It seems to be clear that there are a lot of developers struggling to get some attention to their apps, me as well. There have also been nice advices in this forum and it seems that there is a lot of knowhow and I”m eagerly hoping to learn from people who are more experienced and wiser on marketing than me.

Currently I think that the key to success could be really customizing your marketing plan. I mean, learning from other developers but really thinking that what could work with my apps and what would make them to stand out. I can share what I”ve been doing with my apps and what I”ve been thinking of doing. Hopefully someone finds it useful!

I have made three games:
1. Rhythm Sheep
2.
3. Color Match

Rhythm Sheep has the top priority in my marketing efforts and in my opinion it’s the best of those three so I will tell a bit about it’s marketing. The game is about repeating the rhythm you hear as accurately as possible. It should be playable by anyone (there are easy levels in the beginning), but the main target group is people who play some instruments or otherwise are interested in testing and drilling their music skills.

What I’ve done already:

I’ve done some basic stuff for marketing Rhythm Sheep: posted to online forums (android and music -related), told my friends, wrote about the game in twitter, facebook, google plus. These methods have some effect, but getting 5 new installs in a day instead of typical 3 isn’t really what you would hope for a successful marketing? I also made  website to have a showcase of all the games… and to appear a bit more professional.

Ideas for more successful promotion:

The game is about rhythms and music, and I think it might actually be useful (and fun) for people learning music. So, the genre should be taken into account in marketing. Instead of trying… and trying… and trying to get the game reviewed in some popular android-related forum, maybe I should target mainly music related places and bloggers talking about music? I’ve done that a little bit, but with no luck. I am planning also to spread some ads to nearby music schools, but that kind of advertising is very local.

A good game advertises itself…?

Another vision about marketing I have, is that the game should have some built-in mechanics so that it starts to spread as soon as a handful of people are liking it. People who are playing it should have some reason for telling their friends to install the game. First step towards something like that was the Rhythm Sheep Hall of Fame () Basically players can submit their score and see their name and screenshot on the website, awed by other players. That’s a really light-weight implementation, but I didn’t want to waste a lot of time implementing something advanced only to find out nobody cares. And now I wasted only little time to find out the same thing So, it hasn’t been a success, but who knows, maybe it will get some more hall-of-fame submitters later.

Future thoughts:

I have also other ideas of features that would make people to spread the word to their friends. For example: weekly/monthly competitions, level editor, more feedback from your progress, more educational content,… But I have kind of decided that I should get at least a bit more installs before I’m willing to spend more development efforts.

So, here were some of my ideas about marketing. Hopefully someone finds them useful even though this was definitely not “How I succeeded big time: follow these 5 easy steps” -kind of post. I have also thought of writing a blog about my experiences of starting android development and marketing (and share install figures etc.), but the same problem remains. If I can”t get people to find (and install) my games, would I be able to get any more than few readers to my blog? So instead of trying to promote my games and website, I would also have to promote my blog somehow.

Customized strategy for app marketing is a great post written by Turskagames. Post is well written and facts of Android Marketing are explained as quickly and succinctly as possible.
We really appreciate his consent for showing his posts in our blog!!