The mobile app ecosystem is a challenging environment. Year after year thousands of apps enter the app sector and compete for the pivoted top 10 listing.
One of the biggest fundamental mistakes an entrepreneur preparing for the top spot can make is not paying attention to the mobile app promotion stages. Or treating the process less than the number of effort required for the design and development process.
The question in the present mobile app state is not What is mobile app marketing? Or Why is mobile app marketing necessary? But what are the right app engagement methods.
It is a given that no matter how well crafted your application is, it will not get its spot under the sun until it is marketed right and there is a buzz around it much before it hits the stores and users’ devices.
Achieving the promotion utopia is not easy. But let us help you get there.
Here is an app marketing guide to help you market your mobile app.
But before you get to the stage of marketing your mobile app, there is some homework which is required to be done to answer how to market an app successfully.
Prerequisites for Mobile App Promotion
Identification of app objectives and target audience
Much before you get to the stage of finalizing the app marketing budget, you should flesh out who your target audience is and what is your app objective is. While the Product Discovery phase gives the answers to these questions, it won’t hurt to revisit the findings when you are nearing the stage of mobile app marketing.
Do the keyword research
Identifying the right set of keywords is a very important part of the process for mobile app discoverability. One that you’ll find in every app marketing guide. Your application will stand a lot better chance if you what language your users will use to reach your mobile app through natural searches.
Since this is just the homework stage, you need not pay heed to the positioning portion of the keyword as of now.
The promotion strategies for mobile app are primarily made of two stages – Pre-Launch and Post-Launch marketing. Now, unlike the design and development part of the process, where the efforts reduce once the app is deployed, the efforts needed both before and after the app launch stages, in case of app marketing, are the same.
Let us look into the pre and post launch mobile app marketing tips.
Pre-Launch App Marketing Strategy
This is the stage which would enable you to create awareness about your application in the market. Here are the things that will have to be covered in the pre-launch app marketing stage.
Finalize a release date
A good starting point would be to finalize the release date of the application. Having a time frame in mind would help devise better marketing strategies. When deciding on the launch date, consider all holidays and events happening around the date, this will help ensure that the app is not getting overshadowed.
Build A Great App Landing Page
Mobile app landing pages have become some sort of a must-have for businesses looking to generate eyeballs right once the development phase starts nearing its end. The benefits of mobile app landing page can be manifold. First, you can use all the information collected on the page for conversion purposes. Next, you can use the content on the page for SEO purposes – improving the app’s ranking on the search engines.
Outreach initiatives
One of the mobile app marketing tips that works best in favour of promoting an application is the outreach initiatives that a business takes. While it would be a lot more beneficial for a startup to start rolling out PRs and Articles from the stage where the app’s beta version is out, it’d be beneficial to start creating a list of prospects to reach out, in advance.
You should have a ready list of PR professionals, bloggers, and social media influencers before you start promoting your application. It’d also help your mobile app marketing strategy to keep a few pitch ready with you beforehand to then send to the agencies.
Open social media profiles
While assumed to start once there is a link to download the app, ideally, the stage where you create social media profiles should occur 1-2 months prior.
You should start with identifying who your target audience is and which platform do they frequent. On the basis of that information, open social media profiles and start posting content on them to keep the users’ interest in place.
Besides these pointers, there are a few things that you will have to cover from the development front as well. Let us look into them.
Make the app easily shareable
On the development front, it should be made easy for users to share your application to their friends and family. For this, you will have to ask your partnered mobile app development company to add native elements, which would make it possible to share the app through Message, WhatsApp, or other social media platforms.
Implement app analytics
Right from the beginning, there should be an app analytics section inside the application which would make it possible for you to keep track of how the app is performing when the time comes. Adding analytics at a later stage will be a lot more difficult compared to adding it at the development stage.
Enable push notification
The prominence of role that push notifications play is undeniable. It can be your go-to tool for ensuring the app is always on the top of users’ minds. But in order for it to perform what you expect of it, you will first have to incorporate it in your application:
- Register with the push notification service of the operating system;
- The OS service offers an API that enables the app to interact with the service;
- Add SDK to the app.
