Seriously: How to conquer YouTube

Recently, the studio Seriously shared the preliminary results of an advertising campaign with the participation of letsplayers. The event raised downloads to 250 thousand per day. CEO and co-founder of the studio Andrew Stalbow (Andrew Stalbow) spoke about the details of the campaign to the Medium resource. We offer you a translation.

We seriously believe that when a user is not limited in choice, it is the brand that allows him to get through to him. Therefore, we focused on creating a product that will make the same impression as Pixar movies, while being a mobile game.

Our first release was Best Fiends.

Promo art for Best Fiends

We have set ourselves the task of approaching the promotion of the project as creatively as the development. That’s why we spent more than a year trying to figure out how to work with celebrities from YouTube. And they are satisfied with the results of their own efforts.

We launched the “Biggest mobile treasure hunt in the world” as part of a campaign involving celebrities from social networks. As a result, we got into popular searches in the App Store search in many countries around the world.

In addition, we managed to achieve the highest rates of daily downloads, DAU and revenue. In the charts, some key markets managed to take a higher position.

Thanks to our efforts, Best Fiends initially formed a strong base: for example, the retention of the first day (Day One retention) is 60%, the average session lasts 35 minutes a day, and users spend about 1 million hours playing every day.

However, you can’t go far on one strong base. It’s still difficult to break through to the top, given that there are about 1.6 million apps in the App Store, and among the competitors are Supercell, Machine Zone and King, which spend millions of dollars a day on marketing.

We have always believed that marketing channels like Facebook and mobile advertising grids do not provide a serious advantage. And if we rely only on them, it will be a road to nowhere, especially given the high competition and the ever-increasing cost of installation.

A year ago, before the launch of the first project, we interviewed our competitors to find out which marketing channel they consider useless. And YouTube often popped up in their responses. Half of YouTube views are on mobile devices. Therefore, we decided that we would accept the challenge and focus a significant part of our promotion efforts on YouTube.

A good example of how we interacted with YouTube celebrities is the Race Against Slime charity event, which we launched together with PewDiePie and his friends in December 2014.

When you work with YouTube stars, it’s important that they like your project. For example, Rosanna Pansino included Best Fiends in the list of the most favorite iPhone apps.

In her latest video, the talented Rosanna Pansino stated that she is at level 308 in Best Fiends!

In addition, one of our priorities has become working with celebrities from different countries.

EnjoyPhoenix is among the most famous video bloggers in France. She’s about to appear in the local version of Dancing with the Stars

And finally, for the “biggest mobile treasure hunt in the world”, we combined a campaign with the participation of blogosphere stars with a gaming event.

On Saturday, September 26, 13 of the most famous YouTube stars in the world, including Rosanna Pansino, CaptainSparklez, DanTDM and CutiePieMarzia, whose audience totals 60 million subscribers, prompted players in real time where their icons are hidden in the game. If the player found all 13 icons, he got access to a chest with pressure vessels, in which he found the rarest characters in the game, as well as gold and diamonds [in-game soft and hard currency, – approx. editorial offices].

The marketing campaign that we conducted to be seen will seem unconventional to someone. However, it worked. And we are very pleased with the results:

• 13 promo videos from famous YouTube bloggers scored 7.3 million views in the first five days;
• one day, the download figures jumped to the highest value – 250 thousand;
• the number of DAU increased by 40% over the first weekend and reached 1.6 million;
• one day our revenue increased to $100 thousand – the highest value in the history of the project.

We perceive the game as a service, and every three weeks we offer players updates – new events, characters and content. All this is designed to re-interest the existing audience and attract new players.

The latest update is the most successful of all so far. Instagram Facebook fan base has grown to 500,000 people, plus another 250,000 on Instagram and Twitter.

Finding unworn ways to make yourself known in a crowded market is not easy. But now we have a method that definitely works. And we’re going to take it to a whole new level.

A source: https://medium.com