作者：Ed Vause

开发商面临的最大挑战之一是，如何保持应用的流量和引入新用户。

要应对这个挑战，通常的办法是广告（如果你的应用是免费的），有时候还可以借助更新通知和媒体报道作宣传——但不能太依赖这种办法。

更有效的一种推广策略是交叉宣传：开发商利用多种已经面市的应用提高另一种应用的销售量和宣传量，借助的应用可以是自己的产品，也可以是其他开发商的产品。

提供不同的交叉推广方案的公司有好几家，如Chartboost、Appflood、Applifier和TapforTap等。本文将给读者提供几个开发商成功运用交叉营销的案例，以作参考。

Realore工作室

除了沉迷于他们的游戏《罗马之路》系列，我们还不得不佩服这些家伙的营销手段。

从下面的游戏截图可见，这个工作室很精明地在菜单上放了一个“更多游戏”的按钮。玩家通过链接可以进入自有品牌的应用商店，进而看到更多带横幅广告的应用。

roads of rome(from pocketgamer)

realore game(from pocketgamer)

我们认为Realore还可以更进一步，也就是打上优惠促销的信息。

StoryToys工作室

StoryToys制作了很多不错的儿童游戏，也是交叉营销的好手。

注意下面这张主页截图，上面有一个漂亮的大图标，吸引着玩家点击它。

Grimm’s red riding hood(from pocketgamer)

Grimm’s sleeping beauty(from pocketgamer)

StoryToys的另一个把戏是，利用应用更新通知告诉玩家他们又发布新应用了。

另外，StoryToys还在同一天更新几个应用，这样玩家就很难错过这些时时提醒他们下载新应用的通知。

以下是几款StoryToys应用的最近更新截图。

updates(from pocketgamer)

Outfit 7

Outfit 7的《Talking Friends》下载量达到数亿次，所以现在应用商店上出现了许多不同的变体游戏。

除了利用交叉宣传，该工作室还在应用上添加视频菜单，这样玩家就可以在应用上直接观看Outfit 7发布在YouTube网站上的最新视频了。通过这种方法，就可以向许多忠实玩家大肆宣传新游戏和交叉出售它的周边商品。

例如，在撰写本文时，关于《Talking Friends Superstar》玩具视频观看量就突破200万了——可能是因为Outfit 7应用的用户群体庞大。

talking friends(from pocketgamer)

结论

当然，我们知道一个工作室在市场上可能没有那么多应用——除非是历史悠久或财力雄厚的开发商。

但是，即使你还在制作自己的第一款应用，你也应该将现在的应用作为展示下一款应用的窗口，这是一个长期策略。

如果你没有自己的应用可用于交叉宣传，有些服务可以将同类应用链接到你应用，同样可以达到交叉宣传的效果。

如果你有忠实的受众，那么你可以向他们宣传你的其他游戏，甚至是制作一个视频谈论你的升级计划。但愿以上案例启发你如何最大化现有应用的交叉推广价值。（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）

The ten commandments of app marketing,

by Ed Vause

One of the biggest challenges facing developers is how to sustain traffic levels and bring in new users to their apps.

Often this can be achieved through advertising (if you have a freemium app), and sometimes there’s a boost through updates and media coverage – but this can’t be relied on.

What we have been seeing more of – and it seems to be one of the more effective promotion tactics – is cross promotion: using multiple apps that developers have on the market to drive sales and awareness to other apps, both their own and from other developers.

With several companies out there offering different flavours of cross-promotion, including Chartboost, Appflood, Applifier, TapforTap and others, we thought we would take this opportunity to show you some best practice examples of cross marketing that some developers have been creating for themselves.

Realore Studios

Apart from being horribly addicted to the Roads of Rome series, we can’t help but admire how canny these guys are at promoting their other titles.

Take a look at the screenshots below. The studio has created a clear and nicely designed ‘more games’ link for its menu, which links through to a rich, own-brand app store with banners at the top.

We think Realore could make it even more compelling by tying in some price promotion messages too.

StoryToys

StoryToys makes fantastic apps for kids, and the studio is also a dab hand at cross selling and upselling.

Notice that this home screen also has a nice big icon on it, enticing you to click through.

StoryToys has got another trick up its sleeve, too. The developer makes use of app update notifications to do inform customers of new apps that the company has launched.

What’s more, the company updates several of its apps on the same day, effectively creating a hard-to-miss bulletin for its existing customers, alerting them that there’s a new StoryToys app to download.

See the example below, which is a recent update screen from someone who has a few StoryToys apps installed.

Outfit 7

Outfit 7′s Talking Friends apps have been downloaded in their millions, and there are now many different variations on the app stores.

Aside from good cross promotion, the studio has also added a video menu to its apps so you can play the latest Outfit 7 videos on YouTube direct from the app. This helps the company hype its forthcoming products and cross-sell its merchandise to a large audience of engaged users.

For instance, at the time of writing, the video of Outfit 7′s new Talking Friends Superstar toy has had over 2 million views – likely from the studio’s huge installed base of app users.

Conclusion

Of course, we recognise that you may not have a plethora of apps out in the market – only developers that have been around for a while, or those with deep pockets, do.

However, even if you’re working on your very first app, your long term strategy should be to use your app as a window to your existing or future products.

And if you don’t have your own apps to cross-promote with, there are services out there that will link you in to similar apps to still deliver that cross-promotion effect.

You have a captive audience to which you can promote other games, or even put in a video that talks about a future update. Hopefully, the examples above will get you thinking about how you can maximise your app’s real estate and get it working as hard as possible for you.(source:pocketgamer)