We’ve talked about app marketing quite a few times so far. Marketing is an important part of creating a successful application, no matter what you’re planning to do with it. You can have a great idea, and create an awesome application which will offer smooth performance and great features, but if people don’t hear about it… well, they won’t use it. Now, mobile applications have become a crucial part of every big brand, which was to be expected considering that smartphones have become an integral part of our lives. Mobile app downloads have actually doubled in 2012, and then doubled again in 2013… and the same thing basically happened a year later. These numbers speak for themselves. Anyhow, we’re here to talk about brand strategies for mobile app marketing. We’ll go over strategies that the largest companies in the world are using in order to promote themselves and get users to pay attention to them.
App Stakeholders Should Be A Team
This section will depend on who owns your app marketing strategy, but if we’re talking about a number of shareholders, you should do your best to unite them. There’s no better way to push your app in the right hands than with a group of people that are working like a team. It is very difficult to achieve anything if every single person is trying to achieve something else, if they have different goals. Communication is the key here, of course.
Marketing Resources
If you set up your app properly and managed to do everything right, you’ll see revenue coming in on a regular basis. Applications can be a real revenue-generating machines if they’re successful, and even though the marketing is becoming more complicated by the day, it is still very much possible to achieve this. It is no longer enough to use the simplest marketing strategies, you have to be proactive in your approach. What does this mean? Well, in a nutshell, it’s best if you invest some cash into marketing. According to MMA’s ROI analysis of mobile, the optimal percentage to spend on marketing of mobile is 7%. Many companies invest far more than that, but this is just a guideline of sorts.
App Marketing Goals
No matter which app you’re marketing, you have to set marketing goals for it in order to be successful. First of all, you have to figure out which ‘Rank’ in the app store you want to achieve and try to maintain this rank. This will require a lot of steps, but most importantly, responding to bug reports frequently and communicating with the consumers. You also have to aim for a certain amount of app downloads for your app, set a goal and try to reach it. If you cannot respond to every bug report or e-mail contact, make sure to communicate properly with the users who paid for your app, they’re your priority. Revenue goal is also a smart move, you need to have goals all around, and in order to achieve android monetization, you need to have a revenue goal.
Furthermore, you should aim to beat your competition. Find out who is your competition, which companies make a similar app to yours and try to be better than them. Target new customer acquisitions, set a goal to have a constant inflow of new users, this is a very important step in order for your app / business to grow. If you’re targeting a certain geography, you can always be selective, and focus your efforts when needed. Last, but not least, meet your defined metrics in certain time-frames, this will keep you moving in the right direction.
Mobile Media Marketing
Marketing your app on mobile media is also a very important step. You can get a lot of users by marketing your app properly, and mobile media will give you a lot of exposure. You’ll have to pay in order to get a proper marketing exposure on mobile media, but it’s certainly worth it because you’ll get through to the exact userbase you’re targeting. Mobile ads are usually underestimated, and they shouldn’t be, not by a long shot, so keep that in mind and make sure that you give it proper attention on your road to success.
Optimal App Store Rank
Application store ranks are really important, if your app isn’t ranked properly, users will not even see your app, let alone download it. App store rank is all about acquiring ‘organic’ users. What are ‘organic users’? Well, those are the users who install your app via natural discovery while browsing a certain app store. The app store rank won’t be affected by consumers who find your app via paid ads, external links and stuff like that, they have to do it while browsing the store. In order to get an optimal rank, it is important you conduct burst campaigns with an intent network. What will you achieve by doing this? Well, a high number of downloads in a very short period of time, which should be enough to get your rank app.
Loyal Customers
Loyal users are just as important as download numbers, even more important in fact. What is a loyal user? A loyal user is a consumer who uses your app repeatedly, clicks through your online store, downloads a coupon, makes in-app purchases, places orders and registers for a service or a newsletter. Local users are the ones you build your business on, these are the users you should strive for, always. If you manage to get enough of them to use your app, the business will strive.
Optimization Technology
When you’re marketing your app, the goal should not be to market you on as many places as possible, this will burn through your budget and you won’t achieve much. The key is to plan it out and hit the crucial places, that way you’ll achieve the best outcome possible. Same applies for all the points we’ve talked about thus far, see what’s important in your specific case, and make sure to focus on it. The key is to plan up front and know exactly what you want to do at a certain point.
Mobile Marketing Technology Partner
No matter what you’re marketing, you should always find a mobile marketing technology partner and a reliable one at that. Your mobile marketing technology partner should offer a number of services, here are some of them: centralized media buying, ad tracking and attribution, app usage analytics and optimization. There are many mobile app marketing platforms that offer all of these points and so much more, and it’s very important that you find the best solution for your specific case and stick with it.
Testing, Learning And Implementing
This pre-launch step is very important, and you should never skip it. Media testing is an integral part of the pre-launch process that you should pay attention to. You should find out which media will serve you best, and go with that source. There are a ton of options in the market these days, from ad networks to premium web and app publishers, and if you don’t test the market properly, you’ll miss a lot of great chances. Chances are you’ll have to spend some money on media testing as well, so build it in your budget before you start doing anything.
Feedback Loop
It all comes down to communicating with users, they’re the ones who will use your app and, therefore, keep you in business. Make sure to update the app regularly, and provide frequent feedback to users, otherwise it won’t work. Same thing goes for stakeholders, you need to keep them happy in order to keep your app successful. Speaking of which, there are quite a few ways you can provide feedback to stakeholders: metrics reporting, app landing pages, app consistency, ad testing and conversion rates. You’ll basically have to study metrics and every other aspect of the app, and report it back to stakeholders. The same can be said about ads actually.