Despite “games” is the most popular app category by volume, the abundance of choice lays the foundation for an increased competition. No matter your mobile game has an outstanding idea and the gameplay, without a killer marketing strategy and a little luck it has low chances to climb to the top. What is k factor and why should you care?
Viral marketing: brief overview
Viral marketing is a marketing technique that is used to increase brand awareness or achieve any other marketing objective (create marketing buzz, and ramp up product sales, just to name a few) through processes that are analogs to the spread of a virus. It is defined by two key parameters, i.e. k-factor aka the viral coefficient and the viral cycle time* [1]. K-Factor: definition The term k-factor (or viral coefficient) is used in viral marketing to depict the growth rate of a mobile game/app/web app (please, have a look here to see what solutions we offer). The term has been borrowed from epidemiology, where it describes the state of a virus. If it has a k-factor that equals 1, then the virus is in the state of neither growth or decline, i.e. it is “steady”. The k-factor that is greater or less than 1 indicates exponential growth or decline correspondingly. In marketing, the case with the k-factor is practically the same as it describes the level of mobile game distribution and its infection or virus. Let’s have a look at the example to clear up the matter. Having just submitted your mobile game to an app store or having decided to go social first (and launching it on Facebook, for instance), most often your friends are the first to download your new product. Then your friends that have just downloaded a mobile game start inviting their friends in return. The snowball is consequently rolling and your user base is increasing. K-factor is calculated as follows: K = i x c, where K is K-factor, i is the number of invites sent by a user, c is an average conversion rate** of those invites in percent (%). For example, there were initially 10 mobile game players that have sent 10 invites each. As a result, those 10 invites converted 2 customers or 20%. Thus, to have k-factor calculated, we get 10 x 0.2 = 2, which shows exponential growth (just like it is used in terms of epidemiology). After the first cycle, you are likely to get 30 customers, and after the fifth cycle this number will equal 630, for instance: (table)
What is a good k-factor?
When k factor marketing and in order to achieve true viral growth, it is critical to keep this coefficient higher than 1. Even if the number is by 0.01 greater than 1, your user base is going to grow and your mobile game will slowly spread. Apparently, the coefficient is normally used in free-to-play (F2P) games with freemium monetization strategy as in mobile games where players have to pay first, its usage doesn’t make any sense. What are the standard invite options? Existing players Username, smart match, contact list are just some of the options that are often offered to mobile game players. However, forwarding invites to the existing players won’t improve the k-factor, but help to keep users engaged. Game players just love challenging their friends! Social media is doubtlessly a sure-fire choice when searching for an option to increase your user base. With more than 1.2 billion users, sending invites to the friends that are on the social behemoth is a must. Nevertheless, you can always include other minor social networks (like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat) depending on your mobile game’s target audience. Candy Crush Saga is probably the best example of a game that has taken the full advantage of Facebook. That’s where the product was initially launched and that’s where the major part of its user base has originated. The game offered its players an option to send friend invites as well as to share extra moves (+3 ones) with them. Tips for the finale
In order to achieve true viral growth, it is essential to keep your product’s k-factor greater than 1 and its viral cycle time as short as possible. Therefore, make sure to discuss the integration of such functionality with the core game loop already at the stage of product discussion with your vendor (please, visit r-stylelab.com to see what solutions we offer). Well-thought-out design and professional execution will surely increase your product’s chances on the way to success! *Viral cycle time is a time index that indicates within what period of time a mobile game manages to ramp the number of players. **Conversion rate is metrics that measures the number (in percent) of invites sent to new users that have converted into new mobile game players.
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