Give it all to TriplePoint. I'm not sure how much benefit we got out of them long term, but it must have been plenty. The storm they created on launch of GBWG was epic. The first game got a good review from a couple of sites such as TA eventually, but with the sequel launch and TP driving it, we got tons of top quality review sites all doing good stuff during release week. That's the best possible start your new app can get. If you can get positive reviews and a shedload of new customers in the early days/weeks, they should spread word of mouth for you from that point, totally free. (If they don't, your product is crap and you'll need to spend 30K each month to get 31K in sales, so everything else is moot anyway)
Speaking from a purely consumer point of view: The App Store is horrid for discovering new apps, so I have totally stopped visiting its "featured" tab. Instead I get my leads from review sites and forums. Youtube videos can be useful if I am interested but unsure, but as a general rule, I sift through them in this order: Sites (RSS feeds announcing new games/reviews) Forums (To hear the buzz about the new games and sometimes someone will mention another game that is similar to one that I enjoyed, but missed) Youtube (Can be helpful if your game is good and I am unsure, or could cost you the sale if I am unsure and end up not liking your game due to the video). So get Toucharcade, Slidetoplay, TUAW, Ars, Joystick, Gamasutra, Boardgamegeek etc previewing and reviewing your game. I can't buy your game if I don't know about it, or if I don't know why I should like it. For example, Shadowgun totally flew under my radar. I thought it was just another FPS on iOS until I downloaded Shadowgun: Deadzone, the freemium multiplayer spinoff. To my great surprise, Shadowgun's touchscreen implementation worked great and I bought it even though it just went back to full price $4.99 from 99¢. Prior to this, I had struggled with the control schemes used by the other popular FPSes on iOS and had not found out how to comfortably play them. That brings me to the last point, if budget permits, release a lite version with enough meat in it to get the player hooked. The other game series, Gamebook Adventures, was one that I wasn't too keen on for various reasons until I tried Gamebook Adventures #8, which used a free to download and IAP to unlock either by chapter or in full model. The hook was that the free first chapter had enough content to make me go, wow, that is quite a bit of gameplay and it was fun, so I bought the full unlock, and that developer actually had Gamebook Adventures #3 on sale so I grabbed that too. Having enjoyed both, I then grabbed yet another of his titles, Judge Dredd, which is like spending $11 or so in total, all derived from that one shareware model Gamebook Adventures #8 and having #3 on sale. Just to show you how awesome that is from a marketing point of view, that developer previously had most of his titles on sale for 99¢ each during the Christmas period. I could actually have bought all his 10 games for about $14, which is just $3 more than the $11 that I spent on just these 3 games. Even if he conducts another 99¢ sale, I will have to spend another $8 or so to download my missing titles, netting him $19 instead of $14. That is assuming I can wait for next Christmas, if not the regular price of each game is like $5 each (apologies if my calculations are a bit off as I am converting to USD from my native App Store prices). But I didn't because I either didn't know they existed (which is untrue in this case), or I misunderstood what his games actually were (due to confusion over the title of Gamebook Adventures #1). In short, don't just think of having this marketing budget to be spent, but think of how you can best let the gamer know what makes your game special and worth his time and money.
Would it make sense to put your eggs in more than one basket and use multiple marketing platforms, or just focus on one?
Yes, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn are the good choice. These covers half of the media outlets. Use fan page on Facebook, so that you can able to reach the targeted audience . Press release via prmac is best option. It helps you to make best reach among the users. Through this your apps will get more exposure and hence increase the growth of the lead.
Press Release : Write a press release as it is intended for distribution to a wide range of media outlets. You can go for popular press release site like prmac.com that makes some noise about your release and hence it brings you more exposure about your app. Placing creative ads on high converting sites will increases your leads and awareness and hence that attracts users. Submit Reviews : Submit your app to the quality review sites and get huge amount of reviews. Make a Trailer : Trailers, previews and sneak-peak videos makes customers excited.
Yes, that is the main reason. Difference in ARRPU (average revenue per paying user) between a typical casual arcade and CCG or builder can be 15-20 times. So the later can use PPI for promotion and still have good cash flow. At the same time, getting new users into such games as simulations, builders and cards is harder - cause you need to attract mid-core and hard-core players, while for arcade or casual is much easier to get higher number of downloads.
If budget is not your problem you can directly contact Applans to get the promotions for 4-6 weeks at the decent money. Also you may consider other marketing agencies like comboapp.
I'd be the first to say that launching our app was fraught with problems (due to us) but even after being featured in the ipad app store (we even got a small banner!) it's been slow going this first week. We see about 15k downloads per day of our game on iPad but with no iPhone promotion it doesn't register at all. With that we see about almost no sales though we let the player play the game about 30-40 minutes before being prompted to purchase the full version. We're hoping to see some slow but steady growth and so far it's been somewhat optimistic. Thanks to everyone for all the great advice. I'll be looking into all of this to see what makes the most sense for us.
Reddit Works I was at a conference where the developers of the Jenga game said they got a surprising number of conversions from reddit
