Mobile App Marketing—a Friend for Your Business

If 10 years ago communicating and working online was something that made you part of a unique community, now it is part of everyday life. Communication became wireless, and digitalization and automation are no longer words explaining human and business relations in the future. To be in the flow of life and business we need to be online, text quickly, and stay connected to other devices. Mobile apps can enable us to do all of these things. People download hundreds of mobile apps for various tasks—messaging, studying, analyzing, and entertainment. In turn, app developers worldwide present thousands of products every year, but the top downloaded are only a few of them. We want to give some app marketing tips and clear up how to make the product really beneficial, launch it properly, and explain how to market your app in order to see the product among leaders.

The more possibilities people have, the more ways they seek to ease their daily routines. With the development of modern technologies, people don’t have to sit in front of the screen to fulfill their daily tasks—most of them can be made via mobile apps. For example, we can pay bills, buy clothes, or join a meeting via mobile apps.

Demand boosts business propositions. Within the first quarter of 2021, Android users could choose between 3.48 million apps, while the Apple App Store was the second-largest app store with more than 2.2 million available iOS apps. And the number of apps has been steadily increasing over the years, even despite the fact that Apple and Google have firm requirements regarding app standards, features, and promotion practices. As figures from the International Business Times research state, Apple’s App Store receives more than 1000 app submissions every day. 

The competition is huge when we look at consumer spending on mobile apps. Solely on the Apple and Google app stores, users spend more than 30 billion U.S. dollars per year. Even internet traffic is mostly generated by mobile users—among the 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide, 93% accessed the internet via mobile devices in 2021.

Mobile app developers’ long-lasting goal is to monetize apps. Thus, they need to stand out from the crowd of other mobile solutions. Foremost, the product should be high-quality, up-to-date, and meet the needs of the target audience in a particular niche. Still, what is not communicated is not created. A developer company needs to be also outspoken about their product—present, launch, and promote.

What Does Mobile App Marketing Strategy Embrace?

A huge part of mobile app development involves building long-lasting relations with your existing and new customers. It embraces dozens of tools that are more or less effective. The result depends on the product launch stage, market niche, and the audience you want to engage. Mobile app marketing is about communicating with consumers at each step of the lifecycle—starting from when they first hear about your app, to when they acquire it and become loyal users.

All these stages are grouped into an app digital marketing funnel, meaning the sequence of all steps that a customer takes when interacting with your product. It is a variation of another marketing tool, a customer journey map (CJM), which is a more complex and technical approach to app marketing. 

The differences are the following: 

• The last one is not linear, so the user can skip various stages on the way or return to the same one several times
• The customer journey does not necessarily end with the target action (like purchases or subscriptions) and can include further interactions in other channels
• The CJM takes into account the goals and emotions of the consumer at every stage of the journey

To systematize mobile apps marketing steps, let’s look more precisely at the funnel stages, illustrated as follows: 

• Acquisition. This engages digital tools that help you show the product to the user and get them to download and install the app. It’s the initial step in user interaction with your app. The purpose of this stage is to lead users further and encourage them to a target action. 
• User activation. It’s the next level of the funnel, meaning the user’s first action within your mobile app—for example, filling a submission form, entering an email address, or purchasing something. Depending on the app type, these target actions can differ, influencing further marketing plans.
• Retention. This is the last step in the funnel, which is to make interaction with the app a regular user activity. It can be, for example, daily monitoring of health, renewing status, check-ups, monthly subscriptions, and so on. 

The model of the digital marketing funnel is adaptable and flexible—users’ behavior can be inconsistent and they can go back and forth between stages. This is a normal practice called the “mobile engagement loop” and it should be integrated into the general mobile application business plan from the beginning.

Stages of Mobile App Promotion Strategy

Mobile app promotion strategies and campaigns can differ depending on the industry, business goals, and steps the company makes. Let’s take a look at what an app developer should keep in mind to launch a successful mobile app marketing campaign that will result in good sales and user feedback. 

Mobile App Pre-Launch Stage: Focus on People

The core of the app promotion strategy is users, their pains, and desires as they decide what to install, why they should install it, and whether to opt for your product. To build an effective app marketing strategy, a developer has to figure out who will use the app, where to find those people, what to say to them, and what they wait for from your app. So firstly, to create a mobile app marketing plan, you need to get acquainted with your users. 

Get to Know the App Audience

To understand the audience, potentially interested in your mobile product, it’s good to use the method of personas, meaning you illustrate each cluster of users in the detailed human description as if they were individual people. For example, you can write the gender, age, demographics, what hobbies he/she has, how he/she spends time, how he/she consumes products, even what he/she does every hour during the day. Preferences in mobile apps and other unique identifiers like Android or iOS should also be included to form well-rounded research. 

