Suppose your job is to find more players for a phone game where you grow wheat and feed chickens. What would you try first?
You’ve seen those ads where someone plays a game so badly you can barely stand to watch. “Oh, come on. Give me the phone. Even I can do better than that.” And there you are, downloading it.
Makes sense, right? Judging by how often those ads turn up, I’d bet they bring in players pretty cheaply.
There are four or five other familiar formats. You’d give them all a shot.
Then what?
Would “Let’s fly to England and hold a séance” make your list?
Funny thing to suggest in a marketing meeting, isn’t it?
Some of the studios behind the world’s highest-grossing mobile games have been at this for five or ten years. They might make and test thousands of ad variations in a month, all to find a few that beat what’s already running.
Even an ad that wins today can wear out. Fewer people respond, and you’re back to making videos again.
And what counts as a win? One ad gets people to install the game for next to nothing, but most of them get bored by tomorrow. Another costs more per player, but those players come back every night. Work out how much more that second group is worth and you can spend your budget wisely. Trouble is, your competitors can do the math too. You’re all trying to earn a spot on the same person’s phone, and every day somebody has a new idea you have to keep up with.
Tired yet?
Anyway, about that séance. The game is Hay Day, and the studio is Supercell.
This Halloween, Supercell took Yvette Fielding, a British TV host known for investigating haunted places, to an old farm in Oxfordshire.
She held a séance there and invited the farm’s ghost to play Hay Day. :)
Even if you’ve never played Hay Day, you now have a story you could tell a friend.
“Look What Your Farm People Did”
Say you’re the kind of person who tells yourself, “I’ll harvest this wheat and then I’m going to bed.” Years ago you played Hay Day with your college roommate. An ad for the game’s latest features comes up. Would you send it to your old roommate?
Maybe.
What about that video?
Much more likely, right?
And now your roommate has a reason to open the farm again. According to the team, the ghost stories about that old farm inspired a character who showed up in the game, the Red Revenant.
Players could complete Halloween tasks to help chase the vampire off the farm. The studio summoned him and left the players to get rid of him. Hay Day’s event notes
An ad platform might correctly figure out that you’ve lost interest in farming games. How would it know you still associate one particular game with your old roommate? You know that. And the video gives you an excuse to get in touch.
Say your roommate sees your message and opens the game for the first time in months. Your phone records one ad view and zero installs. On the other phone, a former player seems to have come back on their own. Both phones got it right. What’s missing from their records is the message that got your roommate back to the farm.
Supercell hasn’t said how many players came back that way.
Before I paid for another séance, I’d want to know how many people who hadn’t played in months came back that week. I’d compare that with the number who usually return around Halloween and ask a few what made them think of their farm that day. Then I’d check who was still planting wheat after the vampire left.
Your customer found you on Google. What made them search that morning?
Imagine you sell scheduling software to restaurants. On Tuesday morning a restaurant owner searches Google, clicks your ad and books a demo.
On the call you ask, “How did you find us?” The owner says, “Google.” Your ad report says the same thing.
I’d ask one more question. “You’ve been making schedules for years. What happened this week that made you look for software?”
Suppose the night before, the head chef had sent the owner a funny video of another restaurant manager scrolling through his texts, swearing as he counted how many people he’d had to message to cover one server’s shift.
Your customer opened her own texts and checked. That was where half of last Sunday had gone.
That’s what was on her mind when she poured her coffee and opened Google.
Knowing this, I’d still pay for the search ad. That’s where she found you. But now you have something else to try alongside bidding a little more than your competitors for the same keyword.
Ask one of your customers to pull out their phone and talk you through the last shift they had to cover. Do staff at other restaurants send that video to their managers? Are the restaurants that find you that way still using your software three months later?
One conversation gives you an idea worth testing. You’ll have to run the test to get the answers.
These days, when somebody in a marketing meeting says, “Our best customers come from Google,” I want to know what happened the night before.
Maybe spending more on Google is the right call. Maybe three of your ten best customers will pull out their phones and show you the same video.
Once you learn who sent that video to whom, you might make your next ad for a different person.
I’d give that some thought before the next campaign.
Now go back to Hay Day. If you had to pick a creator for the game, you could come up with a streamer who covers farming games pretty quickly. It takes a little more thought to suggest Yvette Fielding.
Who watches her? Who would those people tell about the séance? And what would we need to see them do to know we’d spent our money well?
IN COLLABORATION WITH STACY’S BRAIN
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