Mobile App Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert

Apps can be called as the new cosmos in the world of the mobile eCommerce. Statista report says, the number of app downloads across all mobile platforms is estimated to be at 258 billion in 2022 from 178 billion in 2017 – a whopping rise of 45% in five years. But apps don’t sell themselves.

Because of the increasing demand, it’s a bloody, fierce battleground out there between apps to remain crowdpleasers over time, and that’s where you need effective mobile app marketing. The mobile app marketing comprises of techniques and methods deployed in the industry to attract, engage, retain, and acquire app users with value-based applications.

While building a distinct app with uniquely helping functionalities and seamless usage isn’t enough, it can remain undiscoverable by customers in time, requiring thoughtful planning, careful strategy to achieve recognition.

Stages in Mobile App Marketing

There’s a way to go about mobile app marketing, and this roadmap is often termed as the mobile app marketing funnel/loop. It consists of four primary stages and various sub-stages. 

• Stage-I: Pre-Launch/Awareness of the App – It refers to the period when the app is in the development stage, and you need to create a buzz around its concept. 
• Stage II: Post Launch/Acquisition of the App – This is when you’ve just launched your application and require rigorous, foolproof methods to make it more discoverable and encourage downloads. 
• Stage III: Engagement and Retention – More than 25% of apps on the app platforms remain as once or twice downloaded by users. On the contrary, your users should stay hooked to your applications, and for that, you need to have well-rounded promotions.
• Stage IV: App Monetization – Perfect for user-driven apps that help users enjoy paid subscriptions, exclusive features, and more on-app purchases. The catch is – as an app marketer, you need to deliver enhanced, rare features that other free app competitors don’t. 

Stage-I: Pre-Launch/Awareness of the App

Unlike popular belief, the pre-launch marketing strategy is quite helpful in understanding your customers’ location and, thus, having all pieces of the app marketing puzzle fixed for the bigger picture. 

Understanding App Platforms’ Requirements

Apple App Store and Google Play Store are two of the most trusted, widely used app platforms worldwide, but they have their own set of rules and regulations for an app to be hosted on their platforms. As an app marketer, these sets of requirements should be the backbone of your app. 

Keyword Research

The definition of keywords tells about its importance since these are the very words used by customers to search and identify your app and its purpose. However, keywords aren’t always that obvious, and many ‘fluff words’ can be passed on as keywords when not taken proper care. Therefore, it’s best to go through extensive research via tools, comparing other app’s keywords to discern strong keywords for getting your app discovered. Learn more about keyword research. 

App Naming 

There’s more to it than what appears at the surface since it needs to be distinct, yet memorable and findable. There are also several copyright infringements and legal details you need to consider before you name an app.

Check out: How to be a successful mobile app entrepreneur?

Competitor Research

Imperative to your app’s success, it is when you need to understand which apps come first in the keywords you’ve selected from step I and know how they interact with their customers. 

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Identifying Correct Product Category

It’s not easy to make out the right product category without getting deeper into your app and others. Why? Because there are billions of apps already present in the app store that are also widely downloaded. 

Landing Page Creation

A right landing page can make or break your app, in terms of its conciseness in providing relevant app information to users. It should contain elaborate app descriptions and links to the website where users can sign up with their credentials for seamless in-sync and updates. 

Content Marketing

Since pre-launch is all about creating a curious environment before the app launches, it needs loads of relevant, actionable content. It can benefit in:

• Lead generation
• Increase the target audience and brand awareness
• Driving traffic
• Upselling and Cross-selling

Learn more about content marketing

Stage II: Post Launch/Acquisition of the App
 

Your app is now live and ready to churn big numbers. It can only happen with a well-thought-out user acquisition strategy that can be divided into two types:

• Paid Marketing: These techniques require additional payment per download.
• Unpaid Marketing: These are the organic, deep-rooted methods in which you can earn organic downloads based on the quality of service. It can comprise of the following:

App Store Optimization

One of the most compelling features crucial to the post-launch phase of apps is performing several actions like adding right meta tags, descriptions based on the keyword research for keeping the app more discoverable. The Apple App Store and Google Play Store are always featuring apps based on popularity, functionalities, productivity, etc. Therefore, to feature in such lists, you need to increase your visibility in the top categories. 

The ASO feature can influence most of the app’s visibility in trending searches for newly-launched apps, thus directly contributing to the app’s downloads and engagement. 

Remember that as much as 63% of apps get visibility because of the daily featured apps on respective platforms.
 

App Reviews

AppRadar says that as many as 79% of users go through reviews before downloading an app. Therefore, it is essential to reach out to mainstream, online media outlets, and ask for organic reviews. Reviews can go a more substantial way of attracting more visitors to your app and staying ahead of your competitors. 

Besides getting featured, you need to encourage your customers to put in reviews and honest feedback in the reviews section of your app. It would allow other users to rely on these and make download decisions accordingly. 

