Million Victories

Overview:

In order to accelerate growth and expand its user acquisition efforts, Million Victories partnered with Rocketship HQ. By incorporating new networks into its UA mix, the company aimed to achieve faster scaling and reach a wider audience. With Rocketship’s expert guidance, Million Victories was able to successfully optimize its UA campaigns and achieve significant improvements in user acquisition and engagement.

Here are the results achieved by Rocketship HQ:

To achieve the results, we utilized a combination of tactics that were focused on product, creative testing, & channel expansion. Here is a brief overview of the strategies that worked together to unlock growth:

1. Evaluate product health
2. Conduct rigorous creative research to unlock creative opportunities
3. Scaling on Meta with a progression-based testing framework
4. Implement Branch Out strategy to overcome UAC’s automation limitations
5. Focus on profitability while managing operational complexity
6. Team coordination, communication & rapid response time

Here are a few takeaways that helped us unlock profitable scale that can hopefully help you unlock performance and scale as well:

1. Evaluate product health

We started off our engagement by evaluating the product and to what extent it was investible. Some of the metrics we looked at were:

• ✅ Crash rates
• ✅ Retention
• ✅ Revenue trends

2. Conduct rigorous creative research

Rocketship HQ began implementing a rigorous creative testing program that involved producing a number of creatives, conducting regular testing and optimizing campaigns based on performance data.

RocketShip HQ developed the creatives using a deep understanding of player motivations that highlighted the key reasons why players played.

We analyzed app store reviews to gain insights into why users were downloading our app, the challenges they were encountering, and the benefits they were experiencing. Furthermore, we conducted an in-depth investigation of our competitive ads database to understand the competitive environment.

Our team keeps a dynamic record of ads that we identify in the market and continuously track and analyze them. All team members are responsible for monitoring and analyzing a specific number of ads in our competitive ads database as part of their objectives and key results (OKR).

Based on our deep dive, we prepared an analysis of the key elements that constituted ads that we saw ‘out in the wild’ – and mapped these against different player motivations. Some of these were:

• Endless runner: Escapism
• Listicle type ads: ‘3 signs….’: Discovery, Self-expression
• Speaking to different pain points: endless timers, latency, underwhelming game mechanics, etc.: Expertise, Progression
• Fail state: Progression
• First-person testimonials: Social connection, Expertise
• Memes: Self-expression, Relaxation

We used these learnings to inform the ad creatives.

3. Scaling on Meta with a progression-based testing framework

Building on the foundational steps previously implemented, we proceeded to execute a scaling strategy on the Meta platform, which had proven to be the most important channel for this particular account.

A vital aspect of this scaling process involved preemptively identifying potential creative saturation. In order to achieve this, it was necessary to continually surface new winning creative options and replace those that were losing their efficacy due to overexposure.

Out of the numerous testing frameworks available, we deliberately selected a progressive testing methodology in order to reduce overall testing costs. Under this approach, all newly developed creatives were tested in an untested campaign, and only after validating their effectiveness, the successful creatives were integrated into our core campaigns.

4. Implement Branch Out strategy to overcome UAC automation limitations

We ensured that events from Firebase were integrated with the UAC account, as we observed a notable difference in performance when using Firebase alongside an MMP.

Although interests or demographics cannot be explicitly targeted in Google UAC, our Branch Out strategy allows for communicating the desired user segments to the Google algorithm.

Using Branch Out, we treat ad group inputs in UAC (descriptions, display ads, and video ads) similar to search keywords or themes, enabling us to select the most suitable descriptions, display ads, and video ads to target users that are responsive to the key value propositions of the game.

5. Focus on profitability in line with operational complexity

With the current scale we have achieved, operating across multiple geographies and channels, we have encountered increased expenditure as well as a considerable rise in complexity within our operating structure. Nevertheless, it is imperative to ensure that this added complexity does not impede our growth and overall effectiveness.

To tackle this challenge, we developed a tailored dashboard that displays crucial acquisition metrics instantly, simply with a click. This dashboard segments the metrics by channel and time periods, effectively saving us a considerable amount of time that would have otherwise been spent on ad-hoc analyses and extracting data from multiple platforms, dashboards and spreadsheets.

In addition, we implemented a strong operational and review process to ensure that we are always vigilant for any significant changes in both spending and performance. Our team follows a Slack-first and remote-first structure, which allows us to respond to any modifications to marketing and product configurations quickly and efficiently.

6. Team coordination, communication & rapid response time

The team maintained a high level of coordination and communication throughout the project, which helped to ensure that everyone was aligned on the goals and objectives. This included regular team meetings, progress reports, and updates on key milestones. We also prioritized rapid response time to ensure that issues and challenges were addressed quickly and effectively.

In addition, we have implemented a strong operational and review process to ensure that we are always vigilant for any significant changes in both spending and performance.

• Our process includes:
• Health check: daily
• Campaign deep dives: 3x a week
• Creative deep dive: 3x a week
• Weekly update: 1x a week
• Creative production: 1x a week

Our team follows a Slack-first and remote-first structure, which allows us to respond to any modifications to marketing and product configurations quickly and efficiently.

In summary, this was a low-down of what Rocketship HQ achieved for them:

• ✅ 79%+ d7 ROAS improvement
• ✅ 110%+ increase in FB spending
• ✅ 8+ creatives tested per month

Unlocking this growth required the collaboration of a community and the synchronization of several intricate components:

• Evaluate product health
• Conduct rigorous creative research
• Scaling on Meta with a progression-based testing framework
• Implement Branch Out strategy to overcome UAC automation limitations
• Focus on profitability in line with operational complexity
• Team coordination, communication & rapid response time

All of this is to show how it’s STILL possible to unlock tremendous growth.

It’s not easy – but by applying the rigor of full-funnel strategies, deep user understanding, & channel expertise, it is absolutely possible to grow month on month.

It’s what we run day to day in our agency Rocketship HQ.