It is crucial that every persona should represent a group of users that, as you foresee, have a similar user experience and journey. First thoughts, especially in the “idea” stage, can be false or misinterpreted, as marketers don’t have full data and cannot see the whole image of the market—what people really prefer, what decisions are most common, and current trends. So, answering questions and building a consumer profile helps developers be more assured of the app’s success as their decisions are data-driven—based not only on their expertise but also on the results of their research.

When conducting marketing research, product owners have to already understand the purpose of the product—whether its idea is beneficial for the end consumer and whether market participants really require it. If all answers are positive, the technical realization of the mobile app starts, and in the end the product is presented and available for users.

We suggest the following questions to ask yourself:

• Who will use the app and for what purposes or tasks?
• What problems does it help to solve?
• Whom should I target as first, second, and third priority? 
• Who are my competitors in the market?
• What do other developers do to attract their audience to their mobile app?
• What makes my product different from others?
• How can I communicate the benefits of the mobile app to my target audience?

Market research helps to launch the right product for the right audience quickly. Thanks to this, developers can understand the scope and peculiarities of digital app usage and its strong and weak points, and find ways to make it better. Such “homework” helps to get enough data and insights in order to build an optimal marketing plan for launching an app for a successful app campaign.

Mobile App User Activation

To attract a user to download or purchase your product is usually fulfilled by the advertising of mobile apps or other users’ recommendations. The next step is to encourage them to use it. 

In order to succeed, it’s important to build a mobile app activation strategy. This will demonstrate to the user how the product operates, what tasks it covers, and how useful it can be. The most common tool is messaging.

Keep Users With You

There are plenty of ways to build a communication strategy via messages for activating your users. And all of them are compounds of these 3 types of channels:

• Push notification. A company sends the message with the call to action as “install the app” or “sign up with 1 click.” The user doesn’t even need to be in the app to see it. 
• In-app messages. These are similar to push mobile notifications mechanics, except for two things: 1) the user has to be in the app, as messages are delivered while they’re in it and require no signing in or extra actions, and 2) developers can regularly update it in real-time.
• The digital notification center or history. This is a channel integrated into the app that enables users to see past messages. With this tool, they can get acquainted with the offers as soon as they need them. 

And now let’s turn to the ways of combining these messaging channels to build effective app marketing and user activation strategies:

• Send a welcome message. This can be a push notification or a series of them sent within 24 hours after the initial downloading. As an example, you can thank the user for installing the product and then demonstrate the mobile app’s values, possibilities, and “highlights” with key information and features. For example, if a user installs a meditation app, you can send them a thank you push message with a link to account settings and an invitation to join a special platform and/or community. Moreover, you can encourage a user to use the app by sending them a welcome gift—personal sale, coupon, promo code, etc.—they just need to sign in.
• Create an onboarding tour. You can design a sequence of messages, where the user can obtain key features of the digital product and get to know the configuration and what they can do there. Such a fast introduction can ease the first impression, increase engagement, and build trust. Furthermore, after the onboarding flow, you can ask permission to send notifications and other messages.
• Registration via their phone number or email address. This is a key part of cross-channel marketing efforts that helps app developers to engage or retain users. This is helpful for further digital marketing efforts.
• Use conversion incentives if it is appropriate for your product or industry. For instance, if users buy cosmetics, clothes, or other goods, offer them a personal coupon, bonus, and so on. This will make them get used to your app and form a habit to opt-in for your channel. The first experience of your mobile product’s usage is still important.

Mobile App Retention Strategy

Retention Rate

Statistics say that 21% of users abandon an app after one use. As we make our best to build long-term relations with users, we need to keep them engaged in our apps. That is called retention. It helps to calculate the customer lifetime value and shows if the efforts justified themselves. Imagine that you attracted 1000 users and 10% stayed, so the number of users dwindled to 100. And if next month half will remain, that means that you will have 50 net users using your mobile app. 

While building a mobile app marketing strategy, you should measure the percentage of people who continue to use the product within a certain period of time—weeks, months, quarters, etc. This indicator is called the retention rate, and it’s the inverse of user churn. For example, if you have a 30% retention rate for 90-day app use, the churn is 70%. 

The mobile app marketing best practices can lead up to 66% retention for the 30-day period, and average statistics say that 27% to 43% is good enough. In turn, for the 90-day rate, the benchmark is 25% or higher depending on the industry. 

The retention rate can also highlight how users communicate with the app and what their behavior is when they interact with the app—fill the forms, look through the suggestion list, play games, and so on. It also shows differences between groups of users. It helps to track if there is a regularity in how people interact or their needs depending on the age or status.

