This sponsored post was produced by Fiksu.
For game marketers, monetization is crucial when promoting a game: It’s not enough just to find users, you need to find users who will spend money. There are nearly 152,000 games in the app store, making up about 16 percent of live apps. Also, studies show that larger percentages of the best performing apps are games. So a strategy to find users efficiently is crucial. To acquire a high volume of new players quickly as well as sustain a steady flow of players that help you monetize, it’s vital to choose the right incentivized network, more specifically an app discovery network.
Though rewards-based marketing has been around for many years in the CPG, credit card, and travel industries, it has recently migrated to the mobile game consumer acquisition realm, and it has proven scalable due to the size of the mobile audience. This has led to an increase in the number of rewards programs – usually known as incentivized networks or app discovery platforms – that have been springing up to drive user acquisition.
Here are three quick tips for choosing the best-performing app discovery network:
1) Choose a “destination” app discovery network
Many incentivized networks buy traffic from other incentivized networks, introducing a risk of buying duplicate traffic and reducing your overall effectiveness. These types of networks also tend to attract users who are more interested in accumulating rewards as quickly as possible rather than discovering new apps they’ll use on an ongoing basis.
Feedback from game marketers bears this out, suggesting that destination networks provide higher-quality, loyal users. These types of networks have repeat users who are dedicated to and trust the service. Users are there to discover new games, not just to reap the rewards. These networks, focused on their communities, will deliver long-term customer value, deeper tracking, and repeat usage of the game by users.
2) Integrate a social media plan
Social media followers of the app discovery networks are typically dedicated, interested players. Working with a traffic partner that offers integrated social promotion is beneficial, as these users are extremely likely to act on recommendations by their trusted app discovery source. This trust drives thousands of high-engagement, incremental installs.
As another advantage, if your game has strong social sharing capabilities, working with a network that incorporates social can exponentially drive growth. More examples of social media promotion include: driving people to a video, promoting content around your game, and simply announcing your game through targeted social channels.
3) Focus on user engagement
While the majority of app discovery incentivized networks require some post-download engagement before rewarding a user, look for a network that doesn’t reward a user until they play the game for at least 30 seconds. This gives players enough time to get an understanding of the game and gives you the opportunity to hook them with story, gameplay, or rewards.
Some networks can take it a step further by rewarding users for deeper levels of engagements, such as reaching new levels, which can boost conversion rates and drive long-term players.
There are many more factors to consider when choosing an app discovery network, such as global traffic, device targeting, and campaign management tools, among others. Networks that display these top characteristics are more likely to deliver players that engage and monetize with your game.
Therefore, to make sure you receive the best ROI, the decision about which app discovery network to use must go beyond providing massive downloads at the lowest cost per install.
The factors we’ve described here are just a start. Before you launch your own incentivized app marketing plan, make sure you understand these topics, too:
- The range of factors you should have in order to adjust campaigns
- Factors that contribute to filling the customer acquisition funnel with players that engage and spend within your games
- Global traffic
- Device targeting for “lean forward” and “lean back” devices
- Key components app discovery networks should have when it comes to rewarding users for their actions
To learn more about these factors and more, take a look at our free eBook: Top 10 Tips to identify High-Performance App Discovery Incent Networks.
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