Getting a killer app idea and developing an application is just one part of the story for app success. You also need to create awareness with your target audience about how your application can help solve their problem. After all, “if you build it, they will come” is no guarantee for success.
Just developing an app is not enough. You need to market it in order to increase its reach. Tens of thousands of apps are launched every month. You aren’t just competing against apps similar to yours but often against the noise of all apps available to everyone. In this article, we shall discuss 10 top mobile app marketing strategies to help get those app downloads snowballing. These are mentioned in no specific order.
1. Marketing By An Influencer
In order to understand influencer marketing you first need to know, “who is an influencer”? The answer is quite plain, an influencer is a person who is relevant to your application and has some following. For example, if you have developed a business app, then a renowned person in that field would be an ideal influencer. Similarly, if your app is a gaming related app, then a gamer who already has many followers would be a perfect recommendation.
The more popular the influencer, the higher and better the chances of your app being accepted by potential users. Influencer marketing is aimed towards making the influencers advertise your app directly or indirectly to their audience. The biggest challenge here lies in finding the most suitable influencer.
Quite often, influencer marketing turns out to be expensive. Obviously, the more famous the influencer, the higher they are going to charge for their services. At this point, the thing to keep in mind is that with the right influencer the ROI will be high. An influencer can write about your app on their website or they can send out a newsletter about your app to their followers. They can also make a video about the same or write a review and post it on the popular advertising platforms.
You can use online tools like Group High and kred to find the most appropriate influencers based on your Niche.
2. Website and Blog Integration
It is always good to have a website for your mobile application. Your website provides all the relevant information concerning your app in as much detail as possible. This is the place that people will want to head to in order to gain more insight into the product or features. They will expect the common concerns to be addressed here. For example, don’t just top at the basics – things like cost of the app, size of the app, software specifications concerning the devices on which it can be downloaded, how to download. You will also want to provide details on troubleshooting, who to contact in case of troubleshooting issues, tips and examples to get the most out of the app, etc.
Integrating your website with a blog will also aid you in creating an effective content marketing strategy. This will further assist in promoting your app to a wider range of audience. Content marketing will help you collect email addresses and attract more viewers to visit your main website to discover your app. It is important to affix an obvious call-to-action on your homepage as well as blog pages so that the user is redirected to your app page on the app store. If they found you with your mobile device, the instant gratification of downloading your app is right there at their fingertips.
The prime task of your blog is to produce one of a kind and creative content. This content should be related to your application and will further help to engage the audience.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media presence is imperative for any app these days. Its importance increases tenfold when the aim is to promote your application. If you fail to leverage the social media platforms properly, then you’re ruining a golden opportunity.
In order to increase your social media presence create professional pages on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms. It is at precisely these places where your targets spend most of their time…and typically on a mobile device.
Most importantly, you as an app owner have to be continuously active on these popular social media sites. Keep connected to your audience by sharing the content of your blogs, videos, websites, and feature updates. These are also great places to push in-app conversions or special offers to your existing followers. Driving in-app activity is often an overlooked part of app marketing.
4. App Referral Strategy
When used intelligently, the app referral strategy can indeed turn out to be the best one to promote your application. The main advantage of this program is that it attracts maximum users in a short period and you only pay for successful referrals.
An app referral program provides incentives like cash or gifts or discounts to the existing users. This incentive is given for each and every successful referral they make. There are numerous software’s available online that allow you to do referral programs even when you don’t have the necessary know how to either track your referrals or create them.
5. App Store Optimization
The first place you visit when you are looking for an app for your mobile is the App Store or the Play Store. Almost 60% of the apps are discovered via these platforms. Therefore, if you wish to increase the frequency of organic downloads for your app then App Store Optimization (ASO) is your best strategy.
App users tend to use certain keywords while searching for mobile apps. ASO boosts the visibility of your app. So when a specific keyword associated with your app is punched by the user, the store returns your app on the top of its results page. The other aspects of App Store Optimization include app ratings, category selection, etc.
6. Guest Blogging
In this scenario, the main task is to identify blogs frequented by your ideal users and get permission to post on them. Your effort should also be concentrated on coming up with a solid write-up that adds value to your app.
Guest blogging is both cost-effective and provides a push in the right direction. Just make sure that you provide a direct link to the app in your blog post or you’ve missed the opportunity to push users for that impulse download.
7. Ads On Facebook
A large number of people use Facebook to guide them to the most popular applications. For this very reason, most advertisers also use Facebook as a common advertising platform. Recognizing this potential opportunity, Facebook has developed many options that help the advertisers create specific target audience groups. This makes advertising highly efficient as well as effective.
Creating a Cost Per Install or CPI campaign on Facebook is reasonably simple. (Optimizing it to improve results and keep downloads flowing is often the real challenge.) And if you are not confident of doing it yourself then you can hire a dependable professional or freelancer to do this for you.
8. Instagram Ads
After Facebook, Instagram is the next most popular platform for advertisers and users. It is a mobile-first platform. Its users are young and varied who spend an average of 15 minutes each day on it. Due to this varied customer base, Instagram has proven to be a lucrative medium for promoting your mobile app.
Facebook’s extensive repertoire of tools comes very handy when designing ads for Instagram. The only care that needs to be exercised is in adhering to Instagram’s specifications regarding the size of the image.
9. Ad Campaigns On Google
Google AdWords has a unique feature called the Universal App Campaign. This allows an advertiser to promote their app across many platforms like YouTube, Google Search, Play Store and in-app advertising network of Google. You can also target specific mobile devices to refine where your ads show.
One of the first places to start with Google PPC ads are keywords. If you know what your audience might be searching for and you refine your campaign to only show up on mobile, the downloads can happen right with a button click from the search results. This is when you pay Google. And from here, it just becomes a numbers game of how much the average user is worth to you and how many can you drive at a profitable cost per acquisition.
Additionally, Google ads can be very effective to pushing existing users to return to your app, go deeper into your app or make in-app purchases.
Be as creative as possible and think outside the box. For example, make a Call To Action video. Once done, you can use Google’s Universal App Campaign to advertise your app on YouTube ad network. Based on your budget you can select a CPI bid that allows Google’s algorithms to optimize your app promotion campaign accordingly. Again, here a good agency can handle all this for you and pay for themselves.
10. Video Marketing
Videos tend to leave a lasting impression in the minds of viewers. For this very reason, video marketing is only getting started. Making a promotional video helps the users to understand the ways in which your app can help them. It also puts emphasis on the app’s uniqueness.
Additional videos can then be created to run in conjunction with the promotional video to run on other video platforms like YouTube, Facebook, specialized ad networks, etc. and through retargeting programs, if needed.
Whether you are developing a new app or looking to boost downloads and activity of an existing app, there are increasingly more tactics and tools available to you to take advantage of. Make it a goal this year to step up your app marketing game.
