There are tonnes of ways to market your mobile app, from traditional approaches to digitally-focussed options. Here are 20 actionable ideas which can be implemented to supercharge your marketing efforts, without costing the world.
1: Understand your target market
Commit a good portion of time to truly understanding your target audience. You should look to build a set of personas which cover your core target audiences and use these to understand how the people who will use your app think, feel, act and spend their time.
These will also support in guiding your strategy. Accompany your general understanding of the market, with secondary research such as competitor analysis, company reports, existing data, reading comments on forums such as Reddit and conducting your own Q&As or survey using free resources like Survey Monkey.
2: Talk to customers
If you have the resource (we strongly recommend finding the time for this) you should consider sitting down (or at least having a skype chat) with some previous customers and a group of people who represent your ideal customers.
First-hand discussions can offer valuable insights into how to better boost your mobile apps appeal, positioning and the language you use to communicate. They may even be able to open up some untapped channels such as private forums, groups and pain-points not currently met by the existing offering.
3: Research you competitors
Without knowing what you’re up against, you could be missing out on key channels to boost your app visibility. You should be aiming to uncover all of the ways in which your core competitors communicate with users and finding different, more engaging and overall better ways to do them – alongside any unique activities which only work for your brand. You can find out information about their performance online using tools such as SpyFu.
Equally tools such as SEMRush and Moz can give you insights into their backlink profile and keywords, which can help you target publications for coverage and boost your ranking capabilities.
Also, check out their social channels and take a look at what sees top engagement, what flops and what you can do better. You can also use automated tools such as Fanpage Karma to compare your performance to competitors.
4. Use landing pages for personas
Whether you have one or ten different personas within your target market, you should create unique and engaging landing pages to fit each of them.
You should use this opportunity to showcase the elements most suited to that persona and position the mobile app within the context of their everyday life.
Break down the key facts, make it engaging, create a clear call to action, ensure that the most noticeable link is the button linking to the app store, including social sharing buttons and include a mix of multimedia and copy.
5: Get cosy with influencers and journalists
If you can build good working relationships with key influencers, journalists and bloggers, you’ll find it easier to gain coverage for your mobile app.
If you have established a strong rapport with a collection of journalists working in publications targeting your industry, you can leverage this to help you obtain placement of your content.
Equally, you should work on becoming a firm favourite with relevant influencers, informing them on how you feel your app could benefit them and offering them the tools for free to try it out. They may then choose to use their platform to recommend your brand to their followers, becoming an advocate in the process.
6: Optimise your app for the app store
Although this takes a bit of time, it’s worth it to be in for a chance to make it to the top of the App or Play store results. By optimising your app page, you’ll find that your app is overall easier to discover and will, as a result, perform better. You should consider:
- Google app indexing, which allows your app to appear on an organic search results page
- Keyword research which will allow you to focus on the terms which will make it easier for users to find your app for relevant searches
- Volume and competition levels in line with relevancy to find opportunities where competition is low but search volume is high
- Finding ways to encourage good user reviews which can make the app store favour you more highly – you could do this by incentivising for a review such as a discount and making it super easy to do so from within the app
7: Become a blogger
Committing to regular, informative, entertaining and quality content on a regular basis can support in building your apps user support and their overall user experience.
Create an FAQ, generate regular blog posts and cover topics which users frequently contact your support team with. This will allow users to rely less on customer support and be able to find the majority of answers and solutions themselves. It supports the brand experience and shows that you really understand your audience.
8: Make videos
One of the key reasons video is so popular now is down to accessibility. You can implement subtitles, downloadable video transcripts, include audio description and communicate your message visually, which means a huge amount of people can use this asset compared to only copy.
Videos are easy to watch whilst commuting or on the go, or even whilst doing something else, making them highly preferable on social media and useful when trying to simplify an explanation.
They don’t even need to cost a bomb either, you can record and narrate your own video from your smartphone, with plenty of built-in and downloadable software available to edit.
Use your videos on your social channels, landing pages and even in email marketing to boost the accessibility of your mobile app.
9: Get social
Speaking of social channels, without even a basic social media presence you could be missing out on reaching a huge number of people.
