作者：Eyal Rabinovich

涉足手机应用领域的人士都知道，这里蕴藏多少机会以及挑战性。2011年的全球游戏营收超过600亿美元，而且在游戏软件领域，手机游戏领域的发展空间最突出，到2015年这片市场的估值有望达到75亿美元，比当前的27亿美元高出3倍。

每一天市场上有成千上万的应用问世，大家都积极加入此有利可图的增长市场；但只有少数人在此获得成功。有99%的手机应用最终都逐步淡出视野。

因此开发者和工作室要如何将自己的应用或游戏变成其中富有价值的1%？

cross promotion(from marketingmanner.com)

手机游戏依然处在初级阶段

和多数新兴技术和行业一样，手机游戏领域依然处在探究阶段。在2007年1月9日iPhone问世前，手机主要用于打电话和收发短信。

如今我们通过手机进行各式各样的操作，其中包括玩游戏。有些游戏变得非常风靡，它们甚至跨越至商品化的创收领域，成为最具辨识度的品牌——这是所有开发者和工作室都希望达到的状态。但这绝非易事。

虽然行业依然在寻找自己的立足点，但它带给我们一个分化、多元化的行业面貌。从不同操作系统和设备规格到各种游戏题材、目标族群、地理位置及商业模式，这里没有标准化模式。这未必是件坏事。用户显然从选择权中受益，它让开发者享有更多空间，变得更富创造性，但这同时也将事情复杂化。

行业面貌不仅处于变化中；而且还呈加速状态。今年，免费增值商业模式占据手机游戏总创收的55%，应用商店持续涌入无穷尽的免费游戏。最终结果是，这给持续留意最新“闪耀新玩具”的玩家带来无风险的游戏体验。用户的生命周期更短，内容循环更快速，流通量保持稳定。

玩家面临的风险持续缩减，因此开发和推广当前120多万款应用的成本需要开发者自己承担。对于工作室来说，开发简单休闲游戏的最低成本约是5万美元。有2-3名成员的独立开发团队会在开发时间中投入5个月到2年。这不仅涉及所投入的时间和金钱；还包括名气和品牌。

只要你的游戏准备就绪，开发者就要开始担心曝光度问题，当然这里还涉及持续提升的用户获取成本（游戏邦注：自今年1月以来，iOS的营销成本提高56%，Android提高70%）。

但在陷入沮丧情绪之前，要记住2点：

1）行业2011年的创收是600亿美元；2）目前行业存在若干不仅能够处理而且发挥上述问题有利作用的高成本效益创新方式。

介绍交叉推广

这里的目标是曝光你的游戏，无需进行大把现金投资。这就轮到交叉推广发挥作用。这是个传统营销概念，在手机游戏领域发挥显著作用。

从传统角度来说，交叉推广被视作是一种营销形式，在此某产品的用户成为相关产品的目标用户（例如，Martha Stewart在The Martha Stewart Show中引入烹饪书宣传）。在手机游戏领域，交叉推广通常是，某游戏的广告旨在宣传另一来自同家发行商的游戏。

通常来说，交叉推广有如下3个基本指导方针：

1. 合理发挥你的潜在广告空间

由于交叉推广是种广告形式，首先要做的就是弄清能够进行广告的位置。标记所有你能够被动呈现或积极推广其他游戏的地点。在这之后，你需要决定推广什么及在何处进行推广。这种交叉推广方式在手机游戏领域非常高效，原因有2点：

1）它降低风险，因为这里不涉及任何现金成本。通过身兼发行商和广告商角色，排除所有中间商手续费。

2）它排除任何关于是否击中目标市场的担忧。你瞄准的就是目标市场；他们已体验你的其中一款作品。这具有可行性（查看图表）。

chart 01 from gamesindustry.biz

这是最简单的交叉推广形式。我们可以通过广告网络学习更多经验，它们通过激励机制促使玩家执行不同操作。虽然这对广告商来说不是什么新概念，但开发者依然鲜少通过激励性交叉推广方式推广他们的产品——这是种浪费。

