Did you know these effective app marketing strategies for iGaming?
James McLoughlin, a leading app store marketing expert, shares practical insights for iGaming app developers looking to thrive in the competitive digital space. What’s his secret? Apple App Store adverts.
He provides actionable tips and quick wins to enhance your app’s performance such as creating compelling screenshots and custom product pages that instantly capture attention. He also discusses essential topics such as optimising keywords, encouraging user reviews, and the importance of navigating the challenges of the gambling industry while maintaining positive user feedback.
0:00 App Store Marketing Basics
2:01 Keyword Strategy for iGaming Apps
4:02 Encouraging Positive User Reviews
6:25 Maximising Creative Assets
10:39 Advertising Strategies for iGaming Apps
13:43 Quick Wins for Improving App Store Listings
15:26 Final Thoughts
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Welcome to “15 Minute Mastery,” the ultimate show for iGaming professionals, hosted by industry veteran Dmitry Belianin. With over 17 years of experience, Dmitry brings unparalleled insights and wisdom from top industry experts in just 15 minutes. Each episode delivers actionable strategies from all iGaming verticals to improve your personal and business performance. As the founder of Belianin, Dmitry also shares his expertise in nurturing high-potential iGaming startups. Subscribe to “15 Minute Mastery” for concise, high-value content and stay ahead in the competitive world of iGaming.
You can offer free bets, I see that done very well. This is against the Apple terms and conditions, which some of my recommendations will be today. So we're in gambling, right? So where your line sits depends on the nature of your company and how legally run you up. You're listening to 15-minute mastering, a show that empowers you with insights from leading eye-gaming experts to enhance your personal or business performance. The show is brought to you by the AI-powered data analytics platform, Blask, and supported by 10 driven affiliate and media company already media. Lola stars the leading casino partnership program in the next.io, the world's eye-gaming community. Welcome back to 15-minute mastery. Today we're deep diving into the world of mobile app marketing with a focus on eye-gaming apps. I'm excited to announce a good friend of mine, James McLacklin, an expert in up-growth strategies, but most importantly, an app store marketing assassin. James is here to share practical insights on how to make your eye-gaming app stand out in the crowded app store marketplace. James, welcome to 15-minute mastery, my friend. Hey, Sam, I appreciate the opportunity. Try to share some knowledge here. All right, let's go. So let's start with the basics. So in your LinkedIn posts, you always mention that there are three keys to app marketing-- keywords, reviews, and creative. So let's start with eye-gaming keywords. What's the process for identifying an implementing effective keywords specifically for eye-gaming apps? Are there any unique considerations for this niche? Great question. So there are a bunch of different tools in the market. I use mobile action. That's my go-to. App figures is really strong. App tweak has a good UI. So any of those tools and there's a dozen others that essentially do the same thing. And what I try to do is find the comparison products that I'm looking for. I get them on my list, and I see what organic downloads are driving action for them. Obviously, they're going to be heavily brand terms, but I'm going to try to find the industry terms, whether it's blackjack, ruleware, sports batting, online betting bets, whatever the term might be. It's obviously unique to each region. I try to find the hierarchy of terms that are most effective for the industry. And I'm going to keep that in mind versus the competitiveness of those terms. So if it's a brand new app and a really competitive space, I'm probably not going to try to target those really high-level terms that I've discovered. I'm going to focus on some of the more sort of mid-to-load tier in terms of the competitiveness of them. And I'm going to go after those. And then when I write my description on the App Store, I'm going to be very intentional about including those. When I write my copy, it has the keyword in mine, but it's also, you need it for the user experience as well to be able to get downloads that way as well. So I try to put my keywords at the bottom of my long description. And I'm very intentional about how I describe my app. One of the big mistakes I see is applications that just have their brand name. And there's 30 characters that you can use for your name and your subtitle. And they're the two most influential places to put keywords. So I make sure that I'm very intentional about the keywords that I put in there. And then on Apple, there's the keyword section that you want to fill out. And in that spot, you can put a few of the brands that you're trying to challenge as well. Oh, all right, awesome. So a quick idea came through my mind. So when I'm comparing this to Google advertising, sometimes people, they use a similar niche keywords. Do you think this is the case for a game in here to use some entertainment industry keywords? Or it's better to just focus on pureed gaming keywords? I like to focus on the iGaming ones, because potentially, too, if you're ranking for terms that might be a bit broader in entertainment category, you might sit mid-table. You might be competing against a Netflix, for example, or some sort of live sport app. You don't really want to be competing for those because your conversion rates on the other end are going to be really low. So I think you need to be very intentional to grab, use the keywords that are most relevant for your product. Awesome, all right. OK, let's go to the second user reviews. So how can a gaming app developers encourage positive user reviews while navigating the sensitive nature of gambling caps? Are there any specific techniques that work well? There's a couple of grey hat ones, which I'll get to first. I'll