One glance at the statistics should be enough to confirm that we are in something of a “golden age” for mobile gaming. It is anticipated that over the period from 2023 to 2027, revenue generated from mobile games worldwide will record an annual growth rate of more than 7%, thereby leading to a projected market volume of US$376.7 billion.
And 2023 has continued to deliver big developments in mobile gaming. We have seen the ever-greater mainstreaming of the likes of cloud gaming and augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) gaming (the announcement of Apple’s Vision Pro indicating that AR and VR are finally moving from “could be…” to “actually are” status).
There is also continuing to be a lot of talk – and action – in relation to hyper-casual games, cross-platform gaming, subscription models, and so many more intriguing and potentially revolutionary mobile gaming trends and concepts.
So, your mobile game could take any of an exceedingly wide range of exciting forms in 2023. That, in turn, will give you much to talk about when presenting your game to target audiences. But how can you promote and advertise your mobile game while achieving genuine growth and return on investment (ROI)?
The above steps should help take you from ambitions to reality when it comes to marketing – and growing – your mobile game.
Be Clear About Your Mobile Game’s Target Audience
If you don’t know what potential players you will be aiming at with your mobile game (and, consequently, its marketing), how can you be sure that your finite marketing resources will be used efficiently? The answer is that you can’t.
So, considering such factors as the genre of the game, its features, and the markets in which the game will be available, you will need to narrow down your target audience with regard to such parameters as the players’ location, age, and gender. This, in turn, will help you make highly informed decisions on the marketing of your game.
Invest Time and Effort in App Store Optimization (ASO)
If you’re familiar with the concept of search engine optimisation (SEO), and you think of app stores such as Google’s Play Store or Apple’s App Store as “search engines” for mobile games, you will probably already instinctively know what app store optimization – or ASO – is.
Basically, it is the practice of making the changes and tweaks necessary in order to make an app more visible to human users in the app stores.
Effective ASO will help give your mobile game higher rankings in app store search results than its competitors. This, in turn, will help organically increase the number of downloads your mobile game attracts, thereby also helping to drive down the cost of user acquisition.
Through techniques such as using the right keywords in your game’s app title and description, making the content on your game’s app store page relevant to local audiences, and including engaging screenshots and trailers, you can help put your game on a stronger path to growth in 2023.
Put Together Ad Creatives for Your Mobile Game That Actually Work
The extremely broad field of mobile game marketing can effectively be separated into two categories: organic marketing and paid marketing.
“Organic marketing” can be considered to refer to the various marketing strategies out there that are technically “free” – such as posting about your mobile game on the game’s official social media account, or the aforementioned ASO. By contrast, the term “paid marketing” is applied to the paid marketing campaigns that take place across various ad networks.
The sphere of paid mobile game marketing merits an in-depth article of its own – so, of course, we can’t go into great detail on this point. But you should certainly not be underestimating the importance of putting together suitably compelling ad creatives for your game.
You can help ensure that through such steps as carefully accounting for the game’s genre, features, and target audience in the writing of your scripts, keeping your ads short and simple, and undertaking thorough research on your competitors’ ads. Doing the latter, for example, will enable you to better determine what is and is not likely to work for your own mobile game marketing.
With that said, both organic and paid marketing are an excellent form of mobile games UA, providing scalable opportunities to grow the user base of the games.
Work Alongside Reputable Mobile Game Growth Partners
The fact that you are reading this relatively broadly titled piece on mobile game marketing might indicate that you are inexperienced in using even some of the most commonly used techniques for the promotion of mobile games in 2023.
Certainly, there is a lot that needs to be tied together when it comes to assembling the most impactful mobile game marketing campaign. The complexity of the various measures you will need to adopt – encompassing both paid and organic channels – will be heightened by the nature of mobile game marketing as an ongoing process rather than a “one-time-only” act. In other words, you will need to get your target audiences interested in your game… and then keep them interested.
With that in mind, you are likely to be highly appreciative of the assistance that well-qualified external professionals can provide. For example, SuperScale offer various mobile game marketing solutions as part of their All-Inclusive Solution, including such components as the production of high-quality creatives, devising the right campaign strategy, reporting, and many more.
And naturally, there are many other organisations out there that can also provide highly impactful mobile game growth services, helping to unleash your mobile game’s revenue and growth potential.
The above is not, of course, an exhaustive rundown of everything you will need to think about when you are attempting to plot a course of sustained growth for your mobile game in 2023. Hopefully, however, we will have got you sufficiently inspired and informed so that you can quickly get to work on making your mobile game growth strategy truly “2020s-ready”. Good luck!
