A Step-by-Step Guide to Mobile App Marketing Success
Do you know what makes for a successful mobile app? The most obvious answer is to have a useful (or entertaining) app that works well and looks good.
Simple as that? Well, not even close!
The app success formula is a lot more complicated than:
bug free app + awesome design = massive success
We know development and design are crucial in this equation. But there’s no guarantee that you’ll win people’s hearts, earn money or make your brand more recognizable.
What you can do by yourself though, is to extend this potential. You can achieve it by doing two things:
- Measuring and analyzing the app’s performance
- Improving it with a healthy sum of planned and thoughtful mobile app marketing activities.
Mobile app marketing
A mobile app is like any other product out there — without marketing there is little chance that you’ll make it visible to users.
To be honest, there is no magic recipe that I could give you right now. There are some guidelines that can increase the chances of your app’s success. Today I’m presenting you a step-by-step guide on how to plan, execute and leverage your mobile app marketing strategy.
Please note that for following all the guidelines, you don’t need any marketing experience, nor a huge amount of money.
Let’s dive into the details!
Becoming an app detective
The first step before discussing milestones with the EL Passion developers is a market research. Business ideas include profound research. There is no exception when it comes to mobile apps.
Doing a market research means testing your app idea and looking for evidence of its profit potential. A well designed market research answers fundamental questions and will give you a clue about your audience.
All your future mobile app marketing activities will come from the knowledge you’ve collected.
Earning money with your app
The second step on your way to success is choosing a monetization model for your app. Monetization models depend on the type of the app you’re building.
There are three basic models you can choose from:
- paid model — a user has to pay to download and use the app
- freemium model — a scaled down version of the app is free. The fully version of the app comes at a price (try before you buy it)
- in-app advertising — the app is free, with revenue generated only by ads.
You can mix models to maximize the profit potential of the app. There are a lot of options. For example, offer your app for free, with advertising that users can pay not to have.
App store optimization (ASO) process
App store optimization is a method of increasing an app’s position in app store rankings. The higher the position, the greater the app’s visibility and the better the chances that it will downloaded.
The optimization process may sound vague and difficult when you hear about it the first time. I can assure you that it’s not as hard as it may seem, plus it’s an absolute must-have point in every mobile app marketing strategy nowadays.
There are some great tools out there that help with optimizing an app’s visibility. One of these is Appcase. You don’t have to be an expert in optimization from day one!
Zero budget mobile app marketing
There are a lot of marketing activities that are free, yet effective.
You can:
- submit your app to several review and startups sites
- gain valuable exposure from beta testers
- optimize your app’s profile page in app stores (with a little help from the ASO tools)
- introduce your app to app communities and your potential clients
- use a bunch of social media platforms to promote your app and build relationship with its users.
Before you start with marketing activities, create a mobile app marketing strategy and schedule campaigns. No ad-hoc and unprepared promotional actions.
Getting press coverage for your app
Apart from all the standard marketing, you should at least try to present your app to a wider audience. You can do this by getting press coverage in global and local media outlets.
The best places to reach are sites considered as the most reliable sources of the latest news on mobile apps. Getting featured there is not easy but it’s doable.
Preparing a decent press release with a interesting pitch and engaging story will help a lot.
Measuring an app’s performance the easy way
You know what they say, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. Whatever marketing steps you took, you should be aware of the results that your efforts gave you.
The sooner you know that your efforts don’t bring expected results, the greater the chances that you will use your time wiser. All you have to do is to get a big picture of your app’s performance and start improving your mobile app marketing.
Again, there are several tools, that help measure and analyze every factor of your app’s performance. I recommend you try Appcase for this part as well.
Ready to take your mobile app to the next level?
I hope I’ve helped you a bit with learning how to add the marketing factor to the app success formula. Backing up your mobile with marketing may seem a tough task at the beginning. It’s all about strategy planning, a little effort and positive attitude.
If you feel like you need more tips, insights and good practices on mobile app marketing, you will enjoy reading this e-book. I’ve gathered there the most important stages of mobile app marketing. With easy to follow guidelines on how to build a proper mobile app marketing strategy, you’ll be managing campaigns in no time.
If you have any questions or want to share your comments, don’t hesitate to drop me a message. You can also share your thoughts in the comments below.
