How to generate word-of-mouth buzz for your mobile game

We all want to share the cool things that happen to us, so that our friends and family can hopefully experience them too. That’s the very definition of word-of-mouth, and one of the starting points for Megacool: we wanted to make it as easy as possible for players to share the things they love. Here’s why word-of-mouth is such a big deal in mobile game marketing, and some ways in which you can help create that buzz for your own game.

Why is word-of-mouth important?

Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful for one simple reason: people generally trust the things that their friends tell them. That’s what friends are for! Just think about how often you’ve received a personal recommendation for an app, and then gone and downloaded it. Compare that to how likely you are to react to an ad for the same app.

One other advantage of word-of-mouth marketing: it can cost way less than the vast advertising budgets needed to make a splash on paid channels. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that word-of-mouth is “free” — it’ll still take time and effort to build up buzz around your game. But because it happens organically, it can potentially snowball into something huge for comparatively little cost.

It doesn’t take much for a small amount of hype for your game to snowball into something huge.

How to get people talking about your game

When it comes to word-of-mouth, it’s all about emotions. Whether your game is as frightening as Five Nights at Freddy’s or as maddeningly addictive as Flappy Bird, triggering an emotional reaction is going to get players talking.

Those are two extreme examples, so don’t feel discouraged if your game doesn’t have players dropping their iPads in terror, or isn’t already a viral hit on YouTube. Anything that stirs up strong feelings will be a hook to get players talking: winning a boss fight, nailing a hole-in-one, or even failing in a ridiculous way.

How not to GTA. Can’t beat an epic fail.

How to REALLY get people talking about your game

Okay, so you’ve got your players hooked — now what? You’ve got to help those players take that step from I am enjoying this to I am going to tell others about this. The easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it — so try and strip out as many roadblocks from the process as you can.

Some of the things that we’ve seen make a difference at Megacool include:

• Make sharing seem natural — keep your players in the game. Let them see exactly what they’re about to share: Crossy Road shows a Polaroid-style preview of your tweet, and C.A.T.S. lets you see the GIF while you’re checking the post-match battle report.

Okay, a serious GIF this time :D Megacool’s integration with C.A.T.S. allows for seamless sharing, with a GIF preview visible in-app.

• Customised that share text — be creative, engaging, fun and human. Look at what your players say when they share on Twitter or Facebook — maybe there are some examples there that you could use in the game itself?

Customised, personal sharing text — like this in Fun Run — can make all the difference to getting players to share.

• Choose your moment — there’s nothing worse as a player than having a game interrupted by an annoying pop-up trying to get you to do something else. Instead, trigger the opportunity to share at the right moment — when your player has completed a match or set a new high-score. As an added bonus, their emotional reaction to that event will still be fresh in their minds, so they’re even more likely to share. Timing is everything.

Example of how Steppy Pants only prompt you to share whene you hit a new highscore.

If it’s not easy for players to share something, they probably won’t do it. Or even worse, if the sharing experience is particularly clunky — say, they have to close the game, open Twitter, and share manually — then they might not come back at all…

Reaching MORE people isn’t as good as reaching the RIGHT people

Thanks to the massive reach of social media, making a recommendation is easier than ever. But just because Facebook and Twitter have made it faster and easier to spread buzz around your game, that doesn’t mean that they’re the best platform for it.

Messaging services are gold-dust for generating word-of-mouth hype. Think about it: these are personal messages that are ultra-targeted by the sender. If someone sends you a GIF of a game via iMessage or WhatsApp, that means they’ve specifically picked you as someone that they think will get the most out of it. It’s hard to think of a stronger recommendation than that.

We’ve seen this in action at Megacool: over 60% of all sharing via our platform comes from messaging services over social. Better yet, those messages convert at a much higher rate than social sharing.

Game recommendation sliding into your DMs like

Help your players to help you

There’s one thing you need to keep in mind when trying to make your game into a word-of-mouth smash: your players will want to share cool moments from your games. You just need to help them do it.

That doesn’t mean you need to incentivise players to hit the share button with in-game items. Memorable, emotional gameplay moments, added to a seamless sharing experience, will result in players telling the world that they need to check out your game.

Thanks for reading! The full version of this post originally appeared on the GameAnalytics blog. To get in touch to find out how Megacool can help your game grow, head to our website or tweet us — we’d love to hear from you!