You will need to devote some time to grow a following, building assets and establishing a tone of voice, whilst also undertaking activities such as boosting your posts or even delving into paid Facebook ads.
Test out the content which works best, both organically and through paid channels, such as changing messaging and imagery, and continue to test this so with each activity you can grow your effectiveness.
10: Set and measure KPIs
A simple one, and probably pretty obvious, but setting KPI’s before you start anything is crucial. It gives you a target to work towards and will help you better plan the activities you need to undertake to achieve them.
You can then ensure you’re measuring the right data, which could be anything from app downloads, daily active users, stickiness rate, retention rate or any other number of KPIs. You should also keep in mind a way to monitor your users thoughts and feelings about your app, by monitoring comments, forums and reviews.
11: Make your mobile site amazing
For any mobile app developer, you should ensure that you have a responsive, functioning mobile site, optimised for mobile use and offering up all the important information including links through to the app store page.
You should also include links to download your app from any relevant blog content or other websites which you might run or own, where appropriate and permitted.
12: Create demo videos
Leading on from our point about video, creating demo videos can support in usability.
It will allow people to see the app in use prior to downloading, will help with troubleshooting and can help to position the app within your prospective users lives more effectively.
If you can demonstrate the uses in a real-life setting, this can help users understand how the app could fit into and improve their life.
13: Consider all of the options for app stores
Google Play and App Store are the key players when it comes to app stores, but there are other options. Using the support of less well-known app stores can allow you to increase your number of downloads, get the word out and build a name for yourself if you’re struggling on the Google and Apple platforms. Some alternative app stores to consider are:
14: Ensure consistency
With over a million app options on the Google Play Store and App Store, your mobile app needs to visually stand out from the crowd.
You should ensure that you have created a clear and unique app icon, avoiding photographs or text. It’s also advisable to maintain a simple colour palette, with around 3 core colours, so as to ensure consistency. Any other elements you use on images, screenshots and videos on your app page should be created in the same style and colouration.
15: Make it accessible from every touch point
One of the core elements you should ensure is present across all of your touch points is a link through to the app store to download.
Whether it’s on your website, an email signature, a link on your social media channels or embedded in blog posts or articles hosted on external sites, you should make this the core call to action across all of your communications.
16: Get it reviewed
User reviews are crucial for building trust in your mobile app. But you should also consider submitting your app to a review site.
You’ll need to pull together a convincing pitch to get featured on the review site, in the same way, you would pitch your ideas to a journalist.
You should ensure that before you submit your mobile app for review by an external source that the app is stable, does not crash or glitch, is visually perfect and above all else, unique.
Getting featured on a review site can expose you to thousands of potential users, alongside the promotion conducted by the site on their own social channels. There are tonnes of options to consider including:
17: Build a press pack
Creating a set of materials which can be easily distributed to the press and journalists can ensure that you deliver a consistent brand experience to all members of the press.
You should ensure you have a set of high-resolution screenshots, imagery associated with the brand, videos, press release, fact sheets and of course a link to download the full version of the mobile app for free (if applicable).
18: Utilise social network groups
You can join any number of LinkedIn or Facebook groups, with representation across pretty much any market or industry sporting groups.
You should look for groups made up of the types of people who match your persona and existing users and use the platform to share your blogs, videos and useful information on why you think your app is useful to them.
You should also consider contacting the group admins prior to posting so they don’t think you’re a spammer or in case they charge for promotion.
19: Respond to reviews
Whether they’re good or bad, there’s always a lesson to learn from the reviews you receive. Responding to positive reviews can allow you to thank your users and appear to be a brand who cares about what users think.
Equally, responding to negative reviews can help you fix bugs, create an update which will improve the user experience and also could result in a second chance from a dissatisfied user. It also allows you to be shown to care about problems that arise, rather than leaving them to fester.
20: Update it all the time
Finally, one of the best ways to attract and retain users is through regular updates which improve the experience, respond to bug reports swiftly and ensure that the app is secure at all times.
You should aim to create materials which explain the reason for the update, what will change, what will stay the same and what to expect in terms of usability.
For more information on how to optimise your mobile app marketing strategy, contact Favoured today.
