelook believes that the most amazing trick is the complete novice guide, from the name, icon, text, screenshots and posters to the novice guide. This is a complete user conversion solution. However, it is still difficult for the market to delve into the novice guide part, after all, the R&D masters are hard to hire.

Abduction: hijacking users, forced import, advertising import + channel import

The main means of abduction is through advertising (specifically brand advertising + performance advertising) and hijacking users. There must be actual conversion and a certain degree of accuracy.

The most brutal consequence of kidnapping is of course as shown in the picture below, where players are locked up and taken away indiscriminately. However, the reality is that it is difficult to enforce this.

Therefore, we need to think about what means are most effective for users.

Forcing users to unbind or be bound: red dot effect, notification bar

In fact, the most effective way is to change user behavior, such as using the “red dot” like WeChat, text messages, and targeted mobile message notifications from large applications, or even harassing users by popping up update reminders.

These methods interfere with the user experience and require users to perform forced operations: unbinding or being bound. This type of method of changing user behavior is very common on the PC side, mainly in the form of pop-ups and "closing banner ads leading to incorrect operations".

1) For mobile game manufacturers, we are not WeChat, but we can use WeChat or other APP tools to achieve similar results in disguise. For example, accumulate users to the WeChat official account during the warm-up period, and finally achieve the "red dot effect" by sending messages. At the same time, send a few more "red dots" to users when the version is updated.

2) Another method is to cooperate with apps with a high installation volume, such as weather, smog warning, novel apps, and various large-user apps. They can also achieve the "red dot effect" on the user's mobile phone desktop.

3) Placing splash screen ads on other major apps is also a form of forced exposure.

4) SMS notifications have increased value compared to the PC gaming era, for example, SMS can carry download links for mobile games, but there are also issues of decreased effectiveness, such as strong user aversion and interception by 360 Mobile Assistant. In terms of specific cases, you can pay attention to the following registration methods for Shanda's mobile game products. It mainly uses the player's phone number to register and accumulate player mobile phone numbers to facilitate targeted text message sending, and can also be used in the subsequent recall of old users. Of course, it must be pointed out that this approach is difficult to implement in the intermodal market, as many large platforms require the use of their own account systems.

Media selection: targeting mobile game users

Regarding the selection of advertising partners, gamelook compared the population composition of several mainstream products on the market based on the population portrait function of Baidu Index. In fact, if more product names are entered, similar results will be obtained, as shown below:

The interest preferences of mobile online game players are mainly concentrated in the following categories: online novels, animation, film and television, sports, and games. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why many mobile game products often choose to cooperate with video apps, animation media and Weibo celebrities.

There is an extreme case of exploring potential user groups, which is Shanda's "Million Arthur". After Shanda positioned the million as the concept of anime and the second dimension, it used a very primitive "human search" method to try to find all the anime media, anime apps, anime celebrities and other resources accessible online, with the ultimate goal of tapping the traffic potential of anime and the second dimension. After positioning your product, have you ever tried this extreme potential-exploring approach?

Performance advertising

It mainly focuses on mobile advertising in the form of CPC/CPM/CPA. There is no good way to do A/B Testing. At the same time, pay attention to the time period of advertisements and avoid choosing junk time periods when non-users are downloading.

Scam: Use points wall to rush to the top of the list, ASO, and form natural conversion of the list

The way to cheat is to achieve greater results at a smaller cost, and in the mobile game market, it means using various means to improve one's ranking on the list and generate natural downloads.

Ranking: Currently mainly relying on the points wall

In fact, the industry is already aware of how to cheat on traffic. In the past, it was done by inflating charts, faking downloads, and self-consumption. Fake downloads actually have precedents as early as the China Mobile Treasure Box era of SPs, and were once recognized by SPs as the most effective means of promotion. Therefore, as long as there is a list that can bring downloads, whether it is the App Store or Android, there will be people who will manipulate it. Of course, the premise is that the fake volume does not affect the channel's rating and recommendation position for the product.

In the domestic app store, currently, chart manipulation is a high-risk behavior. If caught by Apple, the app will be removed from the shelves. Some companies have even been blacklisted by Apple for manipulation of charts, which requires them to change IP addresses and use small accounts to release products.

