21 (All Time Best) Mobile App Marketing Strategies to Pursue
Experts say that to create an app, the most important thing is the idea, which, in a way, is true. But, not entirely. The purpose is essential as, without it, you cannot build an app in the first place. However, the next most crucial thing before creating an app is its marketing.
Even though your app is one of a kind and needs no recognition or visibility, it is vital that you market your app. Mobile app marketing is also essential for brand building and positioning. Before you start creating the marketing plan for your freshly built app, it is crucial to learn how you to market a new mobile app by creating various mobile app marketing strategies.
Similar to mobile app development there are mainly three stages of mobile app marketing.
- Pre-launch
- Initial launch
- Post-launch
Mobile App Marketing: Pre-launch
#1 Competitor Analysis and Market Research
One of the most crucial elements in “mobile app marketing” is to analyze your competitors. Hence, it is the first stage in mobile app marketing. Market research mainly includes understanding your customers and identify the place/platform where you can find them. Once, you’ve done that you need to identify the pain-point of your customers and learn how using your app can they address their problems. Finally, when you have all the data, all you need to do is approach your customers via forums, ads, blogs, social media, and other channels.
#2 Create User Personas
Before you start to outreach your customers, identify various user personas. Ask these questions to yourself that Who are your customers? Where do they live? What is their range of age/How old are they? etc. Based on the user persons, pre-think whether your app has the required features or not. Add or remove the features based on your identification.
#3 Analyze the Competetive Market
Today, the app market has become highly competitive. For a single application, there are several apps in the app store. So, you need to make a list of those apps which are already famous and share the app idea similar to yours; Identify their cost(if applicable), monetization options, review, pros & cons, ranking, etc. Make sure you’ve removed all the negative points from your app before the release. Include at least one if not two features that would make your app stand out.
#4 Establish your Brand
Yes, it’s true, even apps have brand value and positioning. Create a story and messaging of your brand, which you want your customers to hear(not literally). The messaging can come from the problem that your app solves, the experience that your app provides, etc. After creating your brand messaging, you’ll need to create a style guide where you have to identify the fonts, colors, textures, etc. that enhances your brand value and separates you from your competitors.
#5 Gather PR Materials
It is often recommended that you start collecting all the PR material and create a press kit. The kit will include high-resolution pictures of your logos, screenshots, icons, videos, and other marketing-related images. Also, create a story about your app as to how did you come up with this idea with a little bit of your and your team members’ background. Once, everything is ready, publish the press releases on popular platforms.
#6 Define the Monetization Strategy
No one builds an app for charity. So, you have to define how you’re going to earn money from your app. You can earn money via in-app purchases, ads, or by making your customers pay for the app itself.
#7 App Store Optimization and Content Marketing
App store optimization is a technique to rank your app higher in a particular category and increase conversion rate. Apart from that, creating a content strategy for mobile app marketing is a critical element to consider. Content marketing includes blogging, podcasting, social media marketing, and video publishing. Content marketing will help you drive traffic, create your brand, target niche audience, and engage your customers.
Mobile App Marketing: Initial Launch
#1 Increase your User Acquisition Rate
Once, the app is released, your first aim should be to increase downloads by all means. You can do that by offering discounts (if any), spread the word among your friends and family, link your app to virtually everywhere, i.e., your website homepage, social media profiles, etc., run paid ads on various social media platforms, and more. Basically, do anything to get more and more downloads; Because nothing can help you receive a higher rank in the app store than continuously surging of downloads.
#2 Engage with acquired customers
Engaging with the people who trusted you already is extremely important to remain ahead in the race. Connect with them using your website or social media platforms and build a community that would help you gain more popularity.
#3 PR and Content Marketing
Never stop content marketing even though you’re receiving a massive amount of downloads. However, now, instead of creating content around how your app can help customers, you can create content around how your app is benefiting customers right now. Publish the content on various guest blogging sites, social media platforms, and more. Invite celebrities, journalists, etc. and create podcasts and videos for various PR and media publications.
#4 Reach Out to Professional Reviewers, App Listers, and Editors
To gain more credibility of your app, you can ask professional reviewers to review your app and post it on their website, blog, youtube channel, or social media platforms. Contact people who are known for creating lists of top apps in different categories, and ask them to list your app on their website. You can also contact the editorial team of the App Store for iOS apps and Play Store for Android apps. Getting your app featured in the “Editor’s Choice” list can help you gain more visibility and hence, more downloads.
#5 Apply for Awards
Recognitions and awards are a great way to attract new customers and increase credibility among old customers. On receiving awards, you can boast them on all your social media platforms, website, and even in your ad campaigns.
#6 Collect Feedback and Comments
Once you receive enough amount of app downloads, you’ll start receiving user reviews and comments. Respond to every comment (if possible), give special attention to the bad reviews, and improvisations advice by users. Immediately act upon those improvisations to maintain the app ratings.
#7 Engage and Re-engage Users
Engage your customers by sending them push notifications, conducting quizzes and competitions, providing discounts, offers, and loyalty benefits, etc. You can also engage with more customers via offline mediums such as seminars and live events. Re-engage inactive users by sending them personalized notifications and engaging content.
Mobile App Marketing: Post-Launch
#1 Engage More with Your Users
After the launch of the app, it’s time for you to listen to your customers more via platforms where two-way dialogue is possible. Creating burst campaigns is also an excellent idea to gain the attention of more potential users in less time. In a burst campaign, the idea is to purchase almost every paid media for 48 to 72 hours and expose your app to a broader audience. However, it is risky as it can drag you to debt if it didn’t work. So, you must be quite sure before you decide to do “burst campaign.”
#2 Provide Referral Bonus
Referral bonus is one of the oldest yet, highly efficient technique to increase customer base. The reason why referral programs have a notion of guaranteed success is that it benefits both users and the company.
#3 Build your Website
You might have the question, “Isn’t it better if I build it before the launch?” The answer is yes it is better to build your website before the launch but, if you don’t have enough time and resource to build a site pre-launch then making one post-launch becomes a necessity. It is essential for two reasons. The first is that it does the SEO which provides more visibility to your app, and second is that it acts as a way to connect and engage with your customers.
#4 Don’t Stop SEO Activities for your Website
Doing SEO for your website will help you kill two birds with one arrow. It will increase your website ranking on Google and hence, your app ranking on respective platforms. Again, the most efficient way to do SEO is through content marketing.
#5 A/B Testing
A/B Testing is a critical element of mobile app marketing. It is often used to identify the taste of a particular target group. It helps you to recognize which type of experience suites best to your customers. It is a data-driven approach to optimize an app from UX and algorithm point-of-view.
#6 Gather User Reviews and Feedbacks
Ask a long-term user to review your app on the Play Store or App Store if he/she hasn’t done it yet. Reminding user to express their feelings about your app after allowing them to use it for a sufficient amount of time is a great way to express gratitude for which customers are always hungry. However, this pop-up can adversely affect customer experience if it happens more often or a user has already sent his/her feedback.
#7 Prepare for Continuous Improvement
After asking so many times to your customers about your app and asking them to help you identify the flaws in your app, they are expecting those improvements. The customer experience will come to a full cycle when a customer uses the app-suggest a change-you make the change-customer loves the change. Your aim should always be to add value to a user every time you release an update.
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Conclusion
Mobile app marketing is no child’s play. Once you’ve identified how to market a new mobile app, you need to learn how to keep track of your efforts. It can be for marketing as well as development. Only by keeping track of your marketing and development efforts can you prevent things from going haywire, increase downloads and active users and hence, generate more revenue.
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