Margarita Vasilevskaya provided some tips on game marketing for indie developers during her session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Before you announce your app to the world, you’ll need to think of, and eventually create, a specific place where you will bring your audience to online,” she advised. “Your landing page’s primarily purpose is to convert visitors to future users.”
Margarita Vasilevskaya is an independent mobile marketing expert. She works and cooperates with various indie developers and mobile startups as well as big brands and agencies, helping them to develop, improve, and implement mobile marketing strategies. She is presently focused on the mobile gaming market, prior to that she specialized in digital marketing and SMM.
Motivated and Self-Driven
Vasilevskaya describes herself as self-driven. She knows that in order to reach goals, a person must be motivated. However, there is not always sufficient external motivation, so she prefers to encourage herself.
A time in her career that brought her great satisfaction was working with a tremendous team of Ukrainian indie developers at Room 8 Studio. Young and talented people were united in their purpose of creating outstanding games, and they received worldwide recognition and awards.
Their first title, Cyto, was critically acclaimed and was featured by Apple on the App Store and Mac Store; later, in 2013, it was chosen by Starbucks as the Starbucks App Store pick of the Week in the US, Canada, Ireland, and the UK. Another of their titles, Riot Runner, won the Indie Prize award at Casual Connect last year. She says, “I was definitely proud to be involved in all the success my team gained while I was working there.”
The View From a Marketer
As a mobile marketer, Vasilevskaya can see several trends developing that will strongly affect the games industry. First, mobile e-commerce is growing at an incredible speed. In the near future, she expects people to run payments using mobile apps rather than debit or credit cards.
Secondly, the mobile marketing ecosystem is changing, and small and average ad networks are unlikely to survive. The whole user acquisition ecosystem can be taken by such giants as Facebook, Google, and direct deals markets.
Finally, she is excited to see how iBeacon and similar technologies are changing and improving the whole customer experience.
Aside from these trends, she also foresees that growth of free-to-play games will continue to lead to the devaluation of premium titles, a trend that will affect the entire games industry.
Staying on Top of Things
Vasilevskaya is an enthusiastic mobile gamer who loves iOS. But because of her work, she no longer has time to play as much as she would like. She definitely browses through top charts and top tech websites to be aware of the latest titles. The most recent game she became addicted to was War of Nations, a strategic military base constructor, by Gree. She insists, “I just love to see every alert they did and how the monetization mechanism works in the game.”
When she wants a break from work, she orders food and dives into the world of TV shows. She loves doing TV show marathons where she watches an entire season or even two in an evening. Her friends’ latest obsession is wakeboarding, so they enjoy spending time together on the lake in a boat. She admits, “I can’t say I’ve mastered wakeboarding; my personal record is a two-second ride. But I definitely enjoy it.”
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