April 13th, 2012 by Dawn Siris Posted in Companies & M&A, Marketing Strategies | No Comments »
Did you ever hear about Alfred Russel Wallace? Most chances are you didn’t, but you surely know Charles Darwin I trust. In a nutshell, Wallace was the first to come up with the natural selection theory of evolution, but Darwin marketed it better. Let’s take a look at Draw Something Free on that regard.
Sometimes having a great product isn’t enough to conquer the market. The App store and Android Marketplace are rough water for many developers and small companies who created great apps, but failed nevertheless. After all, there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of new Apps coming out every single day, so what are the chances for your new and shiny App to score some Dough? Does luck play a factor here?
In short, luck does play a factor to some extent, but a genius marketing plan can ensure you won’t get lucked out in the end. Take Draw Something by OMGPOP for instance. OMGPOP made this brilliant game in which players from all over the world engage in a Pictionary-like online game which revolves around drawing all kinds of words given automatically, and your buddies trying to guess them correctly. While the game is indeed a gem, there have been others games similar in concept, so how come you didn’t hear about them?
Little did you know that OMGPOP released two versions in November 30 to the App Store simultaneously; the regular Draw Something, and Draw Something Free, which is essentially identical but with less features. Think about it for a minute, how many people would have purchased the full game right off the bat? Definitely some, but releasing the free version resulted in a huge leap for the #1 place in the App Store, which in turn resulted in a huge boost of downloads and sales to the full version, after people gotten to know the game and were thirsty for the real thing.
So why not combine the better of the two worlds? Not only that, but after the huge boost and commotion the Free Draw Something version stirred, OMGPOP decreased their regular version’s price to give a “discount” which resulted in even more sales which resembled the sleeping giant Angry Birds. Brilliancy all the way to the bank!