give you the juicy sort of forbidden fruit to start with. You can offer free bets. I see that done very well. This is against the Apple terms and conditions which some of my recommendations will be today. So we're in gambling, right? So where your line sits depends on the nature of your company and how legally run you are. But there's an opportunity to incentivize users with free bets. You can communicate those via CRM pushes, push notifications as well, or on live chat. Live chat's a really good one. So really, if you want to stimulate user reviews, you need to have the product lens. So integrating that product experience, so you're putting push notification in front of users that have had a positive experience. I see a really common problem. And I'm sure you see this demo as a user, as you get asked for a five-star review as soon as you've downloaded the apps. Really poor-- really poor time to try to engage someone and ask for that request. You want to make them have a positive experience. So that's on the product side. The CRM team have an opportunity to sort of communicate those as well. And then your customer service team have an opportunity to grab those as well. And you also want to be responsive and responding to feedback. Even if it's critical, you want to be really active on the developer account to respond to feedback, whether it's positive or negative. And also, it helps to ask friends and family to get in there and give you lots of those as well on lots of early users. But back to the gray hat as well, there's some opportunities to pay for those. I've had mixed success. Some companies are more successful than others. They're getting some insincere reviews that are fabricated and synthetic. You can customize those to any region. But that's certainly a pretty common place in our space. What I'm so cool about your answer is that it has a great combination of boss white hat and gray hat. And I think this is what's so beautiful about the eye gaming is that you can always find the workaround and try to come up with some creative and out-of-the-box strategy. So I really like it. Thanks, James. And coming up to probably my favorite one, so the creative assets of eye gaming. So I mean, for everyone who is not following James on LinkedIn yet, I think this is one of my favorite topics on LinkedIn of all, where James is going through pages of apps on the App Store and saying what is right and what is wrong. So what are the key elements you think should be included in an eye gaming apps creative to maximize the conversion rates? Great question. I could take up a long time answering this. And I keep evolving what I think best practice is. But when you're scrolling through and you search for sports betting on your phone, for example, when you're scrolling through to see the options, you're served on Apple anyway, three screenshots that are aligned with each other. So it's really important to make sure that your first three screenshots are the strongest branding. And people are seeing it from a zoomed out view. I see a lot of-- a big mistake is really small font and imagery that's hard to distinguish zoomed out. Just remember that most users are just browsing. We're all scrolling these days. So you want to make sure that you're USPs are really clear. What makes your product interesting? Why should I download it? In our space, it's really great to have a promotion at the front. If you can do that in your region, I see that that's a very effective way to have that master deposit bonus put up at the front and then communicate what are the other strengths of your product. So it's really important to make it on brand, make it colorful, make it stand out, make the typography is really big and bold, and put your strongest foot forward. Because really, people are-- most people are only seeing your first three screenshots. So you really need to nail those. I like to look at some of the most competitive spaces as well to get different ideas. So finance is a really strong category where you get some really good-- in crypto, there's some really strong creative there as well. And the other thing, Dema, just to confuse people, is Apple allows you to do the custom product pages and in-app events as well. So the custom product pages means you can put different screenshots for different campaigns. So my MBA screenshots can be different from my casino and my Blackjack screenshots. So it's really important. They're different users, right? So you want to be able to communicate differently on the screenshots there. That's a really simple strategy that's still not used very well. And then the in-app events is another creative tile. Apple's a creative company, right? They're a massive designer-led business, the most famous one in the world, really. And so they keep providing these new tiles and new creative opportunities to make you stand out, make your app look like it's updated frequently and got unique events on so that people are sticking and keep returning. So I think my strongest advice is to really try to replicate the strongest in the category, big headings for your USBs first, promotions, if you can, and also move with the seasons as well. Like in the US, you know, NFL has just started, so there's a lot of strong NFL screenshots. When MBA starts, you kind of pivot over to being an MBA-led product as well, certainly when there's that new energy. So you need to move seasonally when events are changing as well. - Wow, absolutely, I had no idea that you can use events in such a beautiful and targeted manner. If you can only name one company, like just one gaming company, which you think's creative strategy within stores are the best in the world, what is this company? - You know, I keep going back to the US and the recently Fangiels, the number one app on Apple this week, so I've got a recency bias, but they are very intentional about the creative that they use and they keep refreshing it. So as I just described, I've got the football app now. They had college football two weeks ago. They'll have college basketball, they'll have football on, they'll have a big USC sort of creative in there. That