Ways to promote mobile apps

Mobile app development is expensive and time-consuming. In addition, there are millions of mobile apps, and new ones are coming to the market every day, competing for the attention of users one way or another.

What does this mean for you as a mobile marketer or indie developer?

If you want to stand out and be successful, you need to focus on developing the right strategy to promote your game or app. The way things are now, it is actually the marketing efforts that determine the success of your product and business, not the development, design, or even value of the product itself.

In this article, we will talk about 5 ways to promote your app.

1. Mobile app promotion through the website and blog

Your landing, product page, or even full-fledged website is one of the main parts of your mobile application marketing strategy. A dedicated site allows users to learn more about your app even before you launch the product, while, at the same time, allowing you to gather a potential audience and tell them about the development process. This is a relatively cheap method, with SEO as one of its main means of user attraction. Show what users will see in your app, leave links to the App Store and Google Play with a clear call to action, post its video trailers or just reviews, user ratings and the awards received.

Keep your blog up to date on your website – this is another tool to capture new users and increase your target audience reach. Consider social media content distribution and be sure to use analytics to identify the type of content most beneficial to you.

Tips:

• Look at your competition and try to understand what guided their key product decisions.
• Use the site as a platform for A/B/C… testing of your assets.
• You can also develop a strategy to allow guest posts from any external writers or famous people (influence marketing) who use your app. Or you could write for other sites yourself (for example, VC and Habr in Russia) to achieve the best results and reach.

2. App Store Optimization

We have written many articles about ASO already. In short, this is the process of improving the visibility (search positions) of your app in the App Store and Google Play. This is critical for target user acquisition because even if your company buys lots and lots of ads (which we also discuss here in a later section), these all invariably lead to the app store product page. Therefore, your product needs to have a perfect presentation so that you don't lose those prospects you've already paid for. In addition, ASO is a great source of free organic traffic — which is also targeted as users are already looking for an app in the store to complete their task.

Tip:

• ASO is an iterative process, so don't stop working on optimizing your page.

3. Influence marketing (influencers)

Influence marketing is the use of popular bloggers or famous people to attract new users and promote your brand. This digital marketing strategy for mobile app has become very popular in recent years. In 2020 alone, influence marketing budgets increased by 65%.

There are many ways to create collaborations and campaigns with influencers to achieve your marketing goals. For example, you can provide influencers with some giveaways for your app users (which they can share with their audience), use paid product placement, or simply submit your product for review (this is unlikely to work with a mobile app, but considering the multitude of IT bloggers, it's still worth a try). The advantage of paid advertising is that you have more creative control, while gifts are admittedly more popular with users and can increase viral reach.

Tip:

• Always test and evaluate the efficiency of your interaction with influencers (at least in terms of installs and traffic quality).

4. App promotion through paid advertising

While the methods above might be relatively free, paid campaigns do require a lot of money for scaling. It's important to know the users you want to attract and the actions in the app that they should perform, to create and test dozens and hundreds of creatives, test different social and advertising networks, etc. These are complex processes that need to be controlled with precision, often on a point-by-point basis, and the cost of error is literally high.

Tips:

• The key point here is to ensure the economical effectiveness of your promotion. Among other things, the user LTV must be greater than (or at least equal to) the cost of user attraction. This is not always obvious and simple to do, but without it, paid advertising will not be effective overall.

5. App promotion through remarketing

Your retention rate is the percentage of users who still log into the app after a certain period of time. The average retention rate for the 1st day is 26%, which means that, in fact, the majority (74%) of the people who download your app use it only once and then delete it! For day 7, the average retention rate is 11%; for day 21, it's 7%, and for day 30, it's 6%. However, the figures can vary greatly depending on the product category. The same study explains why it makes sense to run retargeting campaigns within the first week after installation — it significantly increases reach and response.

App marketers can and should focus on increasing returns (retention) as one of the means to increase LTV (user lifetime value; see our article here) and ROI on paid advertising. Returning an already acquired user is much cheaper than attracting a new one!

You need to understand where users typically 'fall away', stop using the app and leave, and try to keep them as long as possible. By retaining users for a longer period, you will achieve higher engagement and get more revenue from users who already have your app installed.

Tip:

• The retention rate can also point to areas that need improvement in your app. For example, if you see an unusually low retention rate on your first day, it could be because of a login issue or other issues with your onboarding experience.

App promotion strategy

These are just a few examples of what to consider when working on your mobile app marketing strategy. Use all the channels and means available to you, combining different approaches, and do your best to not miss anything. Only in this way will you be able to succeed and understand what works best for you.

If you need any help with app promotion or strategy creation, be sure to contact us. We will help you get your app to the TOP.