Need some Marketing Advice for Game

[Twopro]

I made a game for android after doing lots of unity3D tutorials and like everything I have ever done as side projects (websites, affiliate marketing, apps), I always get stuck on this. How do I get more exposure, what can I do to market my game?

My game is called Flappy Hair and its a flappy bird style game with Donald Trump as the main character, so what I have been trying is going into news articles or Facebook posts by Trump and commenting there and adding input about trying out the game. That has gotten me a bit of downloads but nothing worth mentioning. Game has been out about a month now and I only have ~260 downloads.

I need some suggestions for people that know marketing. I tend to want to give up and start a new project if I'm not seeing results but I know I will always get back to this problem no matter what I do. I would like to learn how to market what I create before I decide to spend lots of months/years building the most creative thing I can come up to only have this problem again.

Also should be out for iOS soon...if they ever finish the review process

 

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[Silverhawk851]

Are you running any paid traffic to this?
Are you monetizing at all?
Can you afford to pay $x to get more installs?
if so, Do you know what one customer is worth?

 

[Twopro]

Are you running any paid traffic to this?
Are you monetizing at all?
Can you afford to pay $x to get more installs?
if so, Do you know what one customer is worth?

Tried doing some facebook ads but just $10 for likes on the fb page I made for the game. Didn't get too many from that.
I have ads in the free version and a paid "Pro" version for $1
I could afford to pay for installs but not too much right now since I've been unemployed and have used up a lot of my savings up, but have an interview this Tuesday
Is there a way to calculate what a user would be worth?

 

[Silverhawk851]

Ok, so facebook ads are very expensive in general for app installs.

in the US/Canada, you're paying around $0.20 on average per click.

Say you drive 100 clicks at $0.20, that's $20.
Now obviously, you're not going to get 100% of people to convert/install.

So let's assume 10% of people do, 10 people. $20/10 = $2 per acquisition cost for you.

What you want to do is figure out how to get the max amount of people to convert for the cheapest cost.

The best way would be to target Tier 3 countries that people are not really advertising on FB,
like Indonesia, Egypt, Phillipines, India, Pakistan

or

Try mobile display advertising. There is a TON of mobile traffic out there
This could be great option for you, partner up with someone who is great at mobile display,
you can get clicks for muuuch cheaper, sometimes pennies or below,
and be able to test out traffic and you monetization strategy

Here is a list you can start learning more about:
http://www.adnetworkdirectory.com/ad_networks/?f=74

Hope that helps

 

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[TextbookAnswers]

I personally been able to boil marketing down to three basic things:

Perception, Product, and Payment

Perception being how the product is seen by the customers. The Unique Selling Proposition is a vital tool.
Product being does the offering address a pain point.
Finally, can you articulate the pain point into something that people will pay for and make a profit selling.

 

[Twopro]

Thanks Silverhawk, need to go to the gym to clear my head a bit then I'll dive in to the link you posted. Glanced at it real quick and there is a lot of options, any you have personally used and/or would recommend?

 

[Silverhawk851]

Glanced at it real quick and there is a lot of options, any you have personally used and/or would recommend?

I've only dabbled briefly in the mobile display stuff, I'm sure there are guys here who would have much better knowledge,
I do know two good ones for games are Matomy and Avazu DSP

I'd look into those if it were me

 

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[mt_myke]

The best way would be to target Tier 3 countries that people are not really advertising on FB,
like Indonesia, Egypt, Phillipines, India, Pakistan

Most of those people will have no idea who Donald Trump is. Flappy Bird time has come and gone, it's about as happening as Gangnam Style, and there's already a bunch of other Donald Trump flappy clones. Might be time to take this one behind the barn.

 

[splok]

I made a game for android after doing lots of unity3D tutorials and like everything I have ever done as side projects (websites, affiliate marketing, apps), I always get stuck on this. How do I get more exposure, what can I do to market my game?

Grats on releasing your first game! Now release it for all the platforms you want to develop for, and then completely forget about it! That may sound depressing, but releasing your first game is a huge step and taught you a ton! And releasing it on multiple platforms will teach you even more.

After that, take what you've learned, and make a better game. Note that I didn't say a bigger, longer, or more complicated game.

I would like to learn how to market what I create before I decide to spend lots of months/years building the most creative thing I can

That's the trap that most game designers fall into. Get this thought out of your head if you want to have any chance at all of success! It's basically a guaranteed way to fail. You want to be able to make games as quickly as possible, so you get better at making them as quickly as possible.

