A Step-By-Step Guide to Marketing Your Mobile App

With thousands of mobile apps available across multiple niches, how will you get the people to download your app? Is marketing mobile apps a difficult task? Let’s get answers to these and many more questions you have with this step-by-step guide to marketing your mobile app. Here we have described some of the best practices that you can follow to get higher downloads for your iOS and Android app.

Mobile app marketing strategy involves multiple stages. And at every stage, you can follow the right step to market your mobile application. What are these steps after all? We will help you understand them all with this comprehensive guide. Here, we have specified a step-by-step process to follow before the installation, during, and after.

Before you start with the mobile app marketing strategies, you can learn about different types of mobile apps with our comprehensive blog: What are The Different Types of Mobile Apps?

Mobile App Marketing in The Pre-Launch Stage 

Before the product is launched, the mobile app marketing strategy spreads awareness about your brand and your mobile app. You can build brand awareness and make your mobile app visible during this app marketing stage. Before you get to this stage, learn more about your brand, its mission, its visions, and why people should choose it.

If you wish to make the most of your app marketing strategy, you must clear;y define a purpose and values. People resonate with the values and purposes of your brand, rather than individual products. Here are some steps you can follow in this stage:

1. Fix a Release Date

You need to choose a release date well in advance as your iOS mobile app may encounter a delay owing to the strict review process of Apple. The mobile app review process of Apple is stricter than those of Google. You would not want your mobile app marketing strategy to fail because of a delayed process. It is very important to check out the events happening near your release date that may overshadow the release of your iOS and Android mobile app.

2. Know Your Customers With Market Research

Market research is one of the most important and yet avoided phases of app marketing. This phase will help you know about the key players available in your mobile app category. This is one of the best ways of marketing your mobile app. You can touch on the problems users are facing and address them during your marketing.

If your mobile app is not able to resolve the problem people are already facing with the existing solutions, you will not be able to succeed. No one wants a lite version of the already available iOS and Android mobile app.

You can reach out to blogs, groups, forums, and websites that are related to your category. All these resources can help you reach out to the relevant users.

We have for you a list of the Top 12 Digital Marketing Tools for Small Businesses that can help you learn better about your mobile app.

3. Create User Personas

Discovering your target audience must be the main aim of marketing your app. In this step, you should know what do these people value and what problems they are facing with the presently available solutions. You can divide your audience into multiple user groups and learn about the different personas these companies have.

Depiction of an ideal user is defined as a user persona. From users’ demographics to their choice of mobiles, preferences, backgrounds, unique identifiers, and interests, everything comes under user persona. Customizing your mobile app and delivering a personalized experience to your users will also be enabled by determining user persona.

Whatever you do related to your mobile app development must resonate with the users from platform choice and monetization strategy to functionality and features. If you are able to answer the questions written below, you will be able to ace your complete app marketing strategy.

1. What problems are faced by your audiences in general?

2. Which operating system does your target audience prefer, iOS or Android?

3. Which type of content do these people search for when online?

4. Which would be the best content style, tone, and voice that would resonate with your potential users?

5. Are you able to find any visual patterns in the searches that your target audience performs online?

6. Which influencers do these people follow on different social media sites?

7. Which would be the best platform to run your paid advertisements on?

8. Do these users buy a paid app or are they more towards in-app purchases?

All these questions will help you resonate with your potential users and build a perfect marketing strategy for your mobile app.

4. Learn More About Your Competitor/Do a Competitive Analysis

Conduct a thorough analysis and make a list of the top 5 competitors you have. Learn about them as much as you can, their monetization model, user experience (UX), app store ranking, current price, and reviews. With all these, you would be able to know their pros and cons. Create a matrix and compare your iOS and Android app with theirs.

Do not make the same mistakes as you find in the other apps while reading their reviews. At least do not skip on core features and UX elements that people wish to be changed in existing competitors’ apps. Your entire app marketing approach can be based on how your app excels when compared to the existing solutions people have.

You can learn more about what goes on in this stage, with our blog, 10 Steps You Must Take Before Starting Mobile App Development.

