The No Brainer App Launch Strategy

Coming is a case study that we just ran to show you a strategy that you should deploy when launching a brand new app.

Here’s how to run the paid to free strategy shown in the video.

Transcript:

Coming up is a case study we just ran to show you a strategy that YOU should deploy when launching a brand new app. Stay tuned.

What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P. Young and in this video I’m gonna share a little case study that we just ran for one of our apps and why I believe this case study will prove that we are the best app marketing agency in the world.

Look you can go to a traditional, other marketing agencies that will run traditional campaigns, but you know what, we come up with different and clever strategies to maximize your budget.

Let me share a case study that we just ran, because it’s gonna really highlight the fact that our strategies really do work.

Now, I’m puzzled. Frankly, I’m puzzled by why big game development companies spend hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaigns that everybody else does. Right? Like, c’mon. We all know the platforms. You go on these sites, you buy a bunch of downloads, and then you hope and pray that you hit the Top Charts. And you hope and pray that it all works out properly, right?

But when you have campaigns in our arsenal, in the backs of our pockets that we can run, that will really maximize your dollar, your ad spend, and that’s what this agency’s all about.

And that’s why I love supporting startups, because they don’t have enough budget. So, I have to come up with clever ways, clever ways to really help them. But I believe, we can help bigger agents, bigger game companies, with just strategies, that they are just like overlooking. They are just like throwing money away. Now, I’m like look, let me help you maximize every single spend because that’s what I do with startups already. Alright, let’s get to this case study.

So, here’s an app that, the, that is ours, okay? And it’s one of the crappiest apps I’ve made. And I wanted to run this case study for a crappy app. Just to show the power of it, alright?

This is an app called Spaceman Dodgeball. Look, it’s a very simple game. If you want to check it out, go check it out. Just to show you that when I say it’s really crappy and very simple, I really mean it. The graphics are simple. I think I spent about a thousand dollars. This is when I was trying to get into the casual games space, and I wanted to try different games, and this was one of them. So, I spent a thousand dollars and got it going and launched it. It’s done nothing, alright? It’s made no money. It’s pretty much nothing. But, I wanted to use this app because I wanted to show you the power of this campaign that I’m about to share with you.

Alright, so here we go. I’m just gonna show you the screenshots, so you can see how bad it is. It’s a simple app. All you’ve got to do is, there’s a bouncing ball that’s gonna be bouncing everywhere and you have to tap from left to right to avoid it. Alright? Very simple, very casual game. There it is. There are the screenshots. Got a decent amount of views. Look, there are small reviews. They don’t really mean anything.

So, one of my favorite campaigns that I’ve ran in the past is called a Pay-to-Free Campaign. Now, most people when they hear that, I should probably come up with a different name, because I made it up. But when they hear that, they’re like “Oh okay. It’s a paid app gone free.” That’s traditional. Again, that’s what traditional agencies would tell you. Oh, okay.

But here’s why we’re the best. We tell you, that you can actually run this with free apps. This is a free app, right? And, what we did was, we made one of the in-app purchases for free. Now, we only have one in-app for our case study, Remove Ads, and so, if you have ads in your game, you actually have to make the Remove Ads for free to get press on AppAdvice, and that’s what we did. We only, we pitched AppAdvice. I know the contact there really well, and he ended up covering the app on his Apps Gone Free daily post. So, tremendous amounts of downloads was driven all the time. For one of our previous apps, we did 15,000. For some of our clients, we’ve done even hundred thousand in just a couple of days, just by running this campaign, alright?

So, let me just give you the stats and show you why I think it’s valuable, and why I’m incorporating this campaign into an app launch. Because that’s my hypothesis and I want to show you that this hypothesis is right. That’s all I’m trying to do, experiment. I’m like an app marketing scientist here.

Okay, so here it is. These are the stats. I’m not gonna, I’m gonna show you everything. This is within in my iTunes account. You see, Spaceman Dodgeball did close to two thousand downloads. Now, again, that’s probably on the lower end – because it’s a crappy app – but on the high end we’ve gone a hundred thousand, and on average for a game, you’re probably going to hit anywhere from ten to 15 to 20,000 downloads a day, okay? Or for the campaign, for the life of the campaign. So, this is about a one, two, three, about a four day period that we got the, twelve thou-, uh, two thousand for.

