Every year on May 4th, Star Wars Day captures the attention of millions, blending popular culture with marketing in a way that creates significant opportunities for app marketers. This annual event unites fans in their shared passion for the franchise. It opens up strategic opportunities for brands to engage with audiences through special promotions, themed advertisements, and in-app events. The impact of this celebration on digital marketing trends and user engagement is substantial, offering valuable insights into how popular culture can shape consumer behavior.
Using MobileAction’s Impact tool, we aim to examine the before-and-after analysis of Star Wars Day on various aspects of app marketing. From gaming apps tapping into the galactic excitement to shopping platforms offering themed promotions, this analysis will highlight how leveraging this cultural phenomenon can improve your app marketing strategy and drive user engagement.
Capturing galactic excitement with in-app events
In-app events are a strategic and effective tool during seasonal periods, fostering audience connection and driving traffic to product pages, ultimately boosting app downloads.
For Star Wars Day, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes exemplified this approach by launching an in-app event to celebrate the occasion. Initiating the event just before the season, they kept it live for a week, successfully enhancing user engagement, popularity, and conversion rates.
Impact overview of Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes listing all user acquisition aimed activities during the week of Star Wars Day.
The 3 in-app events are live on May 2nd.
Using Impact’s user-friendly interface, once you’ve selected the start date for your in-app event, you can view all events live on that day, with their specific start and end dates alongside other activities. After choosing to analyze the in-app event, you can observe changes in key metrics before and after it goes live.
The In-App Event created by Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes is dedicated to Star Wars Day.
On May 2nd, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes had three in-app events, with one standing out due to its compelling title and creative approach. While it’s expected that they created an event specifically for Star Wars Day, few apps have made this strategic choice, effectively leveraging the power of in-app events to drive engagement.
The before-during-after analysis of Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes for the selected in-app event.
After selecting the in-app event to analyze, a graphical representation clearly explains the event’s impact on various metrics. With Impact, we assessed changes in category rankings, downloads, and app-generated revenue before, during, and after the event.
Following the launch of the in-app event, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes saw a significant rise in its gaming category ranking from 181 to 26. Downloads doubled, and revenue quadrupled. While other factors may have contributed to this growth, the in-app event undoubtedly played a crucial role in achieving these impressive results.
This outcome highlights the value of in-app events, particularly during seasonal periods, when a well-crafted, relevant campaign can resonate with your audience and drive significant engagement.
Navigating the hype with paid campaigns
Another effective strategy to boost visibility, particularly during seasonal periods, is paid campaigns. Since most downloads come from App Store search results, incorporating paid keywords in your search result ads can significantly increase downloads. This approach enhances rankings for specific search terms, ensuring that your app appears earlier in results when users search for terms related to the seasonal event, in this case, Star Wars Day.
Star Wars: Hunters provides an excellent example of leveraging seasonal events with strategic keyword selection in search result ads.
Impact overview of Star Wars: Hunters listed all user acquisition-oriented activities during the week of Star Wars Day.
In the days before Star Wars Day, the marketing team expanded their paid keyword pool with multiple themed keywords, ensuring that they would rank higher in relevant search results. They maximized their app’s visibility by carefully curating this keyword list and optimizing for terms that fans were likely to search for on that particular day.
The added search result ads keywords.
They expanded their paid keyword pool with multiple Star Wars-themed keywords, incorporating both generic terms and competitor brand keywords to maximize visibility. This strategic selection led to an increase in impression shares, with over 70% growth for some newly added terms. Star Wars: Hunters began ranking for new keywords, effectively enhancing their presence and capturing a wider audience searching for Star Wars-related content.
The before-during-after analysis of Star Wars: Hunters for the search result ads terms added.
To evaluate the impact of this strategic move, we utilized MobileAction’s Impact tool for a comprehensive before-and-after analysis. Adding these new keywords to their paid keyword pool increased their organic visibility score by up to 7 points and achieved a 7x increase in downloads. While other practices may have contributed to this substantial growth, their SearchAds visibility score also rose 7 points, indicating that their Apple Search Ads strategy played a significant role in this success.
Embracing Impact for seasonal success
In-app events and paid campaigns present powerful opportunities to boost visibility and user engagement, especially during seasonal periods. As seen with Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and Star Wars: Hunters, a well-timed and strategically executed campaign can have a substantial impact on an app’s category rankings, downloads, and revenue. By carefully curating your marketing strategy with relevant in-app promotions and targeted paid keyword pools, your app can ride the wave of popular events, capturing the attention of a wider audience.
To unlock the potential of this approach, MobileAction’s Impact tool offers comprehensive insights, allowing you to measure and analyze the before-and-after effects of your seasonal marketing activities.
If you’re ready to utilize this power for your app marketing strategy, schedule a demo now to explore how MobileAction can help you refine your campaigns, capitalize on seasonal trends, and achieve remarkable growth.
