How to Level Up Your Mobile Game for the Holidays

Thanksgiving is within the books, which suggests the vacation season has formally begun (except you’ve been listening to Mariah Carey since November 1st). Cellular app entrepreneurs can nonetheless make the most of the remaining holidays to optimize their cell video games with seasonal person acquisition methods and content material. The vacations are an extraordinarily profitable time for apps and video games, so how can entrepreneurs capitalize on person conduct and seasonality to drive new gamers and enhance present participant engagement? On this publish we’ll unwrap:

• Mobile Holiday Wins
• User Behavior During the Holidays
• How to Get Your Game Ready
• guaranteed app ranking
• mobile marketing success stories
• aso api

Cellular Vacation Wins

The vacations are prime time for cell video games. Customers have extra free time to be on their telephones and sport whereas having day without work of labor or being on college break. Final 12 months, buyer spending hit new data in Google Play and the Apple App Retailer. Some notable wins embody:

• World spending throughout the App Retailer and Google Play on Christmas Day 2019 topped $277 million (11.3% year-over-year progress) in keeping with Sensor Tower Retailer Intelligence estimates.
• Most of that spend was on cell video games, which hit $210 million and generated 76% of all income throughout each app shops (8% year-over-year progress).
• Within the App Retailer alone, buyer spending reached $1.42 billion between Christmas Eve and New 12 months’s Eve — a 16% improve from 2018.
• On New 12 months’s Day 2020, customers spent $386 million within the App Retailer — a 20% improve from 2019 and a brand new single-day file.

Person Habits Throughout the Holidays

Why precisely is that this festive time of 12 months so fruitful for cell video games? The elevated person spending and longer session lengths that come on the finish of the 12 months can seemingly be attributed to 3 tendencies:

1. Folks have day without work of labor or college and have extra time to be on their telephones and play cell video games
2. Smartphones are a sizzling merchandise to present — Apple bought 72.9 million iPhones within the fourth quarter of 2019 alone
3. The joy that comes with getting a brand new cellphone makes customers extra prepared to obtain new apps and video games onto their gadgets

Tailor your person acquisition technique through the holidays to capitalize on these tendencies by creating seasonal content material and offers for customers. You’ll maintain present gamers engaged and entice new gamers to obtain your sport.

The best way to Get Your Sport Prepared

Cellular sport advertisers can optimize new person acquisition and present person engagement through the holidays with these seasonalized methods.

Rethink App Retailer Optimization (ASO)

By making seasonal tweaks to your App Retailer Optimization (ASO) course of, you possibly can entice new gamers, re-engage churned gamers, and enhance engagement with present gamers.

Sprinkle your sport description and key phrases with seasonal copy to look in searches for vacation content material. Additionally, replace your promotional textual content and outline to showcase new options that you simply may be launching through the holidays.

Give your sport icon a festive makeover, whereas retaining it recognizable, and add vacation imagery like snow or items to your product web page screenshots. These modifications could entice extra customers to obtain your sport, and will enhance your possibilities at getting featured or improve your app discoverability within the app shops.

Add Seasonal Content material to Your Sport

Making seasonal modifications to your sport itself might help drive conversions. One cell sport drove a 50% elevate in in-app buy income by including Halloween-themed gadgets and characters. Take into account providing avatars seasonal costumes or decorations for buy, or just replace buildings, characters and different content material in your sport for the vacations. Gamers will really feel the urgency to interact with limited-edition and time-sensitive content material.

Should you’re selling seasonal content material in your product web page, be sure you ship with the in-game expertise. Customers shouldn’t should play till stage 20 to lastly get a style of the enjoyable content material you marketed.

Run Promotional Occasions or Offers

Particular affords or promotions might help improve installs and participant engagement, whereas seasonal in-game content material and occasions can improve in-app purchases. Should you run a promotion or deal, like a seasonal reward or bonus factors for returning to the sport, don’t overlook to promote in your product web page. Make certain the deal and its phrases are simple to grasp and accessible to your gamers.

Should you ran a earlier in-game occasion (limited-time battles, challenges, scavenger hunts, and so on.) that was profitable, duplicate that occasion for the vacations. Reuse sport mechanics from the occasion whereas including a seasonal twist to rope in gamers to take part.

Enhance Advert Spend

When you may be actively updating your product web page and cell sport for the vacations, there are over 950,000 gaming apps within the App Retailer and 380,000 within the Google Play Retailer that might be doing the identical factor. To remain aggressive, improve your advert spend through the end-of-the-year holidays. Additionally, don’t silo your advert spend. Diversify advert spend throughout a number of person acquisition channels to search out new gamers, uncover new insights, and restrict threat.