The founder of the Pixel Happy marketing agency, which brought such projects as Star Trek: Wrath of Gems and Ramboat to the market, Steve Young, shared five tips for promoting the game in the media. Our friends from SoftPressRelease translated this material into Russian.

1. Select the appropriate day of the week to launch

Choosing the right day of the week to launch your game can actually decide the fate of your publications.

Do not run the app on Mondays, Fridays, or weekends.

Monday is usually overloaded with news from the weekend, besides, large companies usually prefer to make announcements at the beginning of the week in order to create a long news cycle. News traffic on Fridays and weekends is mostly on the decline, so launching these days will lead to reaching a smaller audience.

If you are an indie developer with a weak informational social influence, you should choose Tuesday or Wednesday to launch. Thursday is usually the busiest day, because it is on Thursdays that Apple updates the App Store, and publishers of major games release their applications.

In other words, if you release your app on Thursday, you’re competing with heavyweights, so you’re less likely to get published.

However, if luck smiled on you, and your application was “faked” by Apple, most likely they will offer you to launch on Thursday.

2. Create a trailer for the game

Of all the money you can spend on marketing, the best investment will be an impressive video.

• Journalists evaluate the quality of your game based on the quality of your video.
• Journalists can quickly understand what your game is.
• Many journalists will add your video to their publication about the game.

Try to make the video from 30 to 60 seconds long and at the same time demonstrate the key features of your application.

Think of this video as a movie trailer that will push the viewer to download the application. This is a side-marketing video, not a gameplay video.

3. Create a press kit

All publications have their own design requirements, so the presence of a press kit gives the journalist everything necessary to easily write an article.

Each edition has its own way of presenting the app review. For example, AppAdvice uses a high–resolution photo, TouchArcade uses the icon of your application, and Mashable adds two of your screenshots from the App Store.

On average, a journalist writes from 3 to 5 articles a day, so you should do everything possible to make his life easier.

Here is a list of what you should include in your press kit:

• Icon in high resolution (1024×1024)
• Suggestions for a review with a quote from the founder
• Screenshots from the App Store (the ones you submitted to iTunes or Google Play)
• Screenshots in life situations showing the application in action. I use for this Placeit.net .
• Screenshots of the app only (without any marketing messages).

We usually create a zip archive containing all of the above and use Dropbox to distribute it to journalists.

4. Come up with an interesting pitch

Journalists are flooded with pitches every day, so it’s worth taking a thorough approach to writing a truly intriguing pitch. No doubt it takes time, but when you finally find an interesting approach, it can be a decisive factor.

Here are some of our favorite ways to create interesting pitches:

• Exclusive: Give a major publication exclusive rights to your news. This will mean that you do NOT contact other publications until the article is published.
• Set up surveillance: I know that Karissa from Mashabl is a fan of the San Diego Chargers, Carter from Touch Arcade loves baseball and Rangers, and I know that Brandy from Social Times likes to add founder quotes to her app reviews. When I add these little things to my pitch, I clearly stand out from the mainstream.
• “Attach yourself” to a well-known product: Using a well-known application in the subject of your letter, you instantly let the journalist understand what kind of application you have. Every time we used this strategy, the viewing level of our emails doubled. Here are some examples that eventually gave us publications:
  • If Flappy Bird was an astronaut
  • Farmville + Candy Crush
  • Snapchat + Yik Yak

It is also important to format your email pitches in a readable way using bulleted lists, bold text and italics. I describe my email pitch format in detail in this post.

5. Don’t forget about YouTubers

Due to the rapidly growing popularity of gameplay videos, YouTube provides an excellent opportunity to get a huge number of installations of your application. For example, my seven-year-old son finds out about all the apps he installs on the FGTeeV Youtube channel.

You can contact YouTubers by selecting the “About” tab on their channel. Some YouTubers indicate their contacts there. If they are not there, you can click on the “Send message” button and send your pitch via the YouTube messaging system.

Conclusion

Receiving a large number of publications about the launch of your mobile game can have a significant impact on the number of downloads.

Follow the simple tips given above and you will be able to make your pitch unique and get published in your favorite gaming publication.