blue stands out and it's big fonts and there's always promos first. So they're really good. Draft Kings are also really strong. In the UK, I love Sky Sports. I feel like they do a great way to put forward the personalities and the famous former athletes that they have as part of their content. So I think that they do a great job as well. So all those flutter brands, I think do a really strong job and dabble. I'll give dabble a little shout out. I've had the pleasure of working with a good team at dabble and they do a fantastic job with that rich purple and promotions and mixing it up seasonally as well. So I'll give dabble some love. - Oh yeah, I love what these guys are also doing. It's a great example. Okay, so we're done with the basics. Let's go to a more complex ones, advertising and especially advertising strategy. So how does your approach to add platforms like SearchS and Apple S differ for a gaming apps compared to other categories? Are there any specific challenges or even opportunities? - Good question. I think it's a bit of rinse and repeat. I've got some clients in the finance space at the moment. It's very much the same strategy, which is what I touched on before leaning into those custom product pages. So, you know, if you've got a different feature set or a different user that you're trying to hit and you're at my talk to different users, then it's really important to distinguish that with different creative. The best example I've got running at the moment, I look after I work with the guys at Matchbook in the UK and we have really strong, we've got a rule that custom product page, a blackjack custom product page, slots custom product page and then the primary, the primary tiles are around football and we've got some election stuff in there. Obviously that's a huge market. So we're just having that differentiation of creative and then matching the keywords obviously to those terms is the best. My other strategy is being very intentional about the keywords you use and using the exact match searches. So, a common issue with accounts that I take over is it's very broad, it's very messy. If you go into Apple, it's very easy to set up, right? Apple Search Ads is a very easy platform to use. The UI is simple and there's a bunch of suggested terms. What I see clients often doing is just batching them all together and having their brand terms, competitor terms, industry terms, casino sports, spending all just shoved in the same mix, you really need to separate your campaign so that you can determine what's working best and serve that unique creative for each different user. - Awesome, I think not many companies in the world even heard about Apple Store Ads, right? If you can give us like a little tip to understand like how they are compared in terms of the size with let's say like Google or Facebook, which are probably the most mainstream for most of the advertisers out there. So, like where, you know, Apple Store advertising seats within like these two biggest boys? - Yeah, I think it's historically been a bit of a forgotten channel, but it's really come up and I don't know, 20%, 25%, depending on you, you know, that's what I think your marketing budget should be for this channel. Super effective, it's very efficient. And once you've got that user download your product and you've incentivized them to have that first deposit, you know, that's a really sticky customer. And when you've got them on the mobile application, they convert really well. So that's my recommendation. And obviously it depends which industry and which location you're in geographically. But I think it's one of the best places to spend money, very efficient channel. Just backtracking demo, like my background in sports betting advertising is acquisition across the board, every single channel. From some of your blackout SEO tricks, which you sound very familiar with, creating content, programmatic ads, Facebook when it first started. I've kind of done all of those, but the reason that I've focused in the last four or five years around the app store is it's just super efficient, huh? In our space particularly. - Okay, I love it. So I think, like as I mentioned, not many people actually deal with the app store or optimization whatsoever, but they have the app sitting somewhere there. So let's say if you have like a list of quick wins, these guys could like immediately apply to their app to make it's app store listing, rapidly improve or getting better conversions. So can you give us like a few quick wins, which you think any company in the world can do right now, just like getting more traffic and better conversions? - So definitely creative. I'm really bullish on getting creative, right? You need your ratings to be decent as well. You have to have at least a four, obviously depending on how competitive it is, but you need a four out of five to help those conversion rates. So there's some strategies to do that. But creatively you need your app to look professional and sharp. I think that that's a really strong communication technique. And then app lads, like it's a pay to play space, right? And what I see, I used to think that I could organically get any apps at the top, but that's not the case, particularly in our industry where it's super competitive. You really need to have app lads on, you need them to be converting efficiently 'cause they have a big impact on your organic rankings. Not that I've ever seen Apple say that publicly, but it's really clear that having intentional and intelligent and efficient Apple ads campaigns will drastically improve your organic. So if I had two things that I could touch, it would be get the creative, really crisp, and I would turn my Apple ads on. - Wow, absolutely love it, James. And the most importantly, I love the fact that you came up with so many beautiful tactical insights on what should be done, like, and I feel like that was one of the greatest episodes we had. And thank you so much for coming and sharing your wisdom with us. - Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. (dramatic music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
