What if there is only $5 thousand for marketing?

Us on App2Top.ru the developer wrote the other day: “how to promote an f2p game in the USA in the racing section of Google Play with a budget of $5-6k?”. Based on this question, we had a more general query: what to do if the marketing budget of a mobile game is only $ 5-6 thousand? We addressed it to the experts.

Marianna Kryakvina – Business Development Manager at Creative Mobile
The amount of $ 5-$10 thousand can be called significant, depending on what the company plans to spend it on.

If we are talking about investing in the purchase of users (UA), then this amount is completely insufficient. It will be a waste of resources, because it will be very difficult to achieve any significant result on such a budget.

I would rather advise developers, if they have a budget of $5 to $10 thousand, then spend it on business development. Buy tickets to some events, conferences, where you can get acquainted, for example, with representatives of platforms or find a publisher who can provide the game with much better conditions than it has.

Based on our experience, I can also tell you that we tried to do campaigns on YouTube. And they made videos themselves, and video bloggers (including well-known Russian ones) told about our games, but, to be honest, we did not see any large-scale effect.

In addition to business development, there is also another way. You can go towards viral marketing. That is, to try to communicate with community members on social networks, in communities, on forums. So try to earn yourself an initial user base, which you can then use as a marketing tool for viral development: offer your own customers benefits / just interest them in inviting their friends to the project.

We ourselves have been successfully using this strategy for more than four years. And we promote them mainly in this way. It costs, as a rule, minimal budgets, requires only absolutely insignificant amounts to pay for the services of designers and copywriters.

Vera Marnova, Head of the Advertising Department of Unilead
To compete in Google Play in the US market, the budget is, of course, very small, but the main thing is to work on the quality of your product and increase its competitiveness, plus, to purchase unmotivated installations with strict targeting of the target audience of the application.

This will allow you to gather a pool of loyal users, take into account their feedback on gameplay / monetization / design, and also receive the first in-app payments. The optimal source for purchasing is targeted advertising networks with a large set of audience targeting, for example, Facebook.

Inna Ushakova, CEO of Zenna Apps
You need to start with a strategy.

Especially if you have nothing to “spread out” with, pay 2-3 times more attention to it. Cost: $ = your time spent.

With a small budget, it is best to go from the flanks, that is, to enter markets where competition in this category allows you to get more or less tangible results with such a budget. For example, in South Korea, about 3,000 installations are needed to reach the TOP of iOS/iPad. You can save a lot by purchasing using broad targeting. You can also negotiate with a number of traffic providers to receive installations on rev share.

But entering the local market will require localization. If you have a small amount of content, it won’t really affect your budget, but it will be a mandatory item.

ASO is also often underestimated, but you can try to do it yourself. If done well, the conversion to installation when going to the application page can grow by several points.

Community Management and PR can also be shareware if you do everything with your own hands. This is mostly your time costs and you will need to spend at least 2-3 months here.

Perhaps it is worth presenting the game on Kickstarter, at the same time measure the real feedback on the game and collect a marketing budget for promotion in the American store.

Stepan Soloviev, Marketing Director of Appodeal
For $ 5-6k, it will most likely not be possible to buy enough traffic to get into the top, even in the racing section in the USA.

What to do? Search for a publisher that is interested in the game. If you don’t want to or can’t work with a publisher at all, then, accordingly, take over the functions of the publishing house. Do everything you can for free.

Of course, there is no universal recipe, everything is individual and depends on the game itself.