User acquisition is always an engaging topic for mobile gaming panel talks.

That was certainly the case at Mobile Gaming USA West 2013 in San Francisco.

'How to combat the skyrocketing cost of user acquisition without breaking the bank,' was the formal title that the panellists addressed.

"Optimisation is key. You have to find the right traffic sources. Don't drive up your own user costs because you're double bidding," said Glenn Kiladis, VP at Fiksu's FreeMyApps offerwall platform.

"It's all about the power of one. Trying to optimise 15 - 20 traffic sources doesn't work. Find a partner with an integrated platform."

Nique Fajors is co-founder of One Spear Entertainment, which makes games with celebrities such as basketball star Shaquille O'Neal.

"We used zero budget for ShaqDown but because it's Shaq, he was on primetime on TNT talking about it," said Fajors.

Friend of a friend

Beau Ross is director of marketing at Medio, which is launching its 'virality in a box' solution K-Invite.

"There will be some weekends when you can't buy users because of the activity of companies like GREE and DeNA," he pointed out.

"For an app to be successful, it has to be viral."

Jean-Paul Sanday is director of user acquisition at US developer Kiwi.

"You have to be ROI positive," he explained. "A dollar is precious. Don't give it away. Remember your original objective, whatever that is, and optimise for it. Don't get lost in the numbers."

Talking about indies who don't have any money, Ross said companies have to invest in their relationship with platform holders like Apple.

"Don't pray for an App Store feature. Foster a relationship," he stated.

Even spending small amounts of money on A/B testing your icon design can have an impact; 20-30 percent more downloads, he claimed.

Kiladis said companies need to think very carefully about what their campaign goals are.

"For many companies, you don't need to be #1 in the App Store," he said. "It can be cheaper and you can be more successful being #12 for a sustained period."

Moderator Eros Resmini, who used to work at GREE, said that 'burst and sustain' is the best way to use medium and large acquisition budgets.

"We recommend companies spend 40-50 percent of their budget on the burst," said Kiladis

Overlooked traditions

User acquisition shouldn't just be about incentivised downloads or mobile advertising, though.

"I think we need to look more at traditional marketing channels such as email," Resmini commented.

Medio's Beau Ross said it had found SMS - i.e. getting a recommendation text from a friend - worked well in terms of driving installs.

"The click-thru rates are poor, but the channel virality is very good," he said.

Kiladis agreed, saying that FreeMyApps generates 40 percent of its activity through social sharing. And in addition to its web-based offerwall, it uses its extensive Twitter and Facebook communities to drive secondary activity around the games it's promoting with challenges and contests.

Of course, no user acquisition panel can happen without mention being made of Apple banning AppGratis.

Not many panelists were willing to comment, however.

"I don't know what they did, but after they got their VC funding, their own app went shooting up the chart," commented Kiladis.

"I don't think consumers follow VC funding news."