2. 跨游戏奖励措施

给予玩家尝试你其他游戏的理由。这包括许多方面，从原本无法访问的杰出动画、加锁内容，到通常需要购买的虚拟货币和道具。奖励玩家会提高他们在游戏中的粘性，给新作品带来曝光度。这一特别的交叉推广方式将转换率和创收提高3倍。

但交叉推广带给我们更大机会，因为你控制推广和被推广游戏的内容，这带来第3点指导方针：

3. 通过点对点整合形成严密概念

在促使用户体验你的新游戏方面取得成功后，未来持续推广新作品非常重要。若你能够让玩家习惯于在不同游戏中进行转移，要进行此操作就简单许多。要高效做到这点，无需每次都白费力气做重复工作，创建能够轻松被玩家辨认且长久维持下去的连贯构思非常重要。要实现此目标的一个方式是，在两端植入交叉推广内容，以创造连续性感觉。

MoMinis的PlayScape就是上述操作模式的典型例子。作为大型交叉推广游戏平台，玩家可以无缝隙地由某游戏切换至另一游戏中，同时还能够赚取经验积分和虚拟货币，完成操作任务。他们不仅能够接触到平台的所有游戏，而且体验不会遭到任何破坏——通过PlayScape平台的用户体验内容更长时间，频率也更高，给予平台的评价超越它所推广的游戏（游戏邦注：它在Google Play的评级的是4.7）。

chart 02 from gamesindustry.biz

这里的想法是以有组织的方式推广游戏。和打扰玩家体验不同，促销内容变成体验的一部分。这不仅极大提高曝光游戏的可能性，同时还创造玩家和品牌之间的深层次粘性。

考虑事项

需要记住的是，玩家追求多元化，这给交叉推广带来机会。但玩家不希望被广告包围——因此在推广新内容时要保持警惕。

除此之外，记住交叉推广本身是项依赖于数据分析、过滤优化和测试（越来越多的测试）的交易。如果交叉推广构思让你觉得越来越有趣，你可以通过加入既有平台或创造自己的平台充分利用其优势。

这也许是高效曝光游戏的最低成本渠道。对于那些想要挖掘这片市场丰富发展空间的开发者来说，在开发和推广过程中保持创造性必不可少。但若你有足够内容和关注度，且遵循上述指导方针，你多半能够成为行业少数的1%成功者。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Mobile Games: Making it to the 1%

By Eyal Rabinovich

Eyal Rabinovich, Co-Founder of MoMinis, discusses the wonders of cross-promotion in the mobile market

The following article is a guest post from Eyal Rabinovich, Co-Founder of MoMinis.

Anyone involved in the mobile app industry knows just how much opportunity there is and just how challenging it can be to capture it. Global gaming revenue in 2011 has exceeded $60 billion and within the gaming software market, mobile gaming is experiencing the largest growth opportunity and will represent a $7.5 billion worldwide market by 2015, tripling from $2.7 billion today.

Tens of thousands of apps are launched daily, all attempting to tap into this lucrative and growing market; yet relatively few find success. But ninety-nine percent of all mobile apps disappear sooner or later.

So how do developers and studios get their app or game to become part of the valuable 1% category?

Mobile gaming still in its infancy

Like most emerging technologies and industries, mobile gaming is still in the process of figuring things out. Until the iPhone was launched on January 9, 2007, a mobile phone was something most of us used to make calls on and maybe send and receive text messages.

Today, we use our phones for virtually everything, including playing games. Some games have become so popular they’ve crossed over into the revenue-generating world of merchandising and became the most recognizable brands today – a situation that every developer or studio would like to be in. That’s not so easy though.

While it’s still finding its footing, the industry presents us with a very fragmented and diversified landscape. From the different operating systems and device specifications to the various game genres, target demographic, geographies and business models, there is no standardization. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Consumers certainly benefit from the choice and it gives developers the latitude to be more creative, but it does make things more complicated.

And the landscape is not only changing; it’s accelerating. This year the freemium business model accounted for 55 percent of all mobile game revenues, and the app stores are constantly flooded with an endless stream of free games. The result is a risk-free gaming experience for the players who are constantly on the lookout for the latest “shiny new toy.” The lifetime of the user is shorter, the circulation of content is faster and turnover is constant in this market.

