The User Acquisition Toolbox

Casual Connect Europe – 2010-02-10

Who?

• Applifier is the largest cross-promotion network on Facebook

• Based in Helsinki, Finland with an office starting up in San Francisco

• Bla, bla, bla…

Das Problem

• Increased competition• Increasing price of user acquisition• Less viral channels usable for marketing

• You might need a marketing strategy!

A Marketing Strategy?

• Releasing a great game is not a ”marketing strategy”.

• Yes, you need one.• ”Let’s just buy some

advertising” is not a marketing stratey (well, technically it is, just a horrible one)

So, what do you need to do?

• Acquire users via different means• Keep users in your game by optimizing

user experience and ”The Funnel”• ???• Profit!

Getting Users – The User Acquisition Toolbox

• Paid User Acqusition• Virality• Cross-Promotion

Paid User Acquisition

Paid User Acquisition

• Facebook advertising is getting more and more expensive

• Are there alternatives?

Source: Facebook Advertising Performance Benchmarks & Insights / WebTrends, Jan 31, 2001

Paid User Acquisition

• Advertising outside of Facebook?– Can provide cheaper CPC– But you can never know if the user has an

Facebook account

• Options available– Google AdWords– TradeDoubler, affiliate programs

• ”But I’m a humble indie developer, I have no money, what do I do? Viral channels maybe?”

Virality

• ”But aren’t there less and less viral channels, so why focus on those?”

Virality Removal of viral channels

Getting banned

Virality

• It’s not just about posting to the user’s stream and sending requests

• Think of it as social media marketing that your users do for you

• But it’s not easy, for your users to market for you, you must give them something valuable to share, something they want to show off!

”Ok, that’s all great and stuff…”

• ”… but I’m still a humble indie developer, and still don’t have any money, won’t virality require traffic to begin with?”

• Yes.• New users aren’t free.• Ever.• Sorry.• But there are ways to limit your burn

rate…

Cross-Promotion

• Cost-effective way to keep fresh traffic coming in

• … but does require traffic to start with

So, Now You Have Users…

• …what next?

Optimize Your Funnel!

”Optimize My What Now?”

• The Funnel

Users comingIn via advertising

Obstacles in the game:•Bad signup process•High learning curve•Lack of tutorial instructions

Players who actually start playing your game

How Do I Improve My Funnel Performance?

• Lower learning curve• Remove obstacles from signup and initial

steps• Make help and tutorials clear

• ”How do I know where the problems are?”• Measure, analyze, listen!

Example of Bad Funnel Conversion

Incoming trafficIncoming traffic

Load time too longLoad time too long

Bad signup processBad signup process

Insufficient, unclear help and tutorial

Insufficient, unclear help and tutorial

Actual acquired users

Actual acquired users

Lost users, basically money thrown away

Example of a Bad Funnel Conversion

• Consider a ad campaign with a CPC price of €0.30 and 1000 clicks

• The funnel loses 50% of your users due to bad design

• The actual cost per acquired user was then €0.60, not 0.30€!

• So you just doubled your user acquisition cost

Example of Fixing Bad Funnel Conversion

• Step #1: How’s your load time?– People want the game now, optimize loading! Anything

that loads for over 5 seconds needs a progress bar– The Back-button is your enemy!

• Step #2: Overly complex signup– Pinpoint problem with analytics: where does the

process stop– Simplify process

• Step #3: Bad or missing help and tutorial– Add large ”HELP!!!!” buttons– Add paths for sending feedback instead of just giving

up

How Do I Measure the Funnel (and everything else)?

• Google Analytics

How Do I Measure?

• Kontagent

Another way to improve: Let the Users Talk to You!

• Do user surveys• Let the users send feedback really easily– When they hit a block, they should send you

feedback, not exit the game!– Find out what works, what doesn’t and fix the

game

Adding It All Up

• Get users:– Paid advertising– Cross-promo– Virality and social media marketing

• Make sure they stick:– Ease their game experience and listen to them

• Measure everything– Know what works, what doesn’t

THANK YOU!

Tuomas Rintatuomas@applifier.comhttp://twitter.com/trinta