User Retention—App Marketing Strategies

In order to reduce the number of people who abandon the app, mobile app marketers implement the following app retention strategies or their variations—use your imagination, knowledge, and intuition: 

• Discounts or coupons. Thanks to mobile app algorithms and analyses, marketers can provide special offers the users are interested in. This strategy is the most effective for retail, travel, and other apps that can get information from users and give services or products. Such personalization is good when you need to get users back into the app.
• Better personalization. There is nothing better than personal attention to customers. The same goes for mobile apps. Users provide their personal information while using the app, so marketers can use this knowledge to increase the utility of the app. It’s especially pleasant when a company remembers special days such as birthdays or anniversaries—you can congratulate users on these days with push notifications.. More effective is when you offer a bonus, such as an extra discount.
• Special content or news digests. If you have updates or special promos for users, you can use them. For example, send an exclusive guide or a customized selection of products the user can obtain by following the link to the app. Or you can inform them about the enhancements and new functions in the digital app—just send a notification on Facebook or other messenger.
• Notify about familiar people joining. Facebook reminds users of years of friendship with those in their network, as well as suggests other people they may know. You can use it to re-engage users—give them updates on how many of their friends have joined since they left.
• Remarketing. If push or in-app messages appear not to work for your audience (on average, 50% of app users opt-out of push messaging), you can slightly remind them yourself. Marketers can send letters about new things and insights in your app outside the platform to re-engage them. You can even develop a flow to ask them what they need and what you can do to benefit. Digital channels can be diverse—including email, social, and search advertising. With ads, it’s better to create hypotheses and test them in order to build an effective app advertising plan to all categories of users.

Mobile App Marketing Tips for a Boost

Mobile app marketing isn’t limited to messaging and attracting consumers to open the app—it’s also about building trust by communicating your company values, culture, and stories of people who work with you. Brands should be alive—here are some tips to show your soul and expertise:

1. Create a Landing Page or a Website for the Mobile App

To market any product, the creator requires a place to talk about it. For a digital product, such as a mobile app, it is crucial to have a landing page or even a website. This is the platform for first impressions—customers can find out more about your app on mobile web and desktop. The landing page or website has to be made intuitively—visualized and designed in a way that is clear for the audience. Furthermore, it is good to fill the page with interconnected links with supplementary information, and a FAQ answering most of the questions customers have. Then, to validate that your words are truthful, you can add user reviews and screenshots of your mobile app user experience. And, obligatory, provide them with a call to action—users have to understand what you want them to do.

2. Be Active Online: Blogs, Social Media Marketing, and Cooperation with Influencers

You can tell about the product benefits not only on a website—highlight your vast expertise on the topic in other online channels. You can write a blog on the website and regularly update it. Moreover, these articles can be shared within corporate social media along with product presentations—this is organic mobile app advertising. The only thing is to find your topic, be friendly and open to the audience, and make content—videos, photos, live streams, contests, etc. You can diversify the content with third parties—engage influencers to use and talk about your app, and thus promote it to a broad audience. Opinion leaders shape the world’s perception and are the leading sources of information and trust, especially for the young generation. Most important is to find the right people and perform the right messages—formats of cooperation you are free to choose.

Depending on the app type, social media can be organically integrated into your app. This is another possibility for users to share content from your app on their social media channels.

3. Smart Mobile App Promotion Strategy—with KPIs, Ad Optimization, and Email

Success should be measured, so results in KPIs are achieved. Figures shaped in trends and dynamics provide an objective view of reached goals and performance. Strategy, built on material measurements, helps to build a data-driven approach to app marketing and improvement.

KPIs can differ from app to app. Still, the common and demonstrative are daily, weekly, or monthly active users, cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per install (CPI), and cost per mile (CPM). You should also keep in mind click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, retention rate, and churn.

4. Use App Store Optimization (ASO)

ASO is good at enhancing the mobile product’s visibility within app stores and helps to raise app conversion rates, meaning acquiring more loyal users and increasing downloads. This process is an analog of SEO, but for mobile apps, and has a couple of differences. Both ASO and SEO are similar regarding keyword optimization, back-linking, and conversion optimization, but the main difference lies in ranking factors. ASO algorithms are targeted at making the app easily discoverable by the right users. The ranking factors can differ, though the major ones are common—the app name, URL, description, keyword field, in-app purchase, rating & reviews, updates, downloads & engagement, and other hidden factors.

Imagine that an app store user utilizes search to find the needed app according to a certain category, style, stars, or reviews. Due to app store optimization, the user can find the exact product he’s looking for. Eventually, the higher the search ranking position the app has, the more downloads it acquires.

No matter what channel you use, the product should be high-quality and the information you provide should be valuable for users. If you have an excellent app but are confused about promoting it or want to launch it faster with minimal risks, feel free to contact us. Our mobile app marketing team has many solutions and app marketing tips for you.