Appintop

10/03/2016

Егор Карпов запустил направление по мобильному консалтингу.

Подробнее:
http://appbrain.ru/

Консультант по мобильному маркетингу и продвижению мобильных приложений

26/10/2015

Dear colleagues!
We're happy to present our new free ebook:
"How to grow unicorn: mobile games & apps marketing guide"
This is a complete and actual compilation of mobile marketing knowledge. The book is for everyone: mobile app developers, marketers, entrepreneurs and investors!
https://adtoapp.com/book/unicorn

Find your niche, choose a marketing strategy, app representation in the store, pre-release promotion, rules of app stores, creation of banners, beautiful design and trailers.

30/07/2015

Come join our free 30-minute webinar. "Advertising App Monetization: latest trends, researches and useful cases" http://bit.ly/1ODyccc

22/07/2015

Please, listen our podcast with Antoine Sakho, Senior Product Manager at Busuu in discussion on marketing educational apps.

iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/en/podcast/appintop-mobile-app-marketing/id884500433?mt=2

http://blog.appintop.com/podcast/22-antoine-sakho-busuu-todays-challenges-of-marketing-educational-apps.html

Listen in iTunes Guest: Antoine Sakho Senior Product Manager for mobile products at busuu Company: Busuu Antoine Sakho, from busuu, expands on how to s

05/06/2015

Listen our new podcast: App Monetization by advertising

Guest: Adam Ben-David
Head of Developer Operations at Supersonic

Link: http://blog.appintop.com/podcast/app-monetization.html

Listen in iTunes Guest: Adam Ben-David Head of Developer Operations at the international in-app monetization and user

26/05/2015

Webinar from Marina Khaustova for mobile app developers!
Thursday, May 28, 2015 11:00 AM - 11:30 AM PDT
Register for FREE here: http://bit.ly/1FyQKaD
You’ll find out about :
• Most effective advertising formats in terms of revenues
• Advantages of automated solutions
• Specific case studies with successful monetization
• Ways to DOUBLE your app revenues
• Other useful information for monetizing your app
Sign up today!

02/04/2015

Going Against the Grain: 4 Outlandish Ideas for Mobile Success

Mobile marketing is evolving all the time. Focussing the important factors of a successful mobile marketing campaign is becoming exhausting. User acquisition, cost per install, retention, engagement, location-based targeting... the list of buzz phrases trotted out by mobile marketing experts increases daily.
But amongst all this technical stuff, have a few basic components of customer interaction been left by the wayside? If so, here are four, way-out there ideas that may increase a brand's mobile effectiveness:

Customers are people, not just users

Using mobile to give brands unprecedented access to customers is amazing, true. However, breaking these customers down into just bits of data to be managed is awfully impersonal, isn't it? Good mobile marketing should focus on building a relationship with the customer by understanding what they might need in the real world.

One hotel chain decided it actually wanted to use its mobile connections to offer its customers a better service experience and, with a quick survey, determined that tired arriving customers get annoyed with long check-ins, as leaving customers eager to catch their next flight or whatever are frustrated with long checkouts.

The hotel was able to incorporate the customers mobile devices into the checking process and even be used as a room key, providing a real and clever solution to a problem that bothered customers on a personal level. This created an extremely good impression and increased customer loyalty significantly, and came largely from understanding the customers needs as actual people, and then addressing them.

Quality of users over quantity

CPI has everybody paying attention. Every mobile marketing agency is using it as a measure of success, and their clients, not knowing any better, are buying it. Even successful and sophisticated brands that are booming in all other areas can be remarkably under-informed when it comes to mobile marketing, and so often find that their mobile department – be they agency or in-house – are judging their performance based on CPI.

What these brands would probably prefer is to spend a little more on each user, in return for a higher quality of customer. Keeping CPI low is all very well, but as the old adage goes, 'if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys'.

Concentrate on what's in front of you

Organic traffic. Everyone loves it and everyone wants it. Not everyone knows how to get it. The problem here is that many developers and marketers believe that mobile marketing is all about coming up with the latest, craziest, cool and creative ideas. And while that is important, there are technical aspects to mobile marketing as well.

