The App Marketing Snack with Clark Stacey, CEO of WildWorks ⎮ Episode 1

Interview

October 13, 2022

The App Marketing Snack is bringing you the latest ASO tips from app professionals. Our first episode’s guest is Clark Stacey, CEO of WildWorks and creator of Animal Jam.

Below is the full transcript of the video above.

Clark Stacey, I’m the CEO of WildWorks. WildWorks are the creators of Animal Jam and Fer.al and other digital toys for kids.

What kind of app do you use?

It’s reading and podcast listening apps, creative communities like Deviantart or Amino.

How do you promote an app aimed at kids?

The Animal Jam age group (that’s like 8 to 12), really they’re not hanging out in the kids category of the app stores. They’re looking for games, they’re looking for fun and they’re finding it on their own. The way they hear about those things is from their friends. So how do you get your app or your game to be the topic of conversation on the playground? Now it’s very much fed by influencers that they respect and follow. 

The challenge is to surprise and delight, and you have to surprise and delight with your marketing creatives, with the channels where you appear just as much as you do in the game. Some kids are in Animal Jam because they use it as a safe social network, some are there because they like to collect, some are there because they’re artistic and they like to create their own world and create their own unique looks for their animals. The marketing has to reach all those different constituencies. And then, when they get to the game they have to find what they’re hoping to find there.

What if it doesn’t work?

You have to distill from the data. Is it the creative that kids aren’t responding to, that kids are encountering? Are they encountering the creative and they’re clicking through the creative but they’re not interested enough when they hit the game to download, install and proceed through. At what point are they dropping out? Don’t reject a platform or a channel until you’ve looked at it deeply enough and tried different experiments with it to see if the problem is just matching the creative and the first impression of the game to the audience that you’re reaching there.

An app marketing advice to share?

Experiment in a lot of different areas. Spending a little bit of money, energy, and effort on each one and then double down on the ones that work. It’s data-driven now in ways it wasn’t when I first entered the industry. When you’re reaching for an audience like kids, a niche audience. It makes sense to spread your bets out wildly, try a lot of different things, and then narrow down to the ones that are performing for you.

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