How do you promote Gideros games, for iOS and Android?

Comments

• antix Member

  March 2016

  I'd be keen to hear what others do too. I have never published any app and I'm stumped.

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• pie Member

  March 2016

  Hi,
  I recently published my first game on android, and I am wondering about the same thing:
  
  From my little experience on Android it seems that success relies on your visibility on the play store, which is strictly bound to the number of people who have the app installed, stars, and reviews above all.
  My problem with stars and reviews is that google+ is required - and most of my friends (and it seems people in general) hate it :P
  
  What I can tell is that downloads effectively boost your visibility:
  I was getting 0 dl/day; after a "big spam" to friends and friends of friends (almost 120 contacts) my app reached 20 dl/day in the following days (after a peak of almost a hundred the day I sent the email), now that almost half of the people uninstalled it, I get 2/3 dl per day.
  
  I found this website but I have not submitted any review yet, so I am not sure it works:
  http://smoothreviews.com/
  the idea is good though, there is nothing wrong in honest review exchange between developers.
  
  @totebo did you do something to promote no brakes - apart from building a great game?
  I saw that a youtuber with some followers reviewed it, could you tell if that was a boost in no brakes downloads?
  
  
  
  

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• totebo Member

  March 2016

  @pie, I did next to no promotion for No Brakes actually, so it may be a bad example. And thanks for the praise.

  My Gideros games: www.totebo.com

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• PaulH Member

  March 2016

  It's frustratingly circular: The best way to get downloads is to be ranked high in the store listings, and the best way to get ranked high in the store listings is to have lots of downloads.
  
  But there are some things you can do that don't necessarily involve spending money on marketing:
  
  Remember that people can find your app in a store either by browsing a category, or by searching for a topic or theme. For the latter, how you write your app description, and even the name of it, can make a huge difference in your ranking. It's just another flavor of search engine optimization (SEO) but with some different variables. If part (especially the beginning) of the name or your game, or the theme of your game is something that people are likely to search for, and your description emphasizes that appropriately, that's a big help. Make your app listing look as professional as possible. If there are relatively few apps on the store that really relate to those searches, it's obviously easier to rise to the top, but then there are also probably fewer people looking for such an app. Finding the right level of mass appeal vs niche to target is part of the challenge.
  
  Having a high average rating and a large number of downloads obviously factors strongly in your store ranking, but the app stores give new apps a temporary boost, either by listing them in a "new releases" category, and/or simply ranking them higher for the first few days or even the first month they're in the store. That means those first few days are critical. Asking your friends, family, social media followers, anybody you can, to not only download your game but to give it a review, is a very good place to start. If you have a mailing list, or know anyone with a lot of followers/subscribers/friends or any other channel to announce the launch of your game, go for it.
  
  For your announcement I'd suggest the opposite strategy from how you write an app store listing: make it personal, not professional; share your excitement at having completed the project, invite feedback, etc. In my experience people on social media respond much better to a personal post from an indie developer than to anything that looks like it came from a corporate social media team.
  
  Anything you can do to get a few dozen or a few hundred downloads and a handful of positive reviews in those first days can potentially pay off. If you can get into the hundreds in the first few days, that will probably boost your position in the app store, among new releases or among search results. There's a tipping point you're aiming for early on, where you get enough downloads to move up the store rankings, which gets you more downloads, which moves you up, etc. If you see a fairly steady upward trend for that first month, you'll probably see continued growth even after the "new app" factor is gone.
  
  That all assumes people actually like your game, of course, and game design is best left for other discussions.
  
  Beyond those first few days, all you really need is a game that people like. They'll tell their friends, leave good reviews, etc. The way most people find their games is: Browsing the app store by category, searching the app store for a category that interests them, and by seeing what their friends are playing. That's a good thing for us indie developers. It means that once a good game is getting enough downloads to start moving up the rankings and spreading by word of mouth, the growth tends to continue and even accelerate naturally, without the need to spend money on advertising.
  
  Paul
  

  Likes: bali001

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• zuobox Member

  May 2019

  thanks paul for sharing your thoughts

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