A*O, that's app store optimisation, is being somewhat overlooked. That seems ludicrous when you consider that a good deal of organic traffic is going to come from searches run in an app store, and if your product's A*O is as good as can be then you'll show up high in those searches, sending all the organic traffic right to your door.

Your app description and its keywords are right there, providing the first point of interface between you and your customers. Make them work for you as hard as they can.

Your product

Hold on, because here is the wildest idea. You can have the best product ever, but if your marketing is not up to par it's doomed to fail. This we know. However, what developers sometimes forget is that all the shiny and stunning marketing campaigns in the world are not going to make a success of a failing product.

Brands need to ensure that the marketing pros they hire or employ are as product orientated as they are marketing orientated. They need to cater for as much customers seeking data as they do for converting. Many brands are nervous of interfering with the product, However, refining the app based on changes made to the marketing strategy, and providing users with a better data flow is the only way forward in this instance.

So...

It may be considered controversial to ask brands and developers to remember to focus on the product over the marketing, to ensure that their basic store presence is discoverable, to try and attract users who might actually spend money, and to treat users as actual human beings, but there you go.
We did warn you this post was full of insane ideas...

Source: VentureBeat

01/04/2015

Avoiding the Churn

With user acquisition being the main goal as far as most app developers are concerned, particularly acquiring those users that enjoy playing mobile games and are willing to spend money in in-app purchases, the competition for that finite number of users has become fierce. To the point where advertising and social media campaigns are focussed on CPI and achieving as many installs as possible.

If you think about it, this strategy seems counter-productive. The constant battle over user acquisition means that many developers are overlooking one of the main components of digital marketing.

We are talking about re-engagement.

It seems obvious that it must be at least a little easier to convert a user that has downloaded your app to open it again, rather than to go through the rigmarole of persuading them to download a new app, surely? And if your game has been around a while, so you've given up finding the right users and instead you're just targeting lookalike audiences. Maybe it's time to stop worrying about how to get them to download or start spending money.

The good news, supplied by Localytics, is that retention seems to be on the rise as of 2014. Fewer users are downloading an app and only using it once, while those opening it more than 11 times has increased 5%. The bad news is that user churn is still a problem, with mobile games often at risk from only being opened once, if there is no return visit within the first 12 hours.
However, with the custom audiences made up from varying levels of gamers and customers most developers have access to these days, it's easier than ever create bespoke ads to re-target them and lure them back. The kinds of gamers who may return include:
- Users who downloaded but haven't got around to opening your game.
- Those who have run through your tutorial, but not yet progressed further.
- Customers who have spent and progressed well, but stopped playing a while ago.

If you're able to understand exactly who your are approaching, it’s possible to make your message very personal and appeal to exactly what would interest these players. You can gently encourage those who took the first step to continue, or start rewarding the ex-high level players back with free goodies or equipment.

Having done all this work on your masterpiece of a game, allowing it to disappear for want of a little re-targeting would be a shame.

Source: Nanigans

31/03/2015

Marketing Channels 101 Part One

Our next 101 – this one – is all about the different marketing channels available out there for developers to make use of. We're going to look at some of the different methods of promotion and divulge some useful advice on working with the different strategies.

In the worldwide marketing mix, you'll usually find the following marketing channels. So, in no particular order, they are:
- Advertising
- Sales Promotions
- Public Relations
- Direct Marketing
- Word of Mouth
- Personal Selling
- Event & Location
And, just to be different, we'll dive right in with the second one.

Sales Promotions
Now theoretically, Sales Promotions should not cost you any direct capital. They can cost money though. If sales drop, discounting your product is often the first step in trying to regain ground, ergo you lose a little income per unit.
So a little time and effort, a drop in price and you have a quick and cheap way to restart your revenue stream. The trouble is that being too eager to discount your product can tell your customer that maybe you were overcharging in the first place.
Sales Promotions need to be used only when absolutely necessary, and mainly as an incentive for you to get something you need in return. Something like offering 10% off if your customer fills out a survey that provides you data that you need to better market an upcoming product.