But here’s why I would incorporate this into a launch campaign. So here’s the, the thing I want you to get out of this.

One, when you’re launching a brand new, brand new app and you have a portfolio of apps, run this campaign on some of your other apps. Especially if they’re better, and they’ve got, they’re better quality than my Spaceman Dodgeball ’cause here’s what will happen. You will get the downloads for your other app, but, and here’s what you gotta pay attention to, you will get cross-promotional activities as well.

So Paintball Rush is the other game. This is why I wanted to run this campaign. As you can see, we did a 75 percent increase week over week when we ran this campaign for Spaceman Dodgeball. So, I’m running this campaign because I’m utilizing it as a cross-promotional activity.

Again, you can even maximize it. If you’ve got pop-ups to cross-promote like all the big app developers, big app publishers do – they are cross-promoting like heck during launch week – well, you can have a pop-up. I don’t have a pop-up and I was still able to increase downloads for my other apps, for my other game, by 75 percent.

So, let me give you an example. If I were launching Paintball Rush that week, like on February 2nd as when I ran this campaign, if I was launching Paintball Rush on February 2nd, I would pick one of my older apps, here is Spaceman Dodgeball, I would make the Remove Ads for free – because maybe it’s a dying app it’s not gaining that much traction anymore anyways – I will make it for free, and I would utilize the opportunity and the downloads that will come from that free campaign to cross-promote my brand new app. Really cost-effective way of doing that, right?

Here, I’m showing you with the crappy app, that it works. Because I want to show you that it works with any other app. If you have a brilliant app, Paintball Rush when we ran this campaign, we did 15,000 downloads. So, if you have a really well-designed app, it’s gonna do a lot better than just the two thousand I did.

And here’s what’s better, okay? Here’s my other app. oSnap. It’s a camera app. Alright, we didn’t get that many, we didn’t move much units. We got eight, we moved eight units. But look at it, that’s 300 percent and that’s a paid app. So, I actually made money on this campaign with my paid apps, and it’s not even relevant to a game.

You see that cross-promotional power that this campaign has? This is what I stumbled into, and this is why I believe, like, when you’re launching an app, when you’re trying to get traction for your app, we are the best. Because we’re gonna combine all these campaigns for you, and just stack ’em, see?

Most people they go, “Here’s a budget. Boom.” We, take your budget, and we say, “Pa-pa-pa-pop.” And we just start stacking different campaigns that we can run to really maximize the dollars.

Now, I, you can hear the passion, because I’m like, “Why aren’t people doing this?” I even talked to my past clients, who are big game companies and said, “Let me run this for you.” And they’re like, “No, no, no. I’m not that interested – yet.” I’m like, “Trust me, this will work.” And so I said, forget it. Let me do it on my apps, and I’m gonna pick one of my ugliest apps to prove that this works for you. This is the power of it.

So, if you’re looking to hire us for an app launch, guess what? We can help you with the Apple Feature. Eight. I wanna say, eight clients, featured by Apple last year. Some are big, I mean, few were big – I will say a handful, like two or three were big – but the rest were all indie developers, okay? We’re gonna help you with that. We’re gonna formulate a launch plan to really maximize the downloads for you. This shows you the power of this campaign, the cross-promotional activity. Again, I’m not cross-promoting within the apps. This is just organic lift. But just think, if you’re already cross-promoting – if you aren’t, you should – if you’re already cross-promoting amongst all your other apps, why not make a few? If you’ve got a portfolio, like Ketchapp or Appsolute or any of these game publishers. If you’ve got a portfolio, guess what I’ll be doing on launch week? Every single one of my apps, especially my older ones, I’d make for free. So if I’m launching a new app on, let’s say Wednesday, guess what? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I’m gonna have every single different app going free for that particular day to push the new app into the charts.

Be clever. Let’s be clever about this.

Hope you enjoyed this campaign. We’re doing a lot more stuff. I’m gonna share a webinar soon, so bear with me if you’re not already signed up for the email list, make sure you do that. You can use the links below to sign-up for the email list. But I will be doing a seminar that shows you all the power, the unique way that we will be launching an app for you.

Alright, guys. Thank you so much for your attention and I’ll see you on the next video.