The unstoppable growth of mobile applications makes defining and developing an App Marketing strategy vital to success from the start of the project. Large and medium-sized advertisers often have marketing agencies to help them run their business. However, small companies and indie developers often look for faster solutions to play in this increasingly tough market.
Everyone faces the same challenge: “reach the top positions in the rankings, make users fall in love and generate income with their mobile applications.”
Where to start?
Like any marketing strategy, you must define from the beginning what your target audience will be, how you will reach it, what the model will be to monetize your project and know the results (ROI) of all the actions you are going to carry out.
If you are going to launch a mobile application to the market and have a track record as a brand, you should make the most of what you have built to publicize your app. If, on the other hand, your brand is unknown, you should develop your launch strategy to optimize your resources.
In our experience, We always recommend working both actions aimed at branding the app and performance activities. The Internet allows you to work to results, take advantage of it! Do not forget that ASO should be the basis of an app marketing strategy. Carrying out a good ASO strategy will allow us to position ourselves and differentiate ourselves from the competition.
Strategies for Mobile Applications
When you launch a new mobile application to the market, your goal is to rank among the most downloaded of its kind and, of course, for your users to install it and then not uninstall it and obtain good ratings. Achieving this depends, in large part, on an adequate app marketing strategy.
When you launch a mobile application, there are two fundamental stages or phases that app marketing strategies for mobile applications (Apps) must contemplate:
● Pre-launch phase
● Post-launch phase
The two complement each other and have the same importance and weight in mobile applications’ success, which is why we will divide our app marketing strategy into these two main sections.
The Fundamental App Marketing Strategies for Mobile Applications
1. Identify your target audience
In any online marketing strategy, it is essential to know who you are targeting. This will allow you to adapt the tone of language and the message that you should convey. It will also help you identify which channels are the most suitable to reach your audience. A handy tool that can help you make a realistic portrait of this is the buyer persona. It is applied in Inbound marketing strategies, but it is perfectly extrapolated to your mobile application’s app marketing strategy.
2. Generate expectation on social networks
Even before launching your mobile application, you can already start loyalty to your first users. How? Through social media. Choose the one that is most suitable for your type of app. For example, if it has a great visual component, the most suitable social network will be Instagram. On the other hand, if it is technological, it may be better to opt for Twitter.
Announce the launch date of your app, create mystery, and reveal some of its features. The goal should be to generate expectations among your target audience. To get there, use keywords and hashtags. Of course, you must be careful in your choice because these will be associated with your app.
3. Create a landing page
The landing page or a landing page would be the base field from which you will make the different communications related to your app. From its development to its updates, news, etc.
In other words, the landing page will function as the extension of your app. The basic characteristics that you must take into account for your landing page are:
● A powerful call to action: The call to action is the call to action; This is the message that invites the public to perform the action you are looking for. It should be clear and simple text and have an action button focused on increasing the conversion rate.
● Description of the sample app: the description should be brief and direct and focused on awakening the user’s curiosity above all. You must not forget to use it the keywords that you have defined for your mobile application.
● Responsive design: The landing page must adapt to the mobile devices from which it will be downloaded. Otherwise, it will negatively influence your downloads.
● Analytics: You must measure the number of visits and conversions that occur from your landing page and the time that users spend on it. This will give you valuable information on what aspects may be failing, and therefore you need to improve.
4. Create a blog
Content marketing has a perfect place in an app marketing strategy for mobile applications.
Write about the topics that interest the audience for which your app is intended. For example, imagine that you are going to launch an app for tourists in Barcelona,
A blog is a stable tool that will be of great help to you both before and after your mobile application or app launch. From it, you can publish the development process of the app and share it later on social networks. Of course, you should not forget to include the banner of the landing page of your app in the blog. This will suppose a continuous flow of users towards your landing, and soon you will see how the downloads of your application are increasing.
It is also very important that you apply SEO web positioning to your blog and landing page. For this, you must carry out a previous study of keywords (or keyword research), search trends, and ease of web positioning to determine which words, with which it could best reach your target audience. After having done all this study, you can start with the content generation strategy optimized for Google search engines and attractive for users and start writing your articles!
5. Use App Marketing channels focused on Branding
● Own channels: friends, family, social networks, website, newsletter, QR in physical establishments, etc. These are free!
● Media: prepare a complete press kit and send it to the main media.
● Specialized Blogs: contact the main blogs specialized in mobile, technology, or vertical applications in the sector of your app and contract a review for your app. The costs are not very high, and it works!
● Celebrities, influencers, early adopters: Invite influencers to test your application and share their opinion on their channels. This is not within reach of anyone.
● Traditional Media: Advertise on TV. It is increasingly common to see app ads on TV, on billboards, or the radio. If you have a budget, use large audience media.