As risk is constantly shrinking for the players, the developers carry the price of developing and distributing the more than 1.2 million apps out there. For a studio, the cost to develop a simple casual game starts at about $50,000 and up. An independent development team with two or three people can be expected to spend anywhere from five months to two years in development time. It’s not only the time and money being invested; it’s also reputation and brand.

Once your game is ready, the developer needs to start worrying about getting it discovered, and of course, there are the user acquisition costs which are constantly rising (app marketing costs jumped by 56 percent on iOS and 70% on Android since January this year).

But before getting too discouraged, let’s remember two things:

1) $60 billion in revenues for 2011, and; 2) There are some innovative and cost-effective ways to not only address but also leverage the issues mentioned above to your advantage.

Introducing cross promotion

The goal is to have your game discovered and without major out of pocket investment. That’s where cross promotion comes in. It’s an old marketing concept that is proving to be very effective in mobile gaming.

Traditionally cross promotion was considered to be a form of marketing where customers of one product were targeted with a related product (i.e. Martha Stewart included cook book promotions on The Martha Stewart Show). In mobile games, cross promotion is usually advertisements in one game promoting another game from the same publisher.

Generally, there are three basic cross-promotional guidelines:

1. Properly leverage your potential advertising space.

Since cross promotion is really a form of advertising, the first thing to do is figure out where you can advertise. Map all the spots where you can passively present or actively push your other games. After that, you will need to decide what to push and where. This method of cross promotion is proving to be highly effective in mobile gaming for two reasons:

1) It makes the risk smaller since there are no out-of-pocket expenses. By taking the on role of both the publisher and advertiser, any middleman commissions are eliminated as well.

2) It eliminates any concern about whether or not you are hitting your target market. You are; they’re already playing one of your games. And it works (see chart).

This is really the simplest form of cross promotion. A lot more can be learned from advertising networks that use incentives to drive players to perform different actions. While not a new concept for advertisers, incentivized cross promotion is still rarely used by developers to cross promote their own content – and that’s a waste.

2. Use cross-game incentives.

Give players a reason to try your other games. This could include anything from cool animation, locked content that can’t otherwise be accessed, to virtual currency and items that would normally need to be purchased. Rewarding players increases their engagement in the game and leads to discovery of your new game. This particular method of cross promotion has been shown to triple conversions and revenue.

But cross promotion presents us with an even bigger opportunity because you control the content on the promoting and promoted games, which leads to the third guideline:

3. Develop a tight concept with end-to-end integration.

Once you’ve been successful in getting a user to play your new game, it’s important to continue promoting new ones in the future. It will be easier to do this if you can get them accustomed and comfortable to moving from game to game. In order to effectively do that without having to reinvent the wheel each time, create a coherent concept that is easily recognizable by the user and can last over time. One way to achieve this is by integrating cross-promotional content on both ends in order to create a feeling of continuity.

MoMinis’ PlayScape is a good example of how this can be done. As one big cross-promotional gaming platform, players can move around seamlessly from one game to another while earning experience points and virtual currency, and completing missions. Not only do they get exposed to all of the games on the platform but the experience is non-disruptive – users with PlayScape play longer, in a higher frequency and rate it higher than all of the games it promotes (4.7 in Google Play).

The idea here is to promote the games in organic ways. Instead of intruding on the gamers’ experience, the promotions can become a part of the experience. This not only greatly enhances the chances of getting a game discovered, but creates deeper engagement between the player and your brand.

Things to consider

It’s important to remember that players are looking for diversity, and that presents opportunities for cross promotion. However, gamers don’t want to be nagged or bombarded with advertisements – so be mindful when pushing new content.

Beyond that, keep in mind that cross promotion is a trade of its own that relies heavily on data analysis, funnel optimization and testing (and more and more testing). If the idea of cross promotion is sounding more and more interesting, you can take advantage of it by either joining an existing platform or creating one yourself.

It’s probably the least expensive way that delivers the greatest chances of success for getting a game discovered. For developers wanting to capture a slice of the market’s vast potential, being creative while developing and promoting is a must. But if you have enough content, the attention, and follow the guidelines above, you could be on track to make it to that magical 1 percent.（Source：gamesindustry）