3 cross-marketing options for mobile game developers

Cross-promotion is an underrated but very useful mobile advertising tool. Cross promotion is an effective way to increase application downloads, drive traffic, and increase revenue. If you are not sure that cross-advertising is successful in promoting, then you should consider the main advantages of this method before discussing three ways to use cross-advertising in your mobile game marketing strategy.

What is cross-advertising?

Cross-marketing is a collaborative promotion strategy in which two or more publishers promote each other's products through their own products and services. For example, an app for students can use its space to advertise games for teens, and vice versa. As a result, two applications connect to each other’s audience and expand their reach.

The benefits of cross marketing are:

• the ability to promote the application at minimal cost or for free;

• contact cost reduction;

• increase in target audience;

• additional PR;

• an additional source of monetization.

Now let's dive into the top three ways to cross-promote mobile games.

Internal cross promotion

Publishers with a portfolio of applications in their portfolio can promote other applications in their own products. The most successful example in this regard may be the strategy that Ketchapp has been following for a long time. In 2014, their 2048 game was released, which became the most downloaded game (# 1 Top Downloaded Total) in 53 countries. The success of 2048 is a cross-promotion of other publisher products. As a rule, other games are promoted using an advertising pop-up at the beginning of the game.

Another good example is Creative Intdeavor AB. They used the property of their gaming store to promote other games from their portfolio.

Using this strategy, the publisher appeals to the players, creating a sense of communication on all products. Players who were asked to switch to another application will remain loyal and more susceptible to cross-promotion of new titles in the future, so they are likely to remain faithful to all the applications in the publisher’s portfolio.

Direct deals with other game developers

This is the basic idea of ​​cross promotion. You can find another game studio (or any other developer studio, for that matter), and agree on mutually beneficial promotion of each other's products. Thanks to such strategic partnerships, you can confidently reach the right audience. Through mobile analytics, you can get a complete picture of the potential and actual reach of the coverage, and understand how many users follow the recommendation of a partner.

The advantage of such a deal is that you can present your game to a huge audience, especially if your cross-advertising partner is a large gaming studio.