by Game Marketing Genie, on 15-Apr-2021 10:53:52
So, you’ve created a brand new mobile game and want to enter the market. But how do you gain traction for your app among millions of others? Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is your answer! Whether you want to increase the number of players, improve in-game purchases, or something else, by applying these growth marketing strategies, you can reach your business goals more quickly and effectively.
What is conversion rate optimization?
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the process of optimizing your website, landing pages, or mobile app to increase your customers’ desired actions and meet your campaign goals. This process analyzes how potential customers navigate through your site/app, identifies the actions they take, and also recognizes the reasons why they fail to meet your marketing goals.
From making a product purchase on your site, subscribing to a service, and signing up for an email list to adding products to a cart, creating an account, and requesting a quote, a business can have different marketing goals for different campaigns. No matter what your business objectives are, CRO can help you optimize your processes better in order to get the best results and make your business thrive.
Before we move forward, let’s understand what a “conversion rate” is in marketing. Your conversion rate is the percentage of people that come to your website and take the desired action with respect to the total number of website visitors. Here’s how you calculate your conversion rate:
Conversion rate (x) = [Number of conversions/Total number of visitors] * 100
Let’s say your mobile app has 1000 visitors in one day, and 500 visitors downloaded your app or made in-app purchases. Your conversion rate is 50% (very high and very unlikely). While the average conversion rate lies between 1 percent and 4 percent, it differs from industry to industry and campaign to campaign. Though average conversion rates can be used as benchmarks to start off your campaigns, if you want to scale up your business, you need to go past these.
Why do you need CRO for your mobile game?
Just as conversion rate is necessary for other companies’ survival, it is equally important for your mobile game. With 385,551 gaming apps on the Google Play Store and 278,998 on the iOS App Store (at the time of publishing), you want your mobile game to push past these and reach your audience. CRO helps you accomplish these objectives while avoiding any roadblocks hindering your progress.
High conversion rates for your video game means:
- Increased percentage of app installations
- Greater number of in-app purchases
- Higher return on investment (ROI)
- Increased in-game session lengths
- Higher customer lifetime value (CLTV)
- Lower customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Improved customer retention rates
Converting your audience is not a one-step solution but a series of processes. For a gaming app, it involves attracting your target market to your marketing funnel, encouraging them to complete the required action, and convert them into paying users that play your game.
If you’re not confident about how to increase your game conversions, partnering with a video gaming marketing agency that provides excellent conversion rate optimization services will help you get a head start.
How to do it for your mobile game
1. Make your in-game CTAs easy to access
Our blog on Growth Marketing Genie, 10 Ways to Increase Your Conversion Rates, mentions that calls to action (CTAs) are the lifelines of every campaign as they are the main touchpoints that help your audience convert. To make your CTAs easily accessible you need to use clear, concise, and actionable language; provide value propositions to the user; and make them time-sensitive. Once you’ve come up with a list of CTAs that are appropriate for your campaign, A/B test them to learn which work best.
2. Get your players’ emails through giveaways, competitions, and surveys
Gathering customer data has never been easier. Instead of asking your audience to perform an action in your app directly, why not offer them something in return that will help you earn their trust, and build strong customer relationships.
Conducting surveys is a great medium to capture their information and preferences - especially if they get something from doing it. Additionally, hosting competitions and running giveaway campaigns that offer enticing prizes are great channels to not only to collect players’ information but also to gain insights into customer behavior.
3. Make in-game purchase recommendations
Monetization is one of the fundamental objectives of app development, and in-app purchases are crucial for a gaming company’s success. With data from eMarketer showing that an overwhelming $50.1 billion revenue was generated from total in-app purchases in 2020, $36.6 billion came from gaming apps alone - increasing at an annual rate of 21 percent.
Some in-game purchase recommendation strategies that you can use are:
- Sending relevant push notifications
- Featuring offers that are time-sensitive
- Triggering in-game purchase messages
4. Give incentives to download and purchase
Though in-game purchase offers are short-lived, they are one of the best game marketing strategies. Businesses can concentrate on metrics like customer lifetime value (CLTV) to design exclusive in-app promotional strategies that will help you secure your target audience for longer time periods.
Offer them perks that will give them more valuable offers like “become a VIP now to reap exclusive rewards”. Take it a step further and show off your gamers’ purchasing power to other players by giving them a badge next to their username.
5. Make use of screenshots
Screenshots are one of the first things that your audience will notice when they land on your app’s landing page. This first impression can either help your audience decide to download your game or pass onto other apps.
Screenshots give your target market the look and feel of your game, and tell them what they can expect from downloading. Focus on creating compelling visuals by avoiding text-heavy images and featuring attractive game peeks with a visually attractive color palette to make your game stand distinct from your competitors.
6. In-game referral programs
One mobile game marketing strategies that studios often miss out on is the in-game referral program. In addition to being a go-to marketing tool to increase your players, it is a cost-effective approach that doesn’t require heavy investment at all. And these in-game referrals need not be complicated, they can be as simple as “invite friends”.
Strategize your referral program by personalizing it using different copy at different points in your game. Bear in mind to allow invites for different social platforms and ensure that you make them interactive through strong visuals when shared.
Another great method to promote in-game referrals are incentives. Rewarding your existing players with valuable in-game assets is a good strategy to entice players to get their friends on board.
Want to know more about referral programs and how will they help your app captivate potential players? Read our blog, Why You Need Referral Marketing For Your Mobile Game.
7. Use psychological persuasion
Understanding consumer psychology is one of the most crucial things that business owners need to know. A FOMO (fear of missing out) mobile game marketing strategy is one of the six principles of the psychology of persuasion that helps you influence your players to purchase offers that you promote to increase conversions.
According to Strategy Online, 60 percent of millennials claim that they have made reactive purchase decisions within 24 hours after experiencing FOMO marketing. Featuring real-time purchase statistics, creating a timer to highlight urgency, offering early discounts, and featuring exclusive offers are few FOMO marketing strategies that you can apply to your mobile game to spike your sales.
8. Create campaigns that already target mobile users
Yet another strategy that helps you increase your conversion rate, especially when you’re marketing a mobile game, is mobile marketing. Allocate campaigns that you’re currently running to target mobile users specifically and leverage it to market your game to those users. Practicing this will help you invest wisely, saving you time and resources.
Fulfill your quest with mobile game marketing
Mobile game marketing is your key to the quest for success! Take control of your new game and make its marketing matter with the help of our insider tips in Mobile Game Marketing: Your Complete Guide to Success.
A higher conversion rate is every company’s objective, and incorporating these conversion rate optimization strategies will help you scale up your game exponentially. However, achieving increased conversion rates across different campaigns can be quite a challenging task when you’re inexperienced.
Partnering with a mobile game marketing agency that understands the gaming industry will help you level up your marketing efforts. Game Marketing Genie is an accomplished video game marketing agency with a team of experienced professionals that can help you nail your marketing campaigns and increase your conversions.
