THE GAME DEVELOPER'S CRASH COURSE IN LIFETIME VALUE:

CREATING A MARKETING BUDGET AND FUNDING YOUR GROWTH

2

WHAT DOES POLLEN DO?

Early access to funds, paid direct

to your bank account

Seamlessly finance marketing

spend through top ad platforms

Unbiased guidance for UA

campaigns & financial planning

We give app developers early access to revenues they’ve earned from the app stores, so they

can rapidly reinvest in the resources they need to grow their business faster

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

3

THE CHALLENGE: THE APP PLATFORMS ONLY PAY OUT REVENUE UP TO 60+ DAYS AFTER YOU’VE EARNED IT.

LAUNCHYou’re earning money from day 1

This is your moneytrapped in the payment system

Platforms release your cash…

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth 4

MARKETING BUDGET

7 STEPS

5

STEP 1: MIND THE FU**ING GAP

Financial challenge

If you’re stuck in a cycle of spending / waiting for the payout, you’re going to need to

keep replenishing your UA budget from another source

Solutions?

Credit card or other external source such as your seed fund, which can spell trouble

for your relationships with investors, and limit your ability to raise further investment

Without a plan to plug the funding gap, even the most successful and well-funded app

developers can run into financial problems fast

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth 66

STEP 2: ALIGN DESIGN & BUDGET

Reinvest

into advertising

Acquire more

users

Receive your

earnings

Game design + budgeting = $

• Aligning game monetization with appropriate

budgeting, especially critical in the early

stages of your app

• Build custom budget to account for your app’s

unique characteristics

7

LTV: Put simply life time value is the amount of revenue you expect to generate from a single user in the time between downloading the app and abandoning it

Factors: You need to be able to understand the different factors that influence LTV for each cohort throughout the app marketing funnel

Users: Calculating your future profits confidently requires detailed analysis of profitable cohorts

Funnel: Also look at how effective your marketing funnel is for each profitable cohort and how this can be optimised

STEP 3: KNOW YOUR LTV

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

8

STEP 4: MAP YOUR PAYMENTS

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

Align your calendars for efficient operations

App stores (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.) and ad networks (Fyber, IronSource, Tapjoy, etc.) calendars have different payment cycles -

overlay your projections accordingly

9

How long before you receive the

revenue?

Understand and optimize costs to acquire a user

The revenue they will generate

++

STEP 5: MARKETING FORMULA

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

10

The app stores are intensely competitive and you need to

ensure you have the funds to promote your app and

acquire users effectively.

But how do you finance user acquisition without a

substantial marketing budget when your revenue is tied up

in the app stores?

THE REALITY IS THAT YOU NEED TO SUPPORT YOUR APP WITH PAID UA

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

11

Unlock the value of your earnings to fund growth

Think of your accrued app store earnings as an untapped

asset

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

STEP 6: USE YOUR REVENUE TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

12

KEY BENEFITS FOR DEVELOPERS

Do more with your money at an earlier stage: Earlier access to

your revenue enables quicker investment into user acquisition earlier, so you can

maximize your app’s growth potential at critical points in the app life cycle

Keep control of your business: Using revenue recycling reduces

reliance on external capital which dilutes your equity, or involves revenue share with

publishers

Improve your chances of Self-Publishing success: You can

capitalize on your revenues, especially from free traffic events (featuring, influencers,

etc) to finance your growth and self-publish

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

13

KEY BENEFITS FOR INVESTORS

Sustainability: Early access to cash means SMB/SME developers have a better

chance of survival, ensuring a healthier ecosystem in the long term, as top-level

incumbents are replaced by newer players, generating new users and sales

Improved capital efficiency: VC backed companies are able to deploy

their venture money more effectively as they don’t need to tie up a chunk of venture

financing into marketing spend

No dilution or revenue share:  Pollen VC provides an alternative for

companies who are seeking to strengthen their cash flow position without the need to

raise more equity capital

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

Understand payback periods, and how to avoid cash flow gaps

Model financials based on metrics to show how much UA you can fund, and how quickly you can grow

If your cohorts are not delivering, optimize your marketing funnel and deploy capital when ROI is positive

Pollen VC created Financial Forecaster - a tool using readily available metrics of retention, ARPDAU, and CPI to help developers understand and model LTV

14

STEP 7: OPTIMIZE CASH FLOWS

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth

15

STEP 5: OPTIMIZE CASH FLOWS

PLANNING A MARKETING BUDGET FOR MOBILE GAMES

calculator.pollen.vc

calculator.pollen.vc

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth 1616

WHO SHOULD USE FACTORING?Is your marketing profitable?

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth 1717

WHO SHOULD USE FACTORING?Use financing (bank, factoring, venture, angels) only if you are ROI positive

CASE STUDY: TIMING + $ = $$$

Creating a marketing budget and funding your growth 18

No marketing, organic only$5-10 a day

Start paid UA

Use revenue recycling to reinvest in marketing

From $200 to $60,000 a month

@PollenVC

calculator.pollen.vc

denis@pollen.vc