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Reaching the Top 25 on iOS

After creating a great iOS game – using prototyping and everything – you’ll be ready to release it on the App Store.
But how do you make sure your game gets noticed by the players? If you only release it, and don’t do anything additionally to promote the game, the odds are high that it will become a commercial failure.

A while ago, I wrote about social game marketing and cross-promotion, primarily stating that relying on viral spreading for social network games alone is far from enough, and that cross-promotion (recommending other games within a game) is one of the keys to success.

On iOS, cross-promotion is widely used as well. One thing that’s different compared to social network games is that, on Apple’s App Store, games mentioned in the Top 25 Overall get a lot more exposure than games that aren’t.

Moreover, it’s likely that a nicely done game becomes a commercial failure if the game didn’t get mentioned in any of these lists.

In 2010, a marketing agency conducted a survey (with results published in this article in Casual Connect Magazine), and ranked people’s preferred methods to discover new Apps (this survey was not specifically targeting gamers):

  1. Top 25 Overall
  2. Categories
  3. Featured – New
  4. Featured – What’s Hot
  5. Search
  6. Featured – Personalized Recommendations
  7. Ads in Other Apps
  8. Most Popular Topics

So in order to be really successful on iOS, you’ll have to make sure your game gets listed. For example, you may need about 40k installs in a 24-hour period to get into the Top 25 Overall Free on the U.S. App Store.

And how can you get such a huge amount of installs in 24 hours? By using a short burst of advertising and cross-promotion, or as the marketing agency who conducted the survey mentions on their website:
“We do this by recommending quality, useful apps during installation or at other appropriate times, like achieving levels during gameplay, allowing advertisers’ apps to be discovered and installed.”

Whether it is to self-publish your game, or to know how to recognize a good iOS games publisher – If you’re serious about the launch of your iOS game, I warmly recommend reading the Casual Connect magazine article.

Just as there are several services for cross-promotion for social games (as mentioned in my earlier post), there’s also plenty of choice on iOS – the following article lists some of the options.

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