To be able to succeed with your new app on the market, its not enough to just offer a top-notch application you’ve created.
Apart from its quality, your app not only has to address your prospect’s needs but it’s also important to be powered by an effective marketing strategy, which will differentiate it from similar products and highlight its unique selling proposition.
A recent Gartner press release claims that only 0.01% of mobile apps will succeed financially, and one of the main reasons for such an outcome is a failure of their marketing strategy.
To give your app better odds of succeeding in such a competitive market, follow these 12 steps.
- Is There a Genuine Need for Your App?
The first thing you should do, even before you’ve started this venture, is to validate your app idea. You can do this by asking yourself several questions, such as:
- Is there a genuine need for this app?
- Are there any other apps addressing this problem?
- If there are, is the market big enough or is it saturated?
- How can the app we’re making differentiate itself from our competitors’ solutions?
To get these answers, you must do a thorough research of the market.
- Who’s Your Target Audience?
The next step is to determine who your buyer persona is by asking yourself a simple question – who will use our app? The more detailed insight into the target customers you have, the better the chances your app will have in the marketplace.
If you already have a previous customer base, it can help you to better visualize a buyer persona that will be interested in your app. If you don’t, market research is again the answer.
Try to determine your target demographics, but also to gain an insight into your potential customers’ lifestyles, values, problems, and needs.
- Have You Performed Detailed Competitor Research?
If there are other apps serving the same purpose, try to find out whether they are paid or free, as well as what their features are. Also, it is important for you to determine how these apps are performing in the marketplace when it comes to profit.
There are reviews you can easily find in the app stores, so make use of them.
- Have You built a Five-Star App?
An effective app marketing strategy won’t be of much help if your app isn’t top-notch in terms of its quality and functionality. These are the things you must focus on:
- Perfect UX/UI design
- A comprehensive range of features
- Bug-free, user-friendly, responsive, and reliable
- Data protection
- Well-managed and robust backend.
Make sure to beta-test your app before launching it on the market. The good idea is to include popular app testing communities, so that you can gain multiple benefits – suggestions on how to improve your app, as well as early reviews and recommendations.
- Are You Customer Support Stellar?
Stats say that 21% of the consumers abandon apps after the first use, and if you want to try to retain them, try to offer them timely customer support which they can get right from the app’s dashboard.
Be sure to make your customer support button easy to spot, so that they can get their answers whenever they need help.
A chatbot can also come in handy to provide 24/7 support and engage your customers.
Also, your website and social media channels should have all the information they might need, as well as customer support details.
- Is Your Website Well-Designed and Easy to Navigate?
Having a website is a must for every business nowadays, and an essential part of every digital marketing strategy.
It should include all the necessary information about your company and be packed with relevant and useful content.
Your apps’ landing page should be crafted carefully too; make it as appealing and informative to your target audience as possible.
There are several things your landing page should contain:
- The name of your app and all the other important details
- A list of benefits that your potential users can expect
- A clear and compelling call-to-action button,
- A video that gives a simple explanation of your app while promoting it.
- How About ASO?
App store optimization is very important for your app store rankings, as it brings you more visibility. Recent research shows that half of the app users find their apps directly in the app store. Here are a few tips to make your app rank better:
- Your title should be readable and contain a high-traffic keyword
- Give a concise and clear description of your app and stress which problem it helps your potential customers solve
- Spice up your description with relevant keywords
- Add screenshots of the features your app offers
- Design an icon which grasps the essence of your app and make it unique.
Be sure to motivate your customers to recommend and review your app, as this will also have an impact on how well you rank.
- Have You Included Video in Your Marketing Strategy?
Research shows that where both text and video are available on the page, 72% of the users would opt for the video to get information on product or service. With the increase of video popularity, your digital marketing strategy should leverage it for promotional purposes by:
- Showing your prospects that you understand their pain points
- Offering them a simple explanation of your solution
- Giving your prospects a clear call to action.
The video should be on your landing page, but it should be shared on social media channels too.
- Do You Have a Blog?
Your marketing campaign should start while your product is still in the development stage and blogging about your app and its useful features from the early days is a great way to begin and engage your potential customers.
Make the blog posts informative and valuable for your prospects, and try to increase their engagement. Your blog should be optimized for search engines and heavily promoted on your social media channels.
Another crucial factor is the consistency of your blogging efforts, so don’t make long pauses between two blog posts if you want to stay on your audience’s radar.
- Have You Polished Your Social Media Channels?
Social media channels are widely used in promotional purposes nowadays, as 42% of the worldwide population uses at least one of them every day.
With many tools for targeting your audience, you can reach and generate tons of high-quality new leads, which you can later nurture and convert into paying customers.
To be able to do so, you need to provide your customers with well-tailored, helpful and engaging content on every social media channel you manage.
However, it’s not a good idea to spread yourself too thin and start using all available platforms at once. It’s much better to opt for your target audience’s preferred channels and start small – one or two outlets will do just fine until you can afford to expand.
- Do You Track Your KPIs?
If you want to have an insight into the results of your campaigns, you should measure key mobile app KPIs.
There is a whole list of KPIs which you could find relevant, some of them being a number of downloads, daily active users, daily sessions per DAU, the retention rate, unresponsive gestures, the number of crashed sessions, churn rate, etc.
Choose the ones you find most important, and make a habit of monitoring them regularly.
- What’s Your Pricing Model?
When it comes to the pricing of your app, it is, in fact, a way to choose a sustainable business model, so it requires a deeper analysis.
There are several options available, and determining which solution fits your business the best, is a very important task. You can start by spying on your competitors and their pricing, but don’t jump to any conclusions before you perform a detailed research.
It’s also a good idea to ask your potential customers what they would be willing to pay for your app and take their feedback into consideration.
You can make your app free for the customer, for example, and make a profit from the ads, or opt for the freemium model where your customers get just some basic options for free, while additional features have to be paid for. You can also go for subscriptions or free trials, each having its upsides and downsides. Thorough research and calculations are necessary before you make any pricing decision.
An effective app marketing strategy can make all the difference for the future of your app, so make sure to establish it from the early days of your app development. It’s important to monitor your analytics in real-time and fine-tune your strategy accordingly.
