Every time you build an app, it’s to solve a need. However, the challenge is to ensure that your app reaches out to the right people who are looking for “the” solution! App marketing lives and grows along with your app.
Not many marketers understand that app marketing is something that ought to be paid attention to while building the app. It’s believed to be a strategy that comes into force after an app is launched. Well, it’s a wrong belief! App marketing or at least an idea on how you take your app forward after its built is something you should have an idea on while building your app.
Apps today, have enormous potential in solving purposes directly. A recent report by Forbes showed that on an average, consumers in the US, install about 25 apps per month.
Although people download apps, the truth is that most of them are abandoned or not been used. Therefore, at this point, you need to address more tangible issues.
Marketers ought to realize that their app marketing has a much more significant role to play that what seems to be lingering.
Contemporary app marketers have now realized that adjusting to new strategies don’t really show many results as addressing to existing target groups, establishing a closer bond with loyal customers etc.
Therefore, today, we are going to help you understand how you can modify and enhance your app marketing strategy to make sure you are going on the right track.
App Marketing is empowered by Five Pillars.
App Store Optimization (ASO)
The greatest impact you can bring onto increasing your app reach and its download rate is via App Store Optimization. Although every app marketer understands the importance of ASO, they hardly fail to use it when it comes to execution. Here is a list of what’s extremely important when it comes to optimizing.
Given below are 7 crucial factors of App Store Optimization
- App name – This is precisely where optimizing plays a key role. Using the right keyword for your app name can make all the difference in influencing your app ranking. Choose the best, unique and most crisp words that can best describe your app.
- Keywords – Google Play Store and App Store allows you to identify a “reduced set of keywords” to help the app store in identifying your app. Quite obviously, app marketers understand the importance of keyword analysis to carry this forward. However, the trick is to play this from the shoes of your customer. Try and optimize this field from time to time and experiment with keywords that have high chances of providing a solution to what you customers seek for.
- “Download” metric – A recursive aspect that clearly signifies the more downloads brings in a higher probability of your app to appear on the top.
- Ratings and reviews – Quality is the best form of advertising! The most important features of your apps are always reflected in the reviews. This factor greatly influences the overall ranking in the App Store listings. This means you ought to non-intrusively request your customers to leave a review after taking a look at your app.
- App description – Enumerate the important features of your app, by attaching it with likely keywords.
- App screenshots – A picture speaks a thousand words. Screenshots of your app literally convince a user to download and check it out! Make sure your app screenshots exemplify your app important features.
- App localization – It’s a forthright process of translating all details of your app and adapting it to a localized language and culture of a country to which it is targeted. Usually, companies that localize its existing App in a new country, has witnessed an increase in its download rate.
App Indexing
App discovery doesn’t just happen only in the app store! Your app market is a wide platform and should be deemed “discoverable” from any angle.
There are many ways your targeted user can discover your app (aside from searching it on the play store).
According to Forrester, the popular sources for app discovery are(percentages are recorded for iOS):
- Browsing through the platform’s official store – 63%
- Recommendation from others (word of mouth) – 50%
- Browsing the store’s top Apps – 34%
- Previously installed by the manufacturer on the smartphone – 20%
- Through social networks – 19%
- General Internet browsing – 16%
- Searching via search engines (Google, Bing, etc..) – 14%
- Ads in newspapers or magazines – 7%
- Via Blogs – 7%
- Via Newsletters – 6%
- TV ads – 6%
- Mobile ads – 6%
- Radio ads – 3%
- Other – 7%
This means, as an app marketer if you are sticking to ASO alone, it’s not going to take you anywhere!
How do you carry out app discovery through other domains?
As we can see in the list above, there are several moments where we can directly or indirectly influence the download of the App! While some of these channels require a considerable budget, there are other channels that can have a greater impact sans promotion.Here are 10 forms of implementing app discovery outside
Of the many ideas, we have suggested 5 ways your app could be identified from outside the play store.
Website – Design a website, that exclusively highlights the prominence of your app in the app store along with features like – downloads, screenshots, ratings, and reviews. Optimize the website for SEO and always remember to make a mobile version of your website. (Check Snapchat’s image below!)
Promote on Social Networks – Promote your app through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Choose appropriate social networks that caters to your audience group and keep in touch. Invite your friends and target audiences through promotions on these networks.
App banners on your Static Website – If you already have a web application that caters to a group of audience, start using app banners that “shows” these users that you have an app that is available to make things easier!
Influential Bloggers – Introduce your App to bloggers from the similar domain, who can share it on their website or on platforms that they are a part of.
App Review Sites – Advertise your app on app review sites, which not only recommends your app to its visitors but also provides good backlinks which are incredible for your SEO.
App Promotion: How to promote an app?