I know you want to know about marketing, but to be honest, your game is almost certainly not worth marketing. You need to get good enough at design and development that you can actually see people sticking around, playing your games longer and longer, and spending money on your microtransactions. You need to learn what tweaks you can make to improve engagement, retention, and monetization, and then you need to make them and track the results. Then you'll know what a user is worth, and you'll know how much you can safely spend on user acquisition.

If it sounds like this may take a while, that's probably true, but if you want game development to be your business, it's what needs to happen.

 

[Delmania]

That's the trap that most game designers fall into. Get this thought out of your head if you want to have any chance at all of success! It's basically a guaranteed way to fail. You want to be able to make games as quickly as possible, so you get better at making them as quickly as possible.

I know you want to know about marketing, but to be honest, your game is almost certainly not worth marketing. You need to get good enough at design and development that you can actually see people sticking around, playing your games longer and longer, and spending money on your microtransactions. You need to learn what tweaks you can make to improve engagement, retention, and monetization, and then you need to make them and track the results. Then you'll know what a user is worth, and you'll know how much you can safely spend on user acquisition.

If it sounds like this may take a while, that's probably true, but if you want game development to be your business, it's what needs to happen.

This applies to any form of entertainment product, be it a game or a video series on Youtube, you need to get really good and making engaging content as opposed to marketing. Once you've got a hit, it will sell itself. You don't need to write sales copy for a game or a video as the entertainment value it provides will get people to buy it. It's hard, Angry Birds was Rovio's 52nd game, but it you can figure what you want to do and execute on it, it will pay off handsomely.

 

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[Twopro]

Thanks for all the advice and yes I am still learning more game concepts and will continue to develop my skills. Just because I'm trying to learn a bit of the marketing side doesn't mean I'm stopping everything else. Its a gradual process for both, learn a little a day so it can have a snowball effect as time goes by.

Out of curiosity did any of you guys actually download and try the game out?

 

[splok]

Out of curiosity did any of you guys actually download and try the game out?

I didn't because I pretty much knew what it was from the name. Since you asked, I went and tried it though, and it's pretty much as advertised. I realize that it's your first game and that you just needed to launch something, but since you asked, I guess my feedback would be that if you're going to clone/reskin something, try to add some obvious improvement or change from the original. People don't mind very similar games if there's just a bit of a tweak to keep things interesting. You might get some downloads from people having a quick laugh at the reskin, but if you actually want to make money, you need people to stick around instead of going "lol, flappy bird with trump hair", playing twice, and then uninstalling.

 

[Twopro]

Appreciate the honesty. I never played the original myself but from videos I saw, the controls seemed terrible and you would die without actually hitting the pipes. I thought my version of it was better and I did include different game modes to make it more interesting/challenging, but yeah I see your point. More than likely to be noticed in todays app market it has to be unique or bring back an old school game (NES or SNES) with new gameplay and that will probably be what I will try next.

Just seeing so many different flappy bird clones and most of them sucking (I tried a lot) and having thousands or even millions of downloads I thought, hmm I'll combine the popularity of flappy bird with the current political situation as a theme and maybe gain some steam

 

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[Twopro]

Bump for update

So I have been working on other games but recently got contacted by someone wanting to feature Flappy Hair on their article.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/trumps-anti-immigration-talk-is-inspiring-iphone-games

Today I started emailing different people and sending message on twitter and facebook to see if I could potentially get more media exposure.
One person I contacted is a local popular personality with 1 million fb followers. He replied back and was very interested in my game and asked if I would consider partnering up, offering me a lump sum of money up front then splitting a % of profits.

Have a few questions:
How do I come up with a figure and what % should I offer?
What else should I be taking into account here?

Never partnered up with someone before for a business deal, could use some advice

 

[mrarcher]

Bump for update

So I have been working on other games but recently got contacted by someone wanting to feature Flappy Hair on their article.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/trumps-anti-immigration-talk-is-inspiring-iphone-games

Today I started emailing different people and sending message on twitter and facebook to see if I could potentially get more media exposure.
One person I contacted is a local popular personality with 1 million fb followers. He replied back and was very interested in my game and asked if I would consider partnering up, offering me a lump sum of money up front then splitting a % of profits.

Have a few questions:
How do I come up with a figure and what % should I offer?
What else should I be taking into account here?

Never partnered up with someone before for a business deal, could use some advice

This is partly what i was going to suggest. Liberals HATE trump so you could try and contact *shudder* buzzfeed and see if they would do an article. I also heard you can put up your own articles on their site so you could try that.
Also if you get an article or page with your game pm me and ill share it help you out a bit. All advertisings good advertising.
(Personally i like Trump but i can see you making $$$ from this)