So as a small business, you’ve recognized the power and growth potential of mobile apps. You’ve identified mobile app development as a profitable investment and decided to build an app for your business!
Over the next few months, your team meticulously lays down the plan and course of action for this new development project. A significant budget is allocated to it, talented developers are hired, and the project kicks into full speed.
As the development proceeds, the team continues to face unforeseen challenges. The budget is exceeded, and occasional deadlines are missed, frequent bugs and crashes continue to pop up, but you and your team continue to put in your best. Finally, the app does get built, followed by a phase of rigorous testing and patching.
Then comes the day you’ve been eagerly waiting for, time to launch your very first mobile app! You’ve put all this work into building one of the finest mobile apps in your niche, and now all there is to do is to sit back and watch your business reap the benefits, right?
This is where most businesses are wrong. It doesn’t matter how great your mobile app is unless your target audience knows about it. Building a mobile application is only half the challenge; the other half is promoting it. Making sure that your app reaches the right people is equally important as building it in the first place. Unfortunately, most businesses learn this the hard way. Having expected only the development to be the difficult part, companies often don’t realize how important and tough marketing your mobile app can be.
And it’s obvious when you think about it; knowing how profitable mobile app development is, everyone is trying to get their hands on the price by building an app of their own. As a direct consequence of this, the app market is saturated and ultra-competitive.
To survive in a market like this, companies need to set themselves apart from the noise and competition. And the sure-shot way to do so is through solid marketing; without which, you’ll just be another app in a bottomless ocean of millions.
So how do we actually do that? How can we ensure that your target audience not only knows who you are but also downloads your app? To help you out with that, here are some effective and tried-and-tested ways to market your mobile app:
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Leverage Social Media:
Sounds like the oldest trick in the book, but let me tell you why social media works beautifully. Most social media users are by default active mobile users, meaning they are more likely to download an app when persuaded. Add to that the fact that social media has made it very easy to separate and target specific audiences and demographics, and we can expect ad campaigns to reach unheard levels of precision.
Take the US as an example; according to pew research, around 72% of all US adults were found to be using at least one social media platform in February 2021. This means that mobile app development companies USA can potentially target upto 70% of the US population to promote their mobile apps. This is why social media is an appealing marketing channel; its sheer size and reach make it so that almost anyone can find their niche and audience within it.
Engage users with your brand:
Adding to the previous point, it isn’t enough to simply post about your app on social media. With your marketing campaign, you essentially want the users to engage with your brand. Utilize stunning and compelling visuals, videos, and text to capture the user’s attention and make sure you invoke some emotion within the audience. Without an emotional response from the users, your marketing campaign will simply be forgotten.
Make the type of content that makes users want to interact with your brand. This is way beyond just telling people what your app is about and why they should be using it. This is about telling them what your brand is and why they should connect with you; that’s a subtle but important difference.
And in the end, make sure your marketing efforts translate into actual app downloads. It is one thing to make people like your brand, it’s another to have them download your app. To bridge that gap, your marketing communication needs to be super precise, telling the user exactly what to do.
Get people talking about your app
I’m talking about app reviews. In the digital world, reviews are the equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing. Reviews are among the most important factors driving sales and downloads for apps, and so it is paramount that you have tons of them.
Design your app in a way that incentivizes and reminds the users to leave a review. Move beyond just the app store reviews and build feedback channels within the app to encourage users to speak about your app. And if you would like to go all-in, get review sites and tech influencers within your niche to talk about your app. These usually have massive audiences who trust every word they say, and so influencer marketing can be a huge boost to your marketing campaign.
And finally, just build an app that speaks for itself. If you create an app that users love to use, they’ll surely go out of their way to talk about it. And the opposite of it is also true; if you make a crappy app, users will make sure it doesn’t get downloaded. The point is, a solid app will inevitably attract good reviews and market itself.
Optimize for app stores
According to Google, 40% of all downloaded apps are found through app store search results. App search is by far the most common way for users to discover and download apps, and so trying to optimize your apps to appear higher in the search results should be a no-brainer.
However, that’s easier said than done. Users barely scroll through app searches, and thus, it is usually the top 5 apps that get most of the downloads. To make sure your app grabs the top spots, you must optimize your app to rank in app-store searches.
Many factors go into this; for starters, consider optimizing your app title and description to contain the keywords you wish to target. Next, add screenshots and deliver your message through a compelling icon. The number of downloads and the type of reviews and ratings you get also play a role in your app store ranking.
Conclusion
Getting enough users to download your app can be a daunting challenge. Simply throwing money at ad campaigns won’t do it anymore. Instead, app marketing needs to be taken up with a planned and strategic approach.
Mobile app developers need to shift their focus from just building apps to also being able to market them effectively. However, for businesses trying to develop their own apps, outsourcing a mobile app development agency to do the job for them is perhaps the best move. Goodfirms has curated a list of top mobile app development companies to help businesses choose from the best app developers out there.
To sum it all up, businesses need to recognize that marketing an app is as important as building one, and when done right, it can produce some amazing results. Do not be afraid of diversifying your marketing efforts, utilizing multiple marketing channels, and experimenting to find out what works the best for you.
What marketing tactics are you eager to employ? And how do you think they’ll affect your app’s success?
