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, why is it necessary or how it works? 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 mobile application marketing, 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 right app marketing strategy and determine associated budget, you should flesh out who your target audience is. You need to explore and learn what are their pain points, what are the existing solutions available in the market, where are they lagging, and how your application can overcome them. In other words, you need to invest your efforts into product discovery, creating user personas, and much more.
Whilst this is the first step towards developing a mobility solution,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 app promotion process. One that you’ll find in every app marketing guide. Your application will stand a much better chance if you know 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 mobile app promotion 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 creating a promotion 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 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 Press Releases (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 with steps to promote an app. 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. This will help you with avoiding mistakes while promoting your app on social media channels and leverage higher benefits.
Now, when talking about the same, you should start with identifying who your target audience is and which platform they frequently visit. 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
When talking about app success, it is not always about higher app downloads. Various other mobile app KPIs must be taken into account.
In relation to the same, 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 the role that push notifications play in reaping higher benefits of marketing an app 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 app promotion techniques, we basically talk 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 mobile app development process.