Paid Marketing 

This comes as additional support to your organic activities and pushes them further into hitting the hosting platforms’ top charts. It can include:

Mobile App Tracking

An essential tool to understand the source of the downloads, identify patterns in the same can help you have a better knowledge about spending money in the right place for each download. 

Paid Features

From paid press releases, directory listings, and advertisements, these are all effective methods to make your app seen and heard across the search engine results. 

Referral Marketing

‘Word of mouth’ still works wonders in the lifecycle of an app since more than 83% of people rely on their friends’ or families’ app recommendations. Uber, Airbnb are some of the most successful apps that gained (and are still getting) a lot of traction from referral marketing because of their functionalities. 

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Influencer Marketing

Influencers play a pivotal role today with the rise of smartphone users and the online engagement activity on social networking sites. Opinion leaders worldwide on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. have their unique way of reaching out to their millions of followers every day with their posts, and for apps that can mean tremendous visibility. 

Learn more: How to Create Social Media Content Strategy?

Stage III: Engagement/Retention

It is difficult for apps to retain customer engagement in the long term without building a valued customer relationship. It can be only via nuanced, personalized user experience that your customers can remain rooted in your app in terms of usability and stay loyal.
 

Onboarding 

From the customers’ perspective, getting started with an app that they’ve only heard about but never really used can be difficult. Therefore, as soon as your user gets on board with your app, you need to make them aware of all its functionalities, benefits to increase the value of the product for the user. 

Deep linking

It can help your users to navigate across different apps, and within predefined sections to understand, avail exclusive offers, information about their new product/service. 

Push Notifications

It can come as a gentle, exciting remainder about the latest update, exclusive deals, time-limited offers about any product or service featured on your app. 

Marketing Automation

Methods used here can help you minimize the time invested in deploying a marketing routine process. It can include activities like email marketing, campaign management, lead and engagement management, etc. 

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Stage IV: App Monetization

It is an aspect that can prove to be challenging to keep up with time, as more free apps come into the market. 

• Paid subscribers prove to be more loyal to your application as they know and rely entirely on your app’s functionalities.
• Exclusive features and products can be kept at justified prices for all your users to avail at the payment of a specific, predefined fee. 
• Many applications also use advertising as a feature in their apps to keep the users engaged, as in-app advertising allows users to have free access to apps. 

How to Retain Success

Once your mobile app marketing strategy has succeeded, it is also important to retain it and ensure it is updated occasionally. Here are some steps you can take to ensure prolonged marketing success.

•  Users Feedback 

Once the app has gained loyal users, it means the product has connected with them. It is now time to ask them for their feedback and allow them to share their honest experience. You can create a popup invitation for this while ensuring it does not ruin the user experience. Strategize when you want to ask for the review and ensure the request is placed well in the app without disrupting the user experience since it increases the chances of a positive review. 

•  Referral Bonus

You can offer referral bonuses to existing users when they promote mobile app online. It will help spread the word about your app online, with genuine users chiming in and increasing the trust among potential users.

• Conduct A Burst Campaign

Many mobile app marketers use a ‘burst campaign’ technique to improve their app’s ranking in the app store. The campaign involves purchasing paid media exposure aggressively for a short period of time, typically between 24 to 72 hours, depending on budget, to create a sudden increase in visibility for the app.

The aim is to increase the number of paid installs in order to raise your ranking and generate more high-quality organic installs. Once your app is ranked high enough, it will become easier for people to discover it. A successful burst campaign can attract more organic downloads, but consistently paid advertising is necessary to maintain steady downloads.

• Determine Goals and Establish KPIs

To understand whether your app marketing strategy is working, define goals and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can measure. Track the app store ratings and evaluate analytical elements throughout the engagement, conversion, acquisition and retention stages.

You can measure them periodically to evaluate your marketing efforts and understand how they must be optimized to improve the app’s performance on the app store. It will also help you predict potential bottlenecks preventing users from moving from one stage to another. 

Keep track of certain metrics, such as daily active users (DAUs), churn rate, time spent in-app, session length, cost per acquisition and so on, to ensure the continued success of your app. Analyzing these metrics lets you identify which app marketing strategy is effective and prioritize high-value tactics to increase the app’s downloads.

• Update Marketing Strategy Over Time

The same app marketing tactics may stop working after a while, so it is essential to keep updating it based on the KPIs and the app’s performance on the app store. It is also important to diversify the marketing strategy. Consider different formats, such as videos, images, or text, when creating content. It is also good to create a variety of content and ensure that app reviewers can easily access it. Remember that your strategy should be flexible and continuously optimized to find the right balance of approaches.

Also Read: Digital Marketing Tutorial: A Step-by-Step Guide To Become an Expert

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Conclusion

The mobile app marketing has always been considered a complex, sophisticated, multi-level process that takes care of everything from app promotion to getting new technology updates. However, when done right according to the sustainable, strategic pillars of mobile app marketing, you can attain great results and tap into more unique demographics across global mobile platforms, essential for its growth.

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