Now the industry mainly relies on point wall advertising to top the charts. I won’t go into detail about this part, but “low price and sufficient quantity” is the key.

The choice of release date becomes important

In terms of relying on the points wall to boost rankings, in addition to having a sufficient scale of investment, a prominent issue that currently needs attention is the choice of "schedule".

In 2013, 2,000 mobile game products were released in China, and in 2014, the number of products will be at least 5,000. Many of these products may be shut down before they can be released on the App Store, but there will still be far more new products launched on the App Store than last year.

Among them, the advertising of products represented by large publishers has a great impact on the list. For example, WeChat has 2 products per month, which means 24 products per year. Other publishers such as Zhongyou Mobile, Kunlun, Chukong, Feiliu, and Reku have already released more than 100 products. There are also web game companies such as 37 Games, 4399, Forgame, and Youzu that have released nearly 100 mobile games in total. Adding listed PC games and non-listed companies, it is conservatively estimated that they will release 50 games this year. These known companies have financial strength, and new product promotions at almost any time period will be snatched up by them on the list.

Therefore, choosing a time period with relatively fewer new products and avoiding strong products is an important strategy. For example, the two products "Let Go of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dota Legend". "Let Go of the Three Kingdoms" was officially launched at the end of the most brutal period of intensive new product releases in early January, while "Dota Legend" chose the relatively empty time period after the Spring Festival.

ASO keyword optimization

ASO (App Store Optimization) is actually a method that old products that have passed their peak life cycle need to use. It is also the main method used by many application developers who cannot afford to spend money on advertising. Strong companies rarely change their product names and descriptions (except for keywords).

ASO is mainly about designing product names, app keywords, and product descriptions. Here, there are some ready-made tools available, such as AppSEO.com, appcodes.com, and mobiledevhq.com, which can simulate the ranking of hot words and compare keywords of competing products. To find hot words, you have to pay attention to the popular products on the list and the hot events on Weibo.

Steal: social communication, friend relationship chain

The last trick is to steal users. Where should they steal from? It means stealing from the user’s friend relationship chain. Social interaction can be divided into online social interaction and offline real social interaction.

The key to stealing is to thoroughly study the user's social scenarios, sharing methods, conversion methods, content generation methods, and whether the unique functions of the mobile phone can be used.

It is necessary to provide necessary sharing tools, screenshots, and Weibo login functions.

Online viral transmission

Representative cases include Magic Camera, Crazy Guess the Picture, Crazy Guess the Song, and Flappy Bird. These are four products that industry insiders have personally encountered that have brought about a screen-sweeping effect that are not WeChat games. The content shared by these products are all screenshots, and the results presented are personalized by the user, or contain elements such as questions, requests for help, and showing off that have a strong incentive for interaction among friends.

Game records/achievements are more effective for casual and light products because such products are easy to understand, use and download. For medium-core and heavy-core products, videos or sharing methods with interactive demonstrations are more important and help better demonstrate the quality and fun of the game.

Case 1: Gamelook has previously reported on the "Flying Gachapon" used by Japan's Drecom in the launch of "Fight Heroes". In fact, it is to let players repeatedly draw props and gift packs on the page for receiving novice gift packs. Players can draw 80 times a day, and each draw needs to be shared on Twitter to achieve viral spread . In terms of effect, the average daily number of gashapon draws exceeds 200,000, the number of tweets released exceeds 1.4 million, and the number of followers remains between 300,000 and 500,000. Those who are interested can learn more about it.

Case 2: Here we would like to mention Shanda's "Monster Hunter", which used the WeChat HTML5 mini-game method to achieve viral spread during its release period. The effect may be difficult to call it a success, but the form is very worthy of reference for domestic game companies.

Case 3: A few days ago, gamelook saw the official website of dota2 for mobile phones, which is also a good example. It adopts an interactive design of dragging up and down, which is different from the click operation. It is also implemented with H5 technology, which gives users a good sense of freshness.

Offline interaction

For example, the interaction using LBS and Bluetooth functions is one type, while the "Kissing fish" design of near-field interaction with mobile phones and the offline shake function adopted by Leyou's "Happy Aquarium" have brought about a very strong offline social effect. This case is worth learning from.