Mobile App Promotion Strategies for Startups

The mobile app ecosystem is a challenging environment. Year after year thousands of apps enter the app sector and compete for the pivoted top 10 listing.

One of the biggest fundamental mistakes an entrepreneur preparing for the top spot can make is not paying attention to the mobile app promotion stages. Or treating the process less than the number of effort required for the design and development process.

The question in the present mobile app state is not What is mobile app marketing, why is it necessary or how it works? But, what are the right app engagement methods.

It is a given that no matter how well crafted your application is, it will not get its spot under the sun until it is marketed right and there is a buzz around it much before it hits the stores and users’ devices.

Achieving the promotion utopia is not easy. But let us help you get there.

Here is an app marketing guide to help you market your mobile app.

But before you get to the stage of mobile application marketing, there is some homework which is required to be done to answer how to market an app successfully.

Prerequisites for Mobile App Promotion

Identification of app objectives and target audience 

Much before you get to the stage of finalizing the right app marketing strategy and determine associated budget, you should flesh out who your target audience is. You need to explore and learn what are their pain points, what are the existing solutions available in the market, where are they lagging, and how your application can overcome them. In other words, you need to invest your efforts into product discovery, creating user personas, and much more.

Whilst this is the first step towards developing a mobility solution, it won’t hurt to revisit the findings when you are nearing the stage of mobile app marketing.

Do the keyword research

Identifying the right set of keywords is a very important part of the app promotion process. One that you’ll find in every app marketing guide. Your application will stand a much better chance if you know what language your users will use to reach your mobile app through natural searches.

Since this is just the homework stage, you need not pay heed to the positioning portion of the keyword as of now.

The strategies for mobile app promotion are primarily made of two stages – Pre-Launch and Post-Launch marketing. Now, unlike the design and development part of the process, where the efforts reduce once the app is deployed, the efforts needed both before and after the app launch stages, in case of app marketing, are the same.

Let us look into the pre and post launch mobile app marketing tips.

Pre-Launch App Marketing Strategy

This is the stage which would enable you to create awareness about your application in the market. Here are the things that will have to be covered in the pre-launch app marketing stage.

Finalize a release date 

A good starting point would be to finalize the release date of the application. Having a time frame in mind would help devise better mobile app promotion strategies. When deciding on the launch date, consider all holidays and events happening around the date, this will help ensure that the app is not getting overshadowed.

Build A Great App Landing Page

Mobile app landing pages have become some sort of a must-have for businesses looking to generate eyeballs right once the development phase starts nearing its end. The benefits of creating a promotion landing page can be manifold. First, you can use all the information collected on the page for conversion purposes. Next, you can use the content on the page for SEO purposes – improving the app’s ranking on the search engines.

Outreach initiatives 

One of the app marketing tips that works best in favour of promoting an application is the outreach initiatives that a business takes. While it would be a lot more beneficial for a startup to start rolling out Press Releases (PRs) and Articles from the stage where the app’s beta version is out, it’d be beneficial to start creating a list of prospects to reach out, in advance.

You should have a ready list of PR professionals, bloggers, and social media influencers before you start with steps to promote an app. It’d also help your mobile app marketing strategy to keep a few pitch ready with you beforehand to then send to the agencies.

Open social media profiles 

While assumed to start once there is a link to download the app, ideally, the stage where you create social media profiles should occur 1-2 months prior. This will help you with avoiding mistakes while promoting your app on social media channels and leverage higher benefits.

Now, when talking about the same, you should start with identifying who your target audience is and which platform they frequently visit. On the basis of that information, open social media profiles and start posting content on them to keep the users’ interest in place.

Besides these pointers, there are a few things that you will have to cover from the development front as well. Let us look into them. 

Make the app easily shareable

On the development front, it should be made easy for users to share your application to their friends and family. For this, you will have to ask your partnered mobile app development company to add native elements, which would make it possible to share the app through Message, WhatsApp, or other social media platforms.

Implement app analytics 

When talking about app success, it is not always about higher app downloads. Various other mobile app KPIs must be taken into account.

