Marketing and Monetization for Mobile IndiesLessons from the trenches

Keith KatzCo-Founder

XL: A Bunch of Indies Under One Roof

Stuff we’ll talk about

● What partners do I use for marketing & monetization?

● Where do I test/soft launch my game?

● How much cash do I need and where do I spend it?

● How do I test my icon?

● What category should I be in?

● How can I improve my early retention?

First Marketing Exercise: What Game to Build

● Look for a “goldilocks” pie slice

● Find successful games like yours

● More important (and harder): find failures like yours

Sample Analysis:

Services Our Indies Currently Use (iOS)

Testing/Research Acquisition Monetization

=SDK Required

Data Sources and Analysis

Mid/Hard-Core Dungeon Crawler Mid-Core Brawler

All data comes from Flurry: FREE

Southeast Asia is the New Canada

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Chartboost Daily eCPI for BAMF!on iPhone/iPod Touch

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Chartboost Daily eCPI for BAMF!On iPad

Canada Indonesia

What about Australia and New Zealand?

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Daily eCPI for MQ on Facebook

Australia Canada

How NOT to do icon testing

Attempt #1 Attempt #3

CTR Range: .52%-.57%

CTR Range: .44%-.52%

How (maybe, we think) to do icon testing

Control image and copy in all 4 ads

Actual icon we’re testing

.717% CTR

.618% CTR

1.085% CTR

1.194% CTR

Paid vs Organic Installs

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Category Consideration

Week 6, 255 installs: rank 154 in strategy / 238 adventure

Week 4, 231 installs: rank 377 in arcade / 452 action

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Arcade Action

Tutorial Stage Completion: BAMF

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Maximal Level Reached in Day 0

Rolling Retention Day 1

Contact:Keith@executionlabs.com

@Ztakk