Today, there are over 1.85 million apps in the apple app store and 2.5 million in the google play store. If you’re launching an app, and you don’t know how to market it, you might not get a single download ever. It’s a defeating feeling when you’ve hyped up the launch of your app, and then you launch it and see no one sign up.
The truth is, the vast majority of apps in the app store get no traffic. From the moment you launch your app and if you manage to get a few downloads that still doesn’t spell success because while the average person has more than 80 apps downloaded on their devices, they only use an average of 30 of them each month.
But don’t let that discourage you because if you know how to stand out among the competition, you can drive the right users to your mobile application.
This is where marketing comes in. Traditional word-of-mouth marketing is just not reliable enough in today’s marketing landscape when digital marketing comes out on top. To maximise your exposure and gain more downloads and users, you must have a solid social media marketing strategy for apps.
Mobile app marketing refers to the process of building marketing campaigns to target your consumers at each stage of the marketing funnel. App marketing is a critical step that comes right after the app development process.
Here you’ll know exactly what to do for creating a marketing plan for an app, so you can get more downloads even without a huge market and budget.
Creating A Marketing Plan For An App
- Research The Target Audience/ Market.
The first and most critical stage is to identify your target audience. It is not necessary to try to reach out to everyone; instead, focus on a certain set of consumers for whom your app is built.
This might include the user’s location, nation, age group, lifestyle, and so on. Your app must reach the target audience for whom it was designed. It is important to conduct market research before creating and developing your app.
- Perform Competitor Research
Second, to form a competitive resource, you will have tough competition. Hence, it is critical to be aware of what your rivals are up to. Examine what has worked and what has not worked for your competitors, and learn from their failures. Conduct competitive research to learn whether your app has a competitive advantage or a competitive threat.
Make a list of your competitors, price structure, monetization strategies, app store ranking, user experience, pros and cons, and reviews.
- Create a website or landing page
A website is regarded as an important stage in creating an impression on the audience. If not a full website, a landing page should work. It has now become a standard practice to create a landing page to attract users from outside the app store, even without the app store.
Make sure that you create a clean, attractive, user-friendly, and responsive website that works well across all devices and browsers. Your landing page should have a very clear and effective call to action.
- Work on social media
Social media is regarded as one of the most effective components of digital marketing, with millions of users worldwide. Nowadays, having a social media presence is vital to be noticed on prominent social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and others.
Developers may increase their online presence and directly engage with their target audience by posting news updates and features about their app on all of their social media platforms to get their fans excited.
- Optimise your app store
App store optimization is the process of optimising a programme for the app store. The higher your app ranks in app store search results, the more visible it will be in shops. The more visible it is to potential clients, the more downloads there will be. It is also influenced by a range of factors, such as title, description, icon, and so on. By improving all of this metadata, you can optimise your app store.
- Get reviews and rating
Before installing any app, consumers check the reviews and ratings to see whether it’s worth the investment of time and energy to learn or try for the first time. So, regardless of how beautiful your landing page is or how fantastic your app’s interface is. If there are no reviews or ratings, new users are hesitant to download the app. Ask your users to rate your app and leave honest and useful feedback.
Types Of Marketing Strategies Used In App Marketing
It’s not simple to get your app in front of the right people, especially with over 5 million apps accessible on the Apple App Store and Google Play. So, let’s take a look at some of the most efficient mobile app marketing strategies you can use.
- Gain influence by Influencer marketing
The quickest way to get your app in front of users is to get mentions from people who are already in front of your users. Years ago there was a thing called the ‘oprah effect’ if Oprah mentioned a new product to her fans, that product would immediately blow up, receiving thousands and thousands of sales. It’s the same thing for influencers on social media: building a relationship with the right influencer can define the trajectory of your app’s success.
According to surveys, around half of social media users rely on influencers for product recommendations. In comparison, 56 rely on tweets from their friends, meaning that influencers have almost as much power over our buying habits as the people that we trust most,and it’s an effective use of your budget.
The easiest way to get an influencer to promote your product is to pay them. They are usually happy to strike an advertising deal, but if you don’t have the budget to afford them. All hope is not lost, but you’ll need to be creative.
You need to find a trade-off that benefits both of you, providing them free access to your product may be enough to encourage a mention or review or maybe some sort of cross-promotion where you share their post on your profile, and they share yours.
- Make use of Content Funnel
A content funnel is a marketing model that illustrates a customer’s journey from the time they realise a problem exists until the moment that they purchase it. You might think that people just come across new apps in the app store and download it because it looks cool, but that’s not really how it works.
According to Forrester, ‘people consume an average of 11.4 pieces of content before they make a purchase decision’.
If you’re the one controlling the content, then you can influence where they end up when they get to the bottom of their customer journey and if you do it right, the place they’ll end up is in the app store downloading your app.
Think about where it is that your customer searches for information, what queries are they typing in google to find out how to solve their problem, why are they turning to online to compare one solution to another you can respond to all of these questions using content.
- Create awesome videos
Written content like blog articles is excellent for capturing the interest of potential customers searching on search engines like google but if content is king, then video content is the young prince ready to take the throne, or maybe it already has.
In 2019, video was the number one form of media used in the content strategy overtaking blogs and infographics and by 2022 online videos will make up more than 82 percent of all consumer traffic which is 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
The truth is, in 2021 video is what users want to see. Mobile video consumption is growing at a rate of 100% per year for app startups. Using explainer videos, demo videos, and promo videos by implementing mobile app marketing tools can show potential users how your app works, describe its features and benefits and tell your brand’s story.
Conclusion
It doesn’t matter how many people you send to the app store if they are turned off when they get there. You have to make sure that your app listing is top-notch, your description screenshots ratings, and reviews are all important.
Keep in mind that the majority of smartphone users don’t download any apps on average per month, so it’s safe to say that they are extremely selective about what they download. Take the time to write a great description that explains the benefits and features of your application so potential users know that it’s the ideal solution for their particular problem.
Prompt your users to leave reviews and build up your social proof on your app listing. If you do all of these things successfully in creating a marketing plan for an app, there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll drive an insane amount of traffic to your app.