3 Steps to Soft Launch Success

For many apps, global expansion is essential for maximizing profits. However, attempting unconditional global expansion is bound to be difficult without testing your markets first.

To explore new markets, app marketers rely on what's called a 'soft launch'. Soft launching is a method of testing how successful a product will be, by launching it in one market and seeing how it performs before going global.

For example, a company may launch its products in Australia, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom before releasing them in the US market. In this way, companies can discover how an app will perform in a proxy market to their main goal. A soft launch also helps companies find an app's technical flaws, as well as its ability to succeed.

To get a better understanding of how soft launches can improve an app's chances of success, let's look at how to conduct one in detail.

Setting the goals of your soft launch

When testing your product-market fit, there are two preparatory steps: selecting the test country (market) and defining the purpose and target criteria of your soft launch.

Step 1: Pick your market

Choosing a test country can be a bit tricky. For example, if the game's main target market is the United States, it would be ideal to test it in the United States, but testing costs are high there, and testing an app that is still unstable in a key market country inevitably carries risks.

Therefore, during the soft launch, you need to pick a country that has similar user behavior patterns to your target market with low overall costs, so you can conduct efficient testing. However, the suitability of a country for soft launching differs depending on the genre of the app or game, and any decision must be made after closely examining the similarities in users' in-app behavior patterns, similarities in users' purchasing patterns, and similarities in cultural aspects.

Step 2: Define the purpose and objective criteria of the test

The next step is to set the purpose and goals of the test, and there are three main criteria: productability, profitability, and marketability.

• Marketability is an evaluation of how attractive the app is to the target audience via product design. Marketability is mainly judged by retention, session time, and lifetime value (LTV) indicators.
• Profitability is an evaluation of the business model, i.e. how much revenue the app can generate. It is mainly judged by average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) and Payer Rate (buyer rate) indicators.
• Lastly, ‘marketability’ is an evaluation of how well the app will be received in the market. It is mainly judged by click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), and cost per install (CPI).

For all these, benchmarks vary depending on the genre. And, depending on the product genre and business model, the appropriate CPI and user lifetime at the country level can be very different.

As an example, hyper-casual games with a short user life cycle mean that the return on ad spend (ROAS) recoup period is short. Meanwhile, games with strong in-app purchases (IAPs) such as RPGs or social casinos have a long user life cycle. Here then, you'd need to set the ROAS recoup period to be relatively long.

Additionally, even for the same product, the lifetime may vary depending on the user characteristics of the country. Even for the same product, the lifetime of Eastern countries, such as Korea, is shorter than that of Western countries, so the ROAS recoup target period should be calculated separately for each country.

This process of looking into and verifying various indicators must always be repeated. It would be nice if a soft launch could be successful right away through this series of processes, but in many cases, this isn't how it works out. If the test performance does not reach the target, a variety of additional tests are required to continuously improve the indicator.

Step 3: Pick your channels

When choosing a channel for soft launch user acquisition tests, try to choose a platform with a programmatic approach that offers automated targeting of users, based on their location. This will save time for customizing your campaigns. Further, try to find one that gives you the advantage of self-serve, so you can manage campaigns directly.

Getting started with soft launching your app

Once you're set on your strategy, you then must draw up a marketing budget and plan for global launch based on the indicators confirmed through soft launching, and predict the ROAS recoup period, as well as other metrics like DAU or LTV before app launch.

Next, you need to define your criteria for ending the test. Known morbidly as 'kill factor', it's important to know when it's time to stop the test.

With your goals and tactics in line, ensure you document everything. A simple Excel sheet can keep track of all builds, as well as the change log, so you can see which change made the biggest impact.

Beyond that, it's time to soft launch your app!

Manage your soft launch with Mintegral

Mintegral can help customers prepare for global market testing efficiently and effectively through thorough data-based solutions and expertise derived from our diverse experiences.

We can assist you with youruser acquisition andad monetization goals, so don't hesitate to reach out to us tolearn more.

Author: James Haslam (LinkedIn)

• James is a Senior Marketing Manager with over seven years of experience in mobile ad tech. He works for Mobvista, a complete mobile app marketing platform that helps companies acquire high-quality app users at scale.