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๐Ÿ’Ž Growth Gems #53 - Paid UA for games, Growth and Onboarding

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๐Ÿ’Ž Growth Gems #53 - Paid UA for games, Growth and Onboarding

Sylvain Gauchet
Oct 19, 2021
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๐Ÿ’Ž Growth Gems #53 - Paid UA for games, Growth and Onboarding

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Subscribe to get the Growth Gems newsletter every other Tuesday๐Ÿ‘‡

Hi there,

This week Iโ€™m sharing gems on talking to users for better onboarding, growth engineering, DSPs and launching in APAC markets from Matthieu Rouif, Margarita Vasilevskaya, David Burson and more.


๐Ÿฅ‡ TOP GEM OF THE WEEK

๐Ÿ’Ž Launching only a monthly plan first can help you see how people churn and talk to them in order to improve the product.ย 

by Matthieu Rouif (Co-Founder & CEO at PhotoRoom)
at 32:56 in Photoroom - Building, Refining, and Pricing an Ambitious App Business

Next section

Paid UA: DSPs, non-US geos

๐Ÿ’Ž The most valuable thing a DSP can provide is a trained algorithm to find the right traffic for you. Whenever youโ€™re looking at a DSP, check if they have case studies for games or products similar to yours. If they donโ€™t, the success rates of your test will be extremely low because they donโ€™t have the right signals.

by Margarita Vasilevskaya
at 05:56 in UA Across Gaming Genres


๐Ÿ’Ž One thing Warren used to do at his previous company when launching a new campaign on a new DSP for their midcore games: blacklist all Outfit7 games from showing their ads, because they knew that was not a good audience fit for them.

by Warren Woodward (Co-founder at Upptic - Automated Growth/ASO platform)
at 22:31 in UA Across Gaming Genres


๐Ÿ’Ž Korea is a small market. To launch a game in Korea itโ€™s critical to build a community, which can take multiple months. You want to incorporate local celebrities, do pre-registration campaigns, have out-of-home advertising, etc.

by Margarita Vasilevskaya
at 44:53 in UA Across Gaming Genres


โ›๏ธ Going Deeper:
there are important differences in genre preferences in APAC. For example Margarita shared that Korean players are way more into strategy genres for midcore games (also casual games) while Japanese players have more affinity with RPGs.


๐Ÿ’Ž Russia is one of Margeritaโ€™s favorite geos for hardcore games, and everyone is tapping into Russia already. With the right product (high affinity rate), the price is very affordable so itโ€™s worth it even though LTV might still be lower than other markets.

by Margarita Vasilevskaya
at 46:26 in UA Across Gaming Genres


๐Ÿ’Ž When launching in the US, you might set bids that are relatively close between iOS and Android. But if you launch in a geo like India, you probably need 10x or 20x bids for iOS.

by Warren Woodward (Co-founder at Upptic - Automated Growth/ASO platform)
at 50:20 in UA Across Gaming Genres

Next section

Growth: growth engineering, biggest wins, adjacent audience

๐Ÿ’Ž When you try to grow a subscription business, the backend (payment infrastructure) is as important as the front-end. To do high-velocity and high-impact growth work, you need to be able to experiment with free trial length, subscription mix, etc. You need to build the growth muscle.

by David Burson (Head of Product, Growth & Monetization at Canva)
at 10:52 in How Canva drives growth for their paid subscription product


๐Ÿ’Ž Growth engineering is different from product engineering: a lot of the things you try wonโ€™t work. You have to get comfortable with doing just enough engineering and moving fast. Once you get positive signals, you can productivize it.

by David Burson (Head of Product, Growth & Monetization at Canva)
at 12:30 in How Canva drives growth for their paid subscription product


๐Ÿ’Ž One of the biggest growth wins Canva had in 2019 was a simple copy update to their upgrade dialog. It came from user research, which allowed to understand how users articulate why they upgrade to Canva pro. Example: โ€œupgrade to Canva pro for magic resizeโ€ changed to โ€œMagically resize designs to all formatsโ€ (which is the real benefit).

by David Burson (Head of Product, Growth & Monetization at Canva)
at 55:20 in How Canva drives growth for their paid subscription product


๐Ÿ’Ž If you reach a local maxima for one vertical where you have product market-fit, you can still go after adjacent users. In the meantime, you have to believe this is indeed true and focus on your main use case.

by Matthieu Rouif (Co-Founder & CEO at PhotoRoom)
at 21:45 in Photoroom - Building, Refining, and Pricing an Ambitious App Business


โ›๏ธ Going Deeper: here is a great Reforge article on The Adjacent User Theory to better approach looking beyond your initial core audience once itโ€™s time (including how to choose which adjacent users to go after).

Next section

Onboarding: getting to the aha moment, talking to users

๐Ÿ’Ž Photoroomโ€™s onboarding is magical because they donโ€™t get in the way of the user having a desire to get something done. Within 3 taps of downloading the app, you can see the background magic removal happen.

by David Barnard (Developer Advocate at RevenueCat)
at 20:59 in Photoroom - Building, Refining, and Pricing an Ambitious App Business


โ›๏ธ Going Deeper: depending on your product, getting users this fast to a very concrete aha moment is not always possible. Instead, you might have to approach onboarding differently and instead make it longer to better showcase your product value. Check out Growth Gems #50 for Darius Moraโ€™s gem on the two main schools of thoughts for onboarding.


๐Ÿ’Ž Photoroom conducted user interviews at McDonaldโ€™s. Theyโ€™d pay for peopleโ€™s meals in exchange for: asking a few questions about their photo usage, getting them to download the app and then use it. Thatโ€™s how they realized people were not getting to the step of removing a background.

by Matthieu Rouif (Co-Founder & CEO at PhotoRoom)
at 27:47 in Photoroom - Building, Refining, and Pricing an Ambitious App Business


๐Ÿ’Ž Launching only a monthly plan first can help you see how people churn and talk to them in order to improve the product.ย 

by Matthieu Rouif (Co-Founder & CEO at PhotoRoom)
at 32:56 in Photoroom - Building, Refining, and Pricing an Ambitious App Business




And before I leave, a quote from this Upptic podcast:

โ€œIf SKAN is going to work anywhere, itโ€™s going to work with subscriptionโ€ - Xander Agosta (Growth Lead at Upptic)


See you next time. Stay savvy!

โ›๏ธ Sylvain

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๐Ÿ’Ž Growth Gems #53 - Paid UA for games, Growth and Onboarding

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๐Ÿ’Ž Growth Gems #53 - Paid UA for games, Growth and Onboarding

growthgems.substack.com
Seth Miller
Mar 29, 2022Liked by Sylvain Gauchet

amazing per usual ๐Ÿ™

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