Appbooster: the story of the promotion of the game "Word for word"
How to maximize the visibility of the app in the App Store and Google Play by getting 293,000 installs? All stages of the promotion of the mobile game “Word for word” were covered in detail for App2Top.ru Appbooster agency.
About the app
To begin with, let’s tell you a little about the game itself, the promotion of which we were engaged in.
“Word for Word” is a PvP game about searching for words at speed with a developed tournament system and support for two languages. In it, you can compete online not only with random rivals, but also with friends from social networks.
Battles take place in 3 rounds of 2 minutes on a playing field consisting of randomly scattered letters. The goal is to make the maximum number of words out of letters. The longer the words, the more extra points you will get. Words can belong to any part of speech, and you can move across the field in all directions. The winner is the one who scores the most points.
In such projects, the mechanics of dueling with real users is very important. Due to this, interest in the game is not lost, and loyalty is formed among users and they remain in the application.
“Word for word” can be installed in stores for free. The pro version of the product on iOS costs 229 rubles (199 rubles on Android), in which you get access to statistics and ratings, the ability to remove ads, and also increase the number of simultaneous games. You can also buy hints – they are purchased for in-game currency (coins), which you earn by defeating rivals.
About the comprehensive strategy and development of the media plan
A year and a half ago, our company was already promoting this application. At the end of 2016, the client contacted us again and set the following tasks – to improve the visibility “Word for word” in the App Store and Google Play and attract the maximum number of target users.
In order for the application to receive even more traffic, we decided to use a comprehensive promotion. The developed media plan includes the following items:
– Bringing the application to the top due to media purchases and motivated traffic
Each of the stores has its own ranking algorithms, but the parameter “number of installations” has the greatest weight. The higher this indicator is, the higher the place in the top will be. Experimentally, we came to the conclusion that for the general (1-3) TOP in the App Store, we need to attract about 20 thousand installations per day.
– Promotion of the application by key queries
Search traffic is the most targeted and shows the highest conversion rate. Motivated installations also work to promote the product according to key queries. By buying a “motive” from the search, we planned to get to the top positions in the search results, thus receiving targeted organic traffic.
– Output of queries in “trending searches”
TS is a separate screen in the App Store that opens when you go to the search tab. There are queries that are most often entered by users. Being in “trending searches” allows you to collect additional organic installations.
The idea of comprehensive promotion was as follows: first we planned to launch campaigns to attract unmotivated traffic, then find the most successful approaches and scale them. With the help of the “non-motive”, we had to reach an indicator of several thousand installations per day. The second stage of the strategy was to connect motivated traffic in order to “put the squeeze on” the application to the top. We directed the “motive” to several key queries so that the application would rise in the search results for them and start collecting organic matter, which would also help us in promotion. We sent the largest traffic flow to one of the key queries in order to display it in “trending searches” and get another source of target installations. So, “non-motive”, “motive” and organic traffic (from search, “trending searches” and tops) worked to promote the application to the TOP.
Based on the experience of the previous campaign, we assumed that “Word for Word” would show high virality. Therefore, after being placed in the TOP, the application had to hold its position for a long time due to organic traffic.
The first stage
We started our promotion work with media buying, having developed a series of creatives to attract target users. We decided to stop at two main sources of traffic in Russia – myTarget and Facebook.
The targeting was very broad – men and women from 16 to 40 years old. We also segmented the CA by interests (entertainment, games, recreation, etc.) and social status.
For example, we have developed a series of separate creatives for schoolchildren, where the following words were present: diary, desk, recess. We selected other associations for students: a couple, a test, an exam, and so on. For girls, we used creatives with the words beauty, dress, manicure and others like that.
According to the developer, the main target audience of the project are women from 18 to 55 years old (70% of the app users are girls), so the main targeting was directed specifically at this target audience. After the test, media buyers scaled the selected banners. We made most of the traffic on our own creatives. Below are examples of banners that gave the highest conversion rate.
We also bought reviews from Instagram and Youtube bloggers. This was an exclusively test activity, it was important for us to analyze the number of conversions.
We ordered a post from Instagram blogger vasilina_kat (at that time 162 thousand subscribers) and an advertisement for the application inside the release of YouTube blogger Stacia Mar (at that time 570 thousand subscribers, the issue was viewed by 105 thousand people).
The budget for placement on both sites was 30 thousand rubles. These reviews gave 1000 installations on iOS and Android. The CPI was about 30 rubles, which turned out to be more expensive than we attracted with the help of media buying. But there is a small nuance here – you can’t post active links in comments to posts on Instagram, so we had to take the user to the official page “Word for word”, where the download link was placed in the profile description. Because of this, some users installed the app directly from the App Store and got into the “organic”.
The next stage was the placement of posts in the application and the public of the project “Overheard”. Here we hit the nail on the head, since more than 70% of the CA of the resource are women. The results were more than tangible, namely, about 5 thousand installations on iOS and Android.
The second stage
After the next update of positions in the App Store, we evaluated the results and decided to start a “boost” using motivated installations.
Thanks to the involvement of the “motive”, the application got to the second line in the top of the App Store. We managed to display the name of the application and all the promoted keywords in “trending searches”. “Word for word” came in first place for the following “keys”: word game, words, find words, puzzles.
In total, about 48,000 motivated and unmotivated installations were attracted on the day of the boost.
We managed to take the second place in the overall top of the App Store. At that moment, the VK Music application was in the first position, which attracted a very large number of installations. We decided that it would be irrational to try to overtake him.
The third stage
After the “Word for Word” hit the TOP, the application began to attract tangible organics. In order for the product not to start losing ground, we continued to purchase unmotivated installations through media buying, and also, if necessary, attracted a “motive”.
During all this time, 293,000 installations were attracted in the App Store and Google Play.
In total, the app was in the overall Top of the App Store for 23 days (3 days – TOP 5, 11 days – TOP 20).
Conclusion
Before conducting complex advertising campaigns, it is important to draw up a detailed media plan, in which the dates, the connection time of a particular tool will be scheduled, the approximate number of installations to achieve a particular position on a key query, Top, for output in “trending searches” are calculated in advance.
Thanks to a comprehensive promotion strategy, we managed to attract a large number of target users to the application and achieve maximum visibility of the application in the store. All this became possible thanks to a well-developed strategy, an effective media plan and a high virality of the project “Word for word”.
