Facebook announced that they send 735 million referrals. To games. Every day. That’s every day.
For us, this was no surprise. We see these referrals all of the time. While helping our customers with their Facebook integrations, we are constantly blown away with the effectiveness of Facebook for driving new users to an app. It just, well, works.
The simple fact is this: if you are a game developer, it’s time to put away the snark and embrace the obvious. Stop ignoring Facebook. Just stop.
Ignoring Facebook for fun and profit
If you write a tech blog, please – by all means – make money by rambling on with predictions of Facebook’s demise. How it’s over. And failing. How it has lost its way. With one in seven people on the planet using a Facebook account, you’ll have a lot of potential readers to drive up your pageviews.
But if you’re a game developer? You need to stop listening to that hype. You don’t make money from pageviews. You make money with every new user. And your potential new users? They’re on Facebook. Like it or not.
Squirrel!
But sometimes, there’s something new. Something better than Facebook. Something that is going to be the hot new way of acquiring customers.
Snapchat might seem like an interesting new trend, but do you really want to risk putting even a few of your eggs in that basket?
To put it another way… let’s take Snapchat’s total user base. Now, multiply it by 24x. What do you get? That’s right. You get the number of users that Facebook can refer to games like yours. Every day.
Here’s the thing. You don’t have time to muck around with every new shiny object. Or to chase every potential platform. You have a business to run. You have to go with what’s proven.
Facebook, to put it bluntly, is an opportunity you would be an idiot to ignore.
Embracing Facebook for fun and profit
If it’s been said once, it’s been said a million times: sell where there are customers. If you want your app to grow, go where your customers are. I think you know where they are, but just in case I’ll say it again. For those of you in the cheap seats: Your would-be customers are on Facebook.
Why am I so sure? Well, it’s simple… Facebook has more active users.
This isn’t an assumption. This is a fact. More people are on Facebook than on any other social network. Actually, more people are on Facebook than in any one country. Heck, there are more people on Facebook than on some continents. There are more… well, there’s just a lot of people on Facebook.
And by “people,” I mean “potential customers.”
Because those continent’s worth of people? They are finding out about new apps from their friends on Facebook.
How to be effective in all the chaos
We hear you, “Facebook is hard.” That’s true. It is.
There are some caveats. If you think you can make a Facebook page for your game and get the billion users to like it, you are in for a rude awakening.
It’s not that easy. But there are ways.
Truth be told, the best way to reach users on Facebook is through friend to friend advertising. The best posts for attracting new users are not yours – they’re posts from your existing customers. The posts that work are made by regular users.
Why? Because friends trust friends. So they try your app.
Basically, if you want Facebook to work for you: your users need to be making posts on your behalf.
We know it works, because we help developers do just that.
If you are an app developer who is still a Facebook hater. Stop ignoring the opportunity. Stop hurting your business. Just stop. And give us a shot.
We’re here, and your app is awesome. Let’s unlock the potential of that awesomeness together.
– Pat