The days after the launch of your app can be the most unrewarding as you have no clue how your app is going to be received by the masses. Therefore, in order to avoid these, here are a few tips you can make use of to promote your app and be a “smart” app marketer.
Be extraordinary in your promotions
A thousand apps or more, are promoted in different locations every day! However, if you have to stand out with your app promotions, you have to abridge the gap between creating a strong impression and addressing the needs of your customers.
An extraordinary app promotion will stand in the minds of audiences. Identify the most distinctive quality of your app and weave a story, which brings us to the next tip.
Weave a story
Who doesn’t like a good story? Apps are no exception when it comes to signifying their purpose with a convincing story. In fact, developing an emotional, gripping story via 'video’ and releasing it as a part of your app-promotion brings out an emotional coverage with the audience.
For instance, if you have developed a game? What’s the background story behind it? Here’s an example of how Zynga’s Farmville made use of 'videos' to promote their game.
Synchronized Exposure
An app promotion is devised to get maximum exposure in a span of time. In order to carry this forward, you also need to synchronize all forms of promotion like – PR, banners, blogs, influencer outreach etc.
Simultaneous exposure has amplifying effects to a human mind. The first time you see an article about the app, it’s nice. The second time it’s meaningful. The third time can make it a hit!
Website
Yet again, as I said above, your website speaks for your app. You need to build a home for your app on the web. In fact, you need to build a home that gets recognized by Google!!
Most app marketers, fail to realize that they can follow old-school marketing techniques when it comes to app promotion via the website. You can implement site promotion through banners, SEO and backlinking. Make a simple, one-page slider as shown below and all will fall in place!
Influence Downloads
Today, app marketing is not only carried out by people 'creating' the app but also by the general public. Create extremely valuable contacts by networking, speak to influencers and bloggers who can download your app and share their experience, get your app covered by individual PR’s, do anything and everything that can influence downloads from people by people.
App Analytics
From time-to-time, we are posed with a redundant question – “how to improve app retention?“.
Well, the best place to get this started is figuring out why people are uninstalling your app. This starts by digging down into the analytics.
To take your app to the next level, here’s a list of top “free” app analytics tools will give you the data to help you understand how people are using your app, where the pain points are and how to make your app the best it can be.
Mobile Analytics: Google
If you into marketing, you are familiar with Google Analytics. If you use Google Analytics for your website – you can also get your mobile analytics integrated into the same dashboard.
The Mobile Analytics website illustrates the importance of using analytics to maximize the results you are getting from your app. It also integrates with AdMob, making it easy to see how well your paid campaigns are doing.
Cost: Free | Platforms: iOS, Android
App Analytics: Apple
Apple’s in-house analytics platform can be found in the iTunes Connect.
A few of the key features of this platform include:
- Filters – To filter metrics like app version or iOS version. Quite easy to drill down and identify which segments work well and which don’t.
- Sources – Drill down the traffic you get from paid and organic sources.
- Retention – Understanding “how long” people are sticking to your app before closing.
The tool is very limited, compared to other tools on this list. However, good enough to get some key metrics.
Cost: Free | Platform: iOS
Apsalar
Apsalar is focused more on advertising attribution and gives a good look at your marketing ROI.
It helps you find out which marketing campaigns are working and which ones you need to drop. They also offer great marketing tools like SmartTags, which give you more detailed analysis of your marketing efforts.
Cost: Free | Platforms: iOS, Android
Localytics
Localytics provides almost the similar functions of Apsalar, so it really comes down to your preference and which app analytics tool you like best.
The interface platform provides real-time analytics, remarketing data, attribution and more. Their messaging features seem to set them apart from the crowd, so if you are interested in this function, you should check them out.
Cost: Free and paid options | Platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Mobile Web
App Re-engagement
Use Push Notifications Intelligently
Push notifications is an integral part of app marketing. These kind of notifications have the ability to bring users back into an app; if employed shrewdly. Push notifications to send a very specific reminder or incentive bear the best results. To carry this out, brands and agencies need to track in-app activities, create segments and target accordingly.
Advertise using Rich Media
Advertising shouldn’t just focus on driving downloads; it also has a big role to play in re-engagement. But to make it optimally effective, the URL in the media should deep link into the app, ideally to send users straight to the most exciting or relevant page.
Interact with Users Online
We spoke about app promotions on social channels in the second section of our blog. Right now, we are going to reflect the same tactic, but in a different way. Employ strategies that don’t introduce your app, instead, make them realize what they are missing by not being a part of your app.
Share Rewards and Coupons
Reengagement involves targeting audiences who already have an idea of what your app is all about. They have already been there and done it. You need to make things more special if you want them to come back and visit your app! Start implementing referral schemes, affiliates which garner rewards to attract them.
Conclusion
App marketing is a recursive form of marketing that needs to me monitored and gauged on a periodic basis. The strategies have to be fine tuned and updated to serve the purpose of the app.