Public Relations
Again, this can be a useful, zero capital down form of promotion. There are multitudes of magazines and online platforms that fill their pages reviewing all kinds of products made by other people, not least mobile apps and games. And these publications need your product to write about as much, if not more, than you need them to write about your product.
Mostly, all it will cost you is a little time setting it up and a preview copy of your game or app. There is no guarantee any of this type of publicity will actually lead to a sale, or even reach your target audience, but it will get your product and brand out there.
The best thing to do is to research the publications and ensure you're reaching out the the ones whose readers match your ideal customer. It would be particularly pointless to have your product featured on a game blog that is, in fact, only read by other developers looking for ideas for their next game.
Public Relations also covers the incredible reach of social media for the use of self-promotion, but that's an entire 101 by itself. The simplest and most effective steps you can take in this direction are:
Get a Twitter account for yourself and your development company, plus each and every product you start developing and post progress reports and exciting news at every opportunity.
Build a company website and keep it up to date.

Direct Marketing
“Spam, spam, spam... Spammity Spam..!” sang the boys from Monty Python's Flying Circus at length and on more than one occasion. Now, while spam email has largely taken over from junk leaflets being physically sent out and therefore making Direct Marketing considerably cheaper than it used to be, it's still no more welcome.
But, looking beyond the rubbish from mailing lists you've accidentally got yourself on, there is a place for Direct Marketing, but it should be considered retentive instead of generative. If you fire out progress emails to random people willy-nilly, you will get on their nerves. If, however, you subtly and selectively let consumers that have subscribed to the updates – and so, presumably, are interested – know the status of your inbound product or launch date, it should all work out well.
You and your product are promoted, your customer is informed, and no one is annoyed or angered by endless and irrelevant junk mail.

Word of Mouth
Unquestionably, the holy grail of marketing. If Word of Mouth gets working for you you can do no wrong, and it cost you nothing in time or money. Just one snag, it's almost impossible to create for yourself. It has to choose spontaneously to work for you.
Getting people you don't know to talk about you and your product positively, to the point where someone on the other side of the planet – way more than six degrees from both you and Kevin Bacon – is recommending that their friend spend their own money on it is not an easy task to accomplish. The best you can do to 'arrange' that is to manage to get something you have done to go viral. Again, no mean feat.
Purposefully organising a successful Word of Mouth promotional campaign hasn't been managed yet, as far as we know, but creating a great product and cleverly making use of all the other available marketing channels creates the best chance of it happening ever.
Tune in next time when we continue to explore the further ins and outs of marketing channels. Can't wait!

Source: Gamasutra

30/03/2015

How Hard Does Mobile Advertising Work?

The Mobile Marketing Association recently undertook a study to determine the economic value of mobile campaigns when compared with traditional channels, called the Smart Mobile Cross Marketing Effectiveness study.

The study analysed US in-market campaigns from AT&T, Coca-Cola, MasterCard and Walmart, and found that mobile, in these campaigns, was being allocated far less budget than the ideal. It's recommended that, at the very least, 10% of a campaign's total budget should be devoted to mobile. None of these brands got close to that.

AT&T Moto
AT&T wanted to maximise awareness for its customisable brand of Moto x smartphones with a campaign that used TV, print, online and mobile formats, around late 2013.
The study found that, in the six week period from September to October, the KPI of building brand awareness in the over 18-year-old demographic was 100% more effective with mobile than with TV and digital.

Coca-Cola Gold Peak Tea
Gold Peak Tea wanted to up awareness and increase sales with a combined TV, print, online and mobile ad campaign in the Spring of 2014. It was also interested in evaluating mobile marketing's performance.
The results included mobile driving 25% of awareness, 9% of image conversions and 6% of sales, utilising a 5% share of the entire campaign budget.

