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Mobile App Success Story: How Angry Birds Did It

Quick question: Who doesn’t know Angry Birds? From kindergarten to older people, everybody can recognize the image with the red, frowning bird. Since it doesn’t need any presentation let’s go straight into the middle of the story and to discover what are the elements that contributed to this fame.

Image Source: https://www.angrybirds.com/games/angry-birds/

Brilliant Idea

It all started in Finland, but before reaching this enormous success the company that created the game had some failures which made them understand the best way to build an amazing app. Does it sound familiar? No, we are not talking about Supercell, which tells the same story when it comes to Clash of Clans. But Rovio Entertainment, the company behind Angry Birds had a similar trajectory when they created Angry Birds. Don’t get us wrong. We are not saying that you need to move to Finland and to kill tens of games before winning your first $1 Million. We just want to highlight that you can conquer the world (in terms of development) from any country and that you have to work hard and to observe what works and what doesn’t to understand your customers’ needs.

Image Source: http://www.rovio.com/careers/life-at-rovio

 

How Angry Birds Did It

This is not about birds and pigs anymore because Rovio created an entire entertainment industry around the game and now even more with the new release, Angry Birds: Evolution. But let’s see the methods that helped the company to promote these hilarious games.

Image Source: https://www.pinterest.com/diegoiasscrios/angry-birds/

 

App Store Optimization

You can’t start any strategy without a perfect app store page. You know the old saying: “All roads lead to … app store (not Rome in the mobile world).” Every marketing campaign drives all potential users to the market so it makes sense to concentrate a great part of your efforts on creating an impressive app icon, gathering the most attractive screenshots and describing your app in an interesting way.

Here is an example of the best way to amaze your customers. And you need to watch also the preview video to understand our point. In case of Angry Birds after being featured by Apple as the game of the week it reached the first place on App Store from the position 600, like Wired wrote.

Monetization Strategy

For increasing the company budget the apps are offered for free when users want to download them but they contain ads and in – app purchases. Freemium model allows customers to enjoy the game at the beginning and when the addiction reaches high levels they are ready to pay for premium features. Moreover, reserving some space on the screen for promoting other companies’ products is a strategy applied by many game studios. It requires an impressive amount of data to manage these techniques but after creating such a phenomenon with this game, it was easier for the team responsible with the marketing efforts to reach the wanted results.

Image Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/141159/htg-explains-why-free-ad-supported-apps-may-be-more-expensive-than-paid-apps/

Content Marketing

It is enough to add Angry Birds on Google Search and the entire screen is filled with websites and articles that promote the games. The official pages of Angry Birds and Rovio provide all types of news related to the products and even with information about the company management and strategies. Everything is revealed to all the customers interested in the evolution of the brand. Let’s not forget about YouTube channels and other social networks that make the job easier when it comes to spreading the word about top games.

Image Source: http://www.rovio.com/news

 

User Generated Content

A huge community was built around Angry Birds. These days it is not enough to just play a game. Users feel the need to also share thoughts, achievements and ideas with other fans. People enjoy the events and the contests based on the themes produced by Angry Birds products and even if they are not addicted players they still send their creations for winning the prizes. This is another method for engaging users and to make them your trustful ambassadors. The Angry Birds Mania generated a lot of campaigns even for saving real birds’ habitat in Polynesia. Who would believe that goofy characters will create this impact?

Image Source: https://www.facebook.com/angrybirdsfriends/

 

Cross – Promotion

If you discovered our tutorial on how to create a strategy based on cross – promotion you are probably designing your “More Games” button now. But we will give you one more proof that this approach really works when you have a great collection of games under your belt. Just look at Rovio and you will understand how an amazing game can promote its other siblings (and the number is amazing in this case) in front of its users. The challenge is to create the first unforgettable one to attract the huge wave of customers. And we didn’t even mention the movies that followed after the big hit.

Image Source: http://www.rovio.com/games

 

Bonus Tip: Build Your Brand.

Did you know that more than 50% of Rovio’s revenue comes from products different than mobile games? On their website, you can see a section where you can buy all kinds of sets and plush toys or even clothes and accessories with your favorite characters. We are living in an era when kids want those famous pictures all around them, in their school bags, on their walls and even on their pajamas. And the creators of Angry Birds understood this trend, providing them with an easy way to purchase the desired items. This is a very useful lesson for everybody for encouraging fans to increase their interest in the brand.

Image Source: https://www.angrybirds.com/shop/

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

We can end now our journey through the amazing world of Angry Birds admitting that it is very hard to reach the same level of success as Rovio did, but it is not impossible. Take a look at the trends, work hard to impress users with new features and trust your ability to create something that will last over years. Maybe that’s the key that will open the path for your triumph.


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