6. Use Performance Marketing App Channels
● Display Networks: There are many networks with which to work on results: CPC (cost per click), CPI (cost per installation or download), CPL (cost per lead) and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) are the purchase models with whom you work. The budget you want to assign to each network/model will depend on your strategy. My advice is to test various networks, measure, and invest in the highest ROI.
● App Discovery – Apps that other apps recommend. If you want to reach the Top 10, this is your option. However, keep in mind that everything that goes up goes down. For this reason, you should not focus your app marketing strategy solely on this channel.
7. Advertising on mobile applications:
Marketing based on mobile apps is a growing industry. Marketing actions take the form of advertisements that appear while using the app. We will find a banner or pop-up type formats that can no longer be blocked as we are no longer in the context of a web browser. For app publishers, advertising is the most effective way to monetize a free app. To see the advertising, often perceived as intrusive and annoying, disappear, the user will have to switch to the paid version of the application.
8. SMS campaigns:
SMS remains an effective and direct way to reach your target. According to MailChimp, these short messages are part of the intimate life of the consumer, and read rates are close to 95% (compared to an average open rate of 20.81% for e-mails across all sectors). This figure should, however, be put into perspective: users have no choice, the very design of the SMS forcing them to “see” the message directly in the notification. Communication by SMS is subject to the same rules as communication by e-mail: obligation of consent (double opt-in), commitment to providing an unsubscribe link (by giving a right of response “STOP” at the end of each SMS or via another number) …
9. Push notifications from mobile applications:
Voluntarily accepted or activated by the user, these notifications allow applications to send messages, even when the apps in question are not in use. Therefore, you can use these notifications to send messages: whether it is a reduction, an invitation to discover the new collection, or an announcement! However, it is recommended not to abuse push notifications: few users know how to deactivate them without uninstalling the application, which would have the opposite effect of what is intended.
10. Point of sale location functionalities:
With m-marketing, you can use the store locator, the location of a physical point of sale. This drive to store lever makes it possible to attract consumers directly to your point of sale. Moreover, according to a Google study, the information most searched by users with their concerns local activities: opening hours of a store, address, GPS guidance to the store … 32% of clicks on ads based on location usually lead to a purchase or a store visit.
11. Geolocation in a mobile situation:
Thanks to the evolution of mobile technologies (smartphone, 4G, etc.), mobile marketing is becoming increasingly important, and it is now possible to send messages thanks to geolocation when no one is near the store. This will make it possible to directly attract the user’s attention and make him want to enter the store right next to him.
12. Gamification:
Games are one of the most used applications on a smartphone; however, with gamification, you can integrate elements of the game in an area that is not usually gaming (for example, when Gucci created a game, especially for the release of a new bag). Gamification will make it possible to engage its audience by soliciting the player’s commitment. This will, therefore, build customer loyalty, entertain them, and improve the brand image while communicating for it.
13. Buy a .app domain
If you buy a .app domain, you are saying it all: what do you do, what does your page refer to, etc.
A .app extension allows you to promote the website of your mobile application. And if you are a web developer, it is a very good option to use it as an extension of the domain of your resume in web format.
A .app extension has the advantage that it is very easy to remember. In addition, it transmits confidence and a lot of security about the information you can publish on your blog or website.
This extension is much more secure than any other. Being a domain launched by Google, it requires that for this extension to work correctly, the web works with HTTPS to certify that the communication that is sent from a browser to the web servers is encrypted and that the personal data of the users is safe.
14. ASO or SEO positioning for mobile applications
Surely you already know how important an SEO positioning strategy is in-app marketing. Well, we can say, for simplicity, that ASO is SEO applied to apps. In this case, the positioning does not seek to raise positions in Google, as it happens with SEO, but in the Google Play Store and the App Store.
Just as on-page and off-page factors are involved in SEO, in ASO, important factors to keep in mind are on-metadata and off-metadata. And as you can imagine, you have to work both to achieve good positioning in the main stores. Let’s see briefly what each of them consists of.
15. Paid advertising on social networks and Google
As previously discussed, social networks play an important role in promoting mobile applications. In addition to the organic promotion that you develop in them, it is very beneficial for you to carry out segmented advertising campaigns, that is, focused on your target audience. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow you to make completely personalized advertising, in which you can focus only on the public that interests you.
In addition to social networks, you can also do paid advertising campaigns on Google, which has specific tools for this purpose.
In Conclusion
As you can see, the app marketing campaigns for apps must take into account several aspects; all of them focused on reaching the target audience and generating more downloads. We hope that this article has been interesting to you and, above all, that it is useful for you when defining the app marketing strategy for your app.
The Importance of Measuring
It is of little or no use to carry out the actions described above if the results are not measured and analyzed correctly. Put a tracker in your life!
This article exposes the basis of an App Marketing strategy. Each project is a world and requires a different approach that must be carried out with meaning.