MasterCard Travel Card
In the last quarter of 2014, MasterCard launched its Travel Card with the brief to increase its association with business and vacation travelling and raise awareness of its Concierge app. MasterCard used a mix of TV, print, digital - including social media - and mobile formats.
The impact of mobile in the above KPIs showed that its display ads and video converted almost twice as many viewers per image than all other formats for each dollar spent.

Walmart Back-to-School
The Walmart Back-to-School campaign for Summer 2014 targeted grocery intent on mother's of school-aged children with a mix of TV, FSI, online and mobile ads. Walmart wanted to test how best to use mobile, and figure out which parts of mobile marketing would be perform best in reaching its goals.
Mobile ads were responsible for 14% of shopping habit changes, far more than broadcast and cable TV per dollar spent, even though they was allocated only 7% of the campaign budget.

Summing up
The take-away from this study is that mobile marketing does work harder than other media formats, providing more bang for the buck in these campaigns. The study also concluded that allocating and average of 8-16% of total campaign budget to mobile would provide an incremental increase in impact for each of these brands.
It was also found that mobile audio, video and native ads performed so much better than display ads, their increased premiums could easily be fully justified. Display ads still had their place as awareness builders and reminders, but audio, video and native had far more influence on perception and sales.

Source: Mobile Marketing Magazine

27/03/2015

The Questions to Ask Yourself When Monetising a Mobile Game

Somebody's got to ask you. If only to make sure you do actually know what you're doing. Lucky for you we're not only going to run down the seven most important questions to ask before you monetise your mobile game, but we'll give you the answers too.

Before you pledge your eternal thanks, however, remember that we aren't able to do this for you. Some of these answers will need to be applied to your own situation. Some of these questions have no right or wrong answer. The idea here is to arm you with knowledge you can use. So pay attention.

#1 What is the best day of the week to launch a mobile game?
Saturday, as of January 2015, is when the most users are most active. There is over 10% more traffic than on a Friday and a Sunday, and even more than any other day. Knowing when is the quietest time can be useful too, though, in case you need to try a soft launch.

#2 Which platform to focus on?
Again, as of January 2015, iOS has lost it's overall market lead in the US as Android traffic has blown right past it to create a 54-46% split. However, iOS is still known to be the platform that generates higher revenues, being responsible for 65% of money earned from mobile games.
In Europe, customers prefer Android devices 62 to 38%, and in Asia and the Pacific it's anyone's guess – depending largely on which country in the territory that's being focussed. This is one of those questions with no clear answer.

#3 Which OS to optimise for?
Your eventual answer to the above question should have some impact on this, but here could at least be extra data to factor in. Apple likes to mess with iOS quite often, leading to new versions taking over quickly. Android's amusingly candy-named OS updates are slower to roll out, giving you more time to optimise to a more tested operating system.

#4 Which device to optimise for?
The most dominant iOS device is the iPad, and they are so popular that not making a version of your game to run well on one of these is like throwing money away.
Regarding Android, here is where the advantages of the platform start to become less obvious. While the OS seems to be more practical to adapt for, at least with iOS you're only dealing with iPads and iPhones. With Android you have to consider Samsungs, Lgs, Motorolas, Google Nexuses, Sony Xperias and so on. And that's even before you start thinking about different models. For the record, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and S4 rule, followed by the Tab 3 and S3 at the moment.

#5 How much money can I expect to make?
And here's the $64,000 question. Unfortunately, the answer isn't $64,000. The answer is more complicated.
Data from Chartboost puts the top five game genres making money from in-app purchases as: Card games, making $2.7 per user; Strategy and Action with $2.4; and Family and Casual games on $2.3. These are broken-down averages. At the other end of the scale are Sports, Trivia, Word and Racing games, which all bring in under a dollar per user in IAPs.
This is not the end of the story, though, because Sports and Word games especially make far more from publishing and ad revenue than the big IAP earners. The trick is to know your genre, that way you can estimate your potential revenue as well as whether you should focus on IAPs or selling advertising.