5. Create a Website or Maybe a Landing Page

The number one source of app installs is mobile websites. A pre-launch landing page or a video that would serve as a teaser would help you gain more attention. This video used on your website can be recycled and used on social media platforms, paid ads, and app stores.

A website also helps in building domain authority that eventually helps you with early search engine optimization (SEO). This can be an app marketing technique that can also help you collect emails as followers. These email ids can also be used to notify people of your app launch, features, and updates.

To help you more with this topic, we have curated a blog, Is SEO Important For Every Business? This blog will help you learn about the importance of SEO if it is important to you.

6. Outreach Initiatives

This is yet another one of the overlooked mobile app marketing strategies that can help you reach more people. You can contact influencers, publications, and bloggers for the creation of backlinks and the publication of honest reviews.

Add the contacts to your lists that are relevant to you, your niche, or your industry, people you might feel would be interested in writing/reviewing your iOS and Android mobile app. A concise pitch is always appreciated, as the people interested in writing about your mobile app will have all the information they would require.

7. Go Social

Reach out to your users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, and other social platforms; this way you can reach out to your users directly and also expand your presence on the web. You can also be present on specific platforms if your target audience speaks for them. Get answers to the question written below:

1. When looking at your social profile, is it clearly portraying that you have a mobile app?

2. Can people decipher the purpose of your iOS and Android app clearly?

3. Have you attached a link to the mobile app?

Keep your social media sites updated. Post all the feature updates and company updates, making your followers excited about the launch. You can also create a unique hashtag and use it in all your posts.

8. Build A Content Marketing Strategy

Even before the app can be launched you must have your content ready. During launch time this would help you connect with your followers with ease. Put the screenshots of your mobile app, tell people about the features of your app and you can also integrate videos. Benefits of content marketing strategy include:

1. Create brand awareness, drive awareness and get conversions.

2. Get to build trust among the users/potential users.

3. You can use your blog content for email marketing.

Are you thinking about how you will market your content? Do not worry, we have got you covered with our blog, ‘How To Change The Direction Of Thinking To Generate New Content Ideas?’

The Acquisition Stage

Being continuous and redefining your marketing strategies will work in favor of you. You can be as creative as you wish to be and use different methods available. Try achieving as many downloads as you can in the first week of launch. This will help you gain a better rank in the search results of app stores. Get to know about the channels from where people are getting to know your mobile app. This way you can follow best practices and improve channels that are performing not so well.

1. Paid Strategy

When your iOS and Android app is launched, you can start focusing on launching paid apps. This can be on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and other social networking sites depending on the audience you are targeting and demographics belonging to them.

The advertisement platform for LinkedIn allows businesses to target users based on their location, interests, and much more. If you are able to grab the attention of your audience in shorter spans, you would be able to achieve more app downloads. You can also feature your mobile app in Google Search Results.

Do you want to learn more about this topic? Then, you cannot miss reading our blog, The Complete Guide to Digital ad Technology.

2. App Store Optimization (ASO)

App Store Optimisation relates to getting a higher rank in the app stores when users search some keywords. More than 65% of the apps in the App Store are discovered from the search results directly. An app that is ranking highly will keep taking high for months. Higher the rank, the more the visibility to potential users and therefore, increased downloads.

The title and keywords you choose are some of the factors that enable you to perform app store optimization. You can include a keyword in the title as well. If people are clicking on your iOS and Android app by viewing the title to explore more, then your app title is worth it.

3. Get Featured In The App Store

One of the marketing strategies for Apple is being featured in the App Store. Featured apps have better visibility and more downloads with lower acquisition costs increased revenue and more users engaged with the mobile app. Every day professional App Store curators review a free or paid app and game. In the Thousands of pitches received by Apple, you need to stand out by outlining how your iOS app is unique and what it does.

Do you know voice search is the future of search marketing? If you want to learn more visit our blog, What is Voice Search? Is it the Future of Search Marketing?

The Retention Stage

Let’s say you got a thousand downloads but if people are not using it, the mobile app is of no use, it won’t deliver you any business. Therefore, our next course of the plan must be to keep the customers retained that have already downloaded our mobile app. Some of the strategies to keep that are mentioned below.