Post-Launch App Marketing Plan
The efforts that you put in the name of pre-launch app marketing is only half of what you will have to do for post-launch marketing. Now, when we talk about post-launch marketing, we basically about two primary approaches: Organic and Paid.
The idea here is to get as many downloads on your application as possible. For, the ranking of your app on the store will ultimately depend on the number of downloads it has received. But a thing to note here is that there is no list of the best ways to promote an app. It will all ultimately depend on your app type, what you are looking to achieve, and the budget you have set for the process.
Paid Promotion Activities
App-install campaigns
The app-install ads when driven with the right strategy and in the right place and time tend to draw massive benefit for the application on the download count front. What is difficult in this method is ensuring users remain hooked with the application after downloading it. But the returns that can be expected from this approach is massive.
Pay per click
Pay per click tend to have a massive impact on mobile app promotion, if and when done on the right platform. While one approach would be to promote the app on search engine, what we recommend is promoting the application on other applications – this has shown to offer greater benefits to businesses.
Email campaigns
Depending on the demographics of your target audience, eMails can be a great start for your mobile app promotion plans. By sending the details and values of your app to people who either subscribed to your landing page earlier or through cold emails can be a great way to get attention on your application.
Organic Promotion Activities
App Store Optimization
When we talk about organic mobile app promotion, the first method that strikes the mind is ASO or App Store Optimization. The idea of ASO is to work on the app’s store page in a way that it is fit to appear in the search list and enticing enough to be downloaded by the users in one go. We have written an ASO guide to explain the concept better in much detail.
Apply for awards
Awards are a sign that the product is quality focused and is bound to add great value to the user acquisition strategy for apps. In many ways, they also play a role in getting greater downloads.
Here are some of the websites that accept awards application on the basis of its design, features, and other criterias:
Gain visibility
There are a number of avenues you can turn to for gaining visibility on your application. Here are a few of them –
- Submit the application on promotion websites like Rate My Startup or Launching Next. these will help you in gaining reviews from entrepreneurs and other users.
- Publish the app on alternative app stores like Amazon etc. (Note that this can only be a part of your Android app marketing strategy)
- Conduct contests and giveaways to push the interest that you app is getting.
- Keep in touch with the press to continue keeping your brand in the news.
Localize your app
Though English is mostly the language that an app is drawn around, do not restrict the language as the only language. Many people in the world, even in the USA itself, do not use English as their native language – an event that affects the mobile app usage charts.
It is important to localize your application according to the relevant regions – ones where your users belong. But when doing it, do not rely on auto-translation. There are a number of app localization agencies like ICanLocalize, Babble-on, Tethras, Localeyes, etc, which can help bring the app to a global market.
The pre-launch app marketing strategy and post-launch app marketing plans you read above work amazingly well for getting users to your application. But the hard work and effort doesn’t end there. You will still have to work around ensuring that people who install your app don’t abandon it.
While it would help to know the reasons why people uninstall apps, what we recommend is investing your time in mobile app reputation. There are three primary ways to attain it: Setting up listening tools, setting a team to reply users in real-time, and bring troubleshooting tips on app and the landing page. But before these three, you will have to guarantee an optimized app performance.
FAQs About Mobile App Promotion
Q. How to prepare for mobile app marketing during the development phase?
The answer on how to promote an app is something that has to be accommodated from the app discovery and development stage itself. Here are a few things that you should do to ease the process:
- Incorporate push notification
- Make the app easily searchable
- Implement app analytics
Q. How do you increase the visibility of your mobile app?
There are different avenues you can head on to for gaining visibility on your app –
- Submit the app on promotion websites
- Publish the app on alternative app stores
- Conduct contests and giveaways for pushing the interest your app is getting.
Q. How to increase app conversions?
One of the most sure shot ways to increase mobile app conversion is two sided. On one side, you should market your app enough that people know about it. And on the other side, you should develop the app in a way that it offers real value – one which would back the marketing efforts.
Prateek Saxena
Co-founder of AppInventiv
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