In relation to the same, there should be an app analytics section inside the application which would make it possible for you to keep track of how the app is performing when the time comes. Adding analytics at a later stage will be a lot more difficult compared to adding it at the development stage.

Enable push notification

The prominence of the role that push notifications play in reaping higher benefits of marketing an app is undeniable. It can be your go-to tool for ensuring the app is always on the top of users’ minds. But in order for it to perform what you expect of it, you will first have to incorporate it in your application:

• Register with the push notification service of the operating system;
• The OS service offers an API that enables the app to interact with the service;
• Add SDK to the app.

Post-Launch App Marketing Plan

The efforts that you put in the name of pre-launch app marketing is only half of what you will have to do for post-launch marketing. Now, when we talk about post-launch app promotion techniques, we basically talk about two primary approaches: Organic and Paid.

The idea here is to get as many downloads on your application as possible. For, the ranking of your app on the store will ultimately depend on the number of downloads it has received. But a thing to note here is that there is no list of the best ways to promote an app. It will all ultimately depend on your app type, what you are looking to achieve, and the budget you have set for the mobile app development process.

Paid Promotion Activities

App-install campaigns 

The app-install ads when driven with the right app marketing strategy and in the right place and time tend to draw massive benefit for the application on the download count front. What is difficult in this method is determining reasons behind higher app uninstallation rate and take preventive measures for the same. But the returns that can be expected from this approach are massive.

Pay per click  

Pay per click tends to have a massive impact on mobile app promotion, if and when done on the right platform. While one approach would be to promote the app on search engine, what we recommend is promoting the application on other applications – this has shown to offer greater benefits to businesses.

Email campaigns 

Depending on the demographics of your target audience, eMails can be a great start for establishing your marketing strategy for app launch. By sending the details and values of your app to people who either subscribed to your landing page earlier or through cold emails can be a great way to get attention on your application.

Organic Promotion Activities 

App Store Optimization

When we talk about organic Android/iPhone app marketing, the foremost strategy that strikes the mind is ASO or App Store Optimization. The idea of ASO is to work on the app’s store page in a way that it is fit to appear in the search list and enticing enough to be downloaded by the users in one go. The end goal of ASO, however, should be to ensure that the application gets featured on the Play Store.

Apply for awards 

Awards are a sign that the product is quality focused and is bound to add great value to the app user acquisition marketing strategy for apps. In many ways, they also play a role in getting greater downloads.

Here are some of the websites that accept awards application on the basis of its design, features, and other criterias:

Here are some of the websites that accept awards application on the basis of its design, features, and other criterias:

• Appy Awards;
• Best App Ever Awards;
• Apple Design Awards;
• Appsters Awards;
• The Webby Awards;
• Best Mobile App Awards.

Gain visibility 

There are a number of app marketing ideas you can turn to for gaining visibility on your application. Here are a few of them –

• Submit the application on promotion websites like Rate My Startup or Launching Next. these will help you in gaining reviews from entrepreneurs and other users.
• Publish the app on alternative app stores like Amazon etc. (Note that this can only be a part of your Android app marketing strategy)
• Conduct contests and giveaways to push the interest that you app is getting.
• Keep in touch with the press to continue keeping your brand in the news.

Localize your mobile app

Though English is mostly the language that an app is drawn around, do not restrict the language as the only language. Many people in the world, even in the USA itself, do not use English as their native language – an event that affects the mobile app usage charts.

It is important to localize your mobile app according to the relevant regions – ones where your users belong. But when doing it, do not rely on auto-translation. There are a number of app localization agencies like  ICanLocalize, Babble-on, Tethras, Localeyes, etc, which can help bring the app to a global market.

The pre-launch app marketing strategy and post-launch app marketing plans you read above work amazingly well for getting million downloads on your app. But the hard work and effort doesn’t end there. You will still have to work around ensuring that people who install your app don’t abandon it.

While it would help to know the reasons why people uninstall apps, what we recommend is investing your time in mobile app reputation. There are three primary ways to attain it: Setting up listening tools, setting a team to reply to users in real-time, and bring troubleshooting tips on app and the landing page. But before these three, you will have to guarantee an optimized app performance.