Strategies for promoting games on VK Play
The VK Play platform is the only counterpart of Steam in Russia, designed for gamers, developers, and creators. In the previous article, we provided information on how to list your game in the VK Play catalog.
Once your game has passed moderation and is listed in the VK Play catalog, it’s crucial to promote it not only to the platform’s users but also to Russian-speaking players globally. This can be done using the platform’s tools as well as standard digital marketing channels. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Direct Games and Web Platforms Collections
There are several collections available for all games in the VK Play catalogue that can help engage users, and they are free to use. These collections can either be curated by VKontakte editors based on developer requests, or they can be generated by algorithms.
Thematic collections are compiled for both the Web Platform and Direct Games mobile platform and are focused on holidays or seasonal events. These collections are created by catalogue editors who select games that have released significant updates for these occasions.
Sale Day is a promotional event that takes place in the Web Platform and Direct Games catalogues. VK Play announces the specific dates of the sale beforehand on the community page for game developers. During the event, games that participate in the sale offer players discounts on in-game items, and VKontakte provides extensive coverage of the sale within the catalogue and gaming communities. Additionally, VKontakte conducts a vote raffle between all users who make purchases in the games on Sale Day.
Genre Categories: The games within the same genre are grouped together in categories.
Paid Collections: You have the option to place your game in the Recommended Games advertisement collection and banner carousel for a fee. These ads have a maximum limit of 100 impressions per user. You can set up and launch these ads through the VKontakte advertising account or through the QB Agency Game Marketing agency.
Apart from the aforementioned collections, the VK Play catalogue also comprises various other collections created separately for PC and mobile games.
Game Mechanics
By utilizing game mechanics, users can invite each other to games, ask for assistance, exchange gifts, share noteworthy accomplishments on their walls, and fill the activity feed with earned points, completed missions, and achieved levels.
Game Messages are another effective method of delivering essential, personalized information about in-game events to users. These messages should provide relevant and valuable information with a game context to prevent users from feeling irritated by receiving them. By doing so, the likelihood of users launching the game will increase.
Messages are dispatched on behalf of the game’s official community.
Menu Integration. Adding your game to the left-hand menu on the desktop version of the website is a crucial aspect of keeping users engaged and retained over the long-term. It’s the second most common way for users to launch games after navigating to the Games section.
Notifications Notifications are an effective way to attract regular users back to the game, or to encourage inactive ones to re-engage. When you send a push notification, users receive an alert in the “bell” section of the app or website.
Friends’ Activity Feed allows players to stay updated on the progress and success of their friends in different games. It displays information about their completed missions, levels, and points, without requiring any additional actions or confirmations from the player.
Invitations are among the most widely used social interaction methods and a direct means of communicating with friends. They enable users to engage friends in the game for cooperation or competition purposes.
The invitation to the game is shown in the user’s catalog on vk.com or in a mobile application and comes with a standard black notification window or push notification from the VKontakte mobile application if the user hasn’t blocked notifications.
Paid Promotion
VKontakte’s advertising platform offers a variety of targeting options to promote PC and mobile games. We’ve discussed the different game promotion formats on VK in previous articles, and in this article, we’ll focus on targeting and audience selection.
VKontakte has over 20 targeting options, ranging from basic demographics like gender, age, and location, to more granular details such as device type.
Based on our experience, the following targets are optimal for game promotion on VK:
- Interests and behaviors: Computer games. This target audience includes users who have recently shown interest in VKontakte games, visited gaming communities, or external gaming websites.
- Subscribers of communities of similar genre games (your competitors). Targeting this audience allows you to attract users who are already passionate about similar gameplay.
- Keywords. This target audience has already demonstrated an interest in a specific game, which makes them more likely to be receptive to your ads.
- Retargeting audience. This target audience includes users who are already familiar with your game. They may have visited your website, left their contacts, or seen your ads before.
We recommend running separate ad campaigns for each target audience and monitoring the results. It’s essential to evaluate the quality of your ads not just based on cost-per-install (CPI), but also on user engagement and activity within the game.
The team of experts at QB Agency Game Marketing can provide assistance with selecting targets, choosing advertising formats, and setting up and launching paid promotions for your game on VKontakte.