#6 Where to localise?
Taking the US market as a given – it's still by far the largest and most profitable – the biggest money making markets are: France, the Russian Federation, Germany and the UK.
The answer here also depends on a few other factors. Again, pay attention to your genre. Board games are extremely popular in Turkey and South Korea. India loves its Action games and China can't get enough Family or Puzzle games. It's time to do your research, people, and find out the best locations to pitch your products

#7 Are there any hidden opportunities?
In short, yes. Staying ahead of the competition by being the first to take advantage of a new OS version is one.
Capitalising on emerging markets is another. Right now, the growing nations include Mexico, Saudi Arabia and India, so look for similar, un-crowded and fast-growing markets.
In the end, posing these questions to yourself is no guarantee that you will come up with the correct answer. As you can see above, often there is no correct answer. The only right course of action is to make sure you at least consider the issues that these questions can bring up, and then use your best judgement.

Source: Gamasutra

26/03/2015

9 App Marketing Mistakes. Part Two
Today, as both promised and foretold, appears the second part of our rundown of simple mistakes that successful app developers and marketers need to watch out for. As we left off at #4, logic demands that we continue on with #5. So here goes.

#5 - Under-valuing A*O
To maximise your discoverability in a world that includes 2.5 million apps and climbing, App Store Optimisation is an important tool that needs to be mastered and used. Key points to remember are:
- Different rules and practices on different platforms need to be studied and worked with.
- Most of what we know about A*O is conjecture. Apple and Google are very secretive about the factors they include for searches, but a large number of individuals and industry experts have been researching the process for a while now. They have managed to uncover a lot and remove some of the mystery.
- A*O is not an exact science. It involves plenty of testing, weighing and measuring to find the optimum solutions for your app.
Developing an A*O strategy involves focussing on two main components: Keyword Optimisation and Conversion Rate Optimisation. Here are some tips to help improve your chances:
- Adding keywords to your description on Google Play is a factor for A*O. On iOS, it isn't.
- Spaces between keywords are not required, so save some characters by just separating words with a comma.
- Spend time developing your icon, it tells the user more than you'd think about your app.
- Write your app description about the value your app gives to a user, and why they should download.

#6 - Not understanding LTV
Independent developers are not able to effectively calculate a user's LTV, which is a great hindrance when the average CPI is climbing high. Lifetime Value is the expected revenue a customer will bring in over the period that they are expected to use your app for.
Knowing the LTV of your users allows you to know what you can get away with spending on user acquisition and application improvement. If you're spending more than you're expecting to bring in... well, you know the rest.

#7 - Doing testing in the App Store
The iOS store is hot on getting the latest apps to its customers asap, and uses numerous scripts and bots to accomplish this task. The upshot is: if you launch your app before it's ready on the App Store, it will be publicised enormously which may lead to a spike in downloads of an unfinished app.
First, this creates a bad impression on users who are unaware you’re testing, so are expecting your app to run perfectly, and second, when your app is ready, it's already been launched and won't benefit from all the 'newest app' promotion that we've just outlined above.
Beta testing is important, but should be conducted in the right place. Apple offers TestFlight to help iOS developers accomplish this outside of the App Store.

#8 - Failing to complete a viral loop
A viral loop is when your users effectively become your primary marketers. They spread the word about your product for you, costing you very little and offering self-sustaining marketing.
Hooking your users in and encouraging them to share your app with their friends not only increases their engagement, but potentially increases your audience. By offering incentives to share your app, your users tell their friends, who are offered the same incentives and so tell their friends... and so on to a huge user base.

#9 - Lack of research
It’s probably the most common mistake of all, but getting carried away with your idea and not checking out the competition still happens a lot, especially with 2.5 million apps available. You can have a brainwave and come up with the next big thing, but make sure you check to see if anyone else is already doing it. In 99.99% of cases, there will already be a similar app to compete with your brainwave.
Research is fairly simple and inexpensive, but can save you a fortune in lost investment if you just check out your competition thoroughly and only develop your app if it can work better, faster, cheaper or offer something the others don't.

Source: AppLift