1. Establish a Two-Way Communication

To make your users continue using your product, you will have to learn about their needs and their preferences. The more people resonate with your mobile app, the more engagement is. Brands that communicate with users using in-app messages are able to retain users in a range from 61 percent to 74 percent within 28 days of receiving a message.

These notifications can be about payment failures, updates, app issues, warnings, or version upgrades. The messages you send must be relevant to the users to get them back. You can also divide your audience to prepare the best app marketing strategy.

2. Push Notifications

Anywhere from a 56% to a 180% improvement can be seen with push notifications in user retention. You can view 88% higher app engagement for users that have opted in push notifications than those who have not.

A good retention rate also helps you rank better in the app store. You can also give an incentive to your users for using the mobile app. Special promotions, rewards, coupons, specialized content access, and other offers can drive your users to come back to your app and use it.

We have a blog for you that can help you learn more about push notifications. To find it, click the link: What is a Push Notification? Why Are They Important?

Steps For Continued Success

Keeping your mobile app successful is also a part of your mobile app marketing strategy. Here are some of the steps you can follow:

1. Ask For Feedback

When people have started using your mobile app and when they use it continuously, you can ask your users to write feedback for you. Deliver users a chance to provide you with their opinions about what they think about your mobile app. This will help you improve but make sure the user experience stays intact even while the fack is being recorded.

Do not frustrate users with feedback forms, let it flow with the user experience you are delivering. If you have placed a popup strategically, you will have a higher chance of getting positive reviews.

2. Consider Conducting a Burst Campaign

One of the most popular techniques among mobile app marketers, Burst Campaign will help you get your app store rank better. In this mobile app marketing strategy, you aggressively purchase paid media exposure that usually lasts for a short period of time, maybe between 24 and 72 hours depending upon the budget and you provide a “burst” of exposure for your mobile app.

This ultimate aim is to improve ranking by getting as many iOS and Android mobile app installs as we can. When the mobile app starts ranking high enough you can get organic traffic and hence, more organic downloads. Then the paid advertising can maintain the steady downloading of your mobile app and organic growth will get downloads as the people search.

3. Offer A Referral Bonus

Providing a benefit to the users or a bonus as they refer your iOS and Android app online will encourage them to spread about your mobile app online. This is a way of marketing your mobile app that helps Dropbox receive a humongous 3900% growth rate. From 1,00,000 registered users in 2008, the company reached an astounding number of 4,000,000 registered users within just 15 months. This was because of the referral program the company spread.

Set Goals And Track Key Metrics

To understand the working of your marketing strategy, you need to set goals for yourself. Setting goals and tracking your progress is the best way to achieve the success that can not be taken away from you. Tracking all the stages including acquisition, engagement, conversion, and retention stages will help you receive analytics to improve your mobile app marketing strategy further.

Churn rate, time in-app, session length, daily active users (DAUs), session interval, and cost per acquisition are some of these metrics you must track as a part of your app marketing strategy. This will help you understand what works for you and what does not. Managing your resources in the right way can help you increase your app downloads exponentially.

Get the best Google Analytics Training in Jaipur to learn more about the tips and tricks of app analytics.

Don’t Over Promise

You should never oversell your mobile app, this is yet another important point you must note for marketing your mobile app. One of the most effective strategies for mobile apps is word-of-mouth. If you do not want to break it do not advertise falsely or overpromise. A wrong message and people will be left frustrated and your app uninstall rate will increase.

Mobile App Marketing: in a Nutshell

The best app marketing strategy is to diversify your marketing strategy. There are some people who like reading better than visual aids like videos and vice versa. Make sure you reach out to every person in the form of videos, texts, images, and everything else. Keep your app marketing strategy dynamic and you will succeed. What is your strategy for marketing apps? Do let us know in the comment section below.

Get Help From Expert Digital Marketing Company

VerveLogic is a professional Digital Marketing Company that can help you market your product with ease. We can help you get analytics and reach your goals. The expert digital marketers available at our company can empower your mobile app to reach greater heights. Feel free to contact us for further details.

To assist you in learning more about mobile apps, we have a blog, 50 Stats for Mobile App Growth and Success in 2021. Do not forget to read it.