What Is App Marketing?
App marketing defines the process of promoting your app to customers, from the initial idea stage right through to acquisition and retention. It includes the initial stages of market research, and can even involve feedback gathering once an app has been released.
Although marketing can take many forms, there are some key styles that you might be familiar with:
- Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is one of the most popular marketing methods seen in app creation. This is where brands will develop an app, and use direct advertising methods like television or social media promotion to introduce it to customers. With this technique, brands approach the customer first, intending to acquire a new download.
- Inbound Marketing
The inbound marketing strategy evolved as a response to outbound marketing, and the way that customers sometimes struggle to develop relationships with brands who reach out to them in this way. Often, inbound marketing teams will create unique, original content that delivers value to a prospective customer. An example of this can be creating a website that showcases your app features along with blog posts or articles. People who are directly searching for specific topics will find this content, and discover more about the brand, which encourages them to reach out to the company. After contacting the company themselves, they can identify with their brand values, and this fosters a long-term customer relationship.
Why Is App Marketing Important?
App marketing is vital for a multitude of reasons, but the primary driver for any strategy is that marketing helps brands to stand out from the crowd. Whether through intense competitor research that allows them to hone in on gaps in the market, or through a curated inbound marketing strategy that develops long-term customer relations, apps that market themselves correctly see high levels of growth compared to those that don’t.
So, don’t get lost in the many app store search results pages – conquer your marketing strategy today!
How To Market Your App Successfully
A successful marketing strategy is diverse and equipped to react to changes in customer reception and opinion. While you can see the tips below as steps to complete, you must revisit them regularly to ensure you aren’t missing any new leads or opportunities.
Conduct Initial Research
Arguably the most vital stage of any marketing strategy is actually the initial research. Without informative research that drives your actions, it’s hard to establish precisely what you should work on for your app. There are two vital research areas to prioritize in the early stages – consumer and competitor research.
Consumer Research
When you start marketing your app, mastering consumer research is crucial. Every app store customer has the chance to become a user of your app, so think about how you will speak to the customers who are the most interested in what you have to offer. Build a customer profile that helps you think about who they are. What do they need from an app? What are they looking for?
Putting yourself in the customers’ shoes is a great way to cater your marketing strategy to them.
Competitor Research
Another essential element of market research is competitor research, which involves taking the time to understand what your direct and indirect competitors are doing well, and what could be improved. Knowing this lets you cater your own marketing strategy around these findings, giving you the best chance of growing your user base.
Choose The Right Style
Once you’ve done your primary research, you can choose a marketing style that suits your app.
- Creating a simple gameplay app that has a large, diverse target audience? Then outbound marketing that grabs their attention and encourages spontaneous downloads might be for you.
- Trying to build a loyal customer base that is highly engaged with the content you produce and an ongoing service? Then inbound marketing style might be more effective at helping you achieve your goals.
Utilize App Store Optimization
App Store Optimization, or ASO, is an effective marketing strategy that will play a key role in marketing your own app. This tactic involves curating your keywords and terminology to match the words being searched by app store users, to make the store’s algorithm see it as relevant and valuable.
By implementing keywords in this way, and prioritizing good reviews, you can show the app store that your new offering is worthy of being boosted to the top of the search results.
Consider Paid Promotion
If you’ve tried a variety of marketing methods, or you want to expand your marketing reach, you might be looking for some alternative ways to drive traffic to your app and improve your retention rates. In this instance, it’s worth considering paid promotion opportunities, such as:
- Influencer marketing
Influencers are an increasingly effective marketing demographic – these individuals build large followings and work with some of the world’s top brands. Collaborating with an influencer is a relevant and cost-effective way to advertise your brand – after all, who better to promote your new app than those who are the most experienced in the digital world?
- Search Ads
Search ads are a great tool, and can be used to promote your app significantly. This process involves purchasing paid adverts that boost your app’s visibility on search engines for increased visibility and brand awareness.
- App Store Promotion
See those ads that pop up every time you enter the app store? The brands that you are presented with aren’t there by coincidence – these ads are paid for by the marketing team behind those companies, and are a great way to introduce people to your app even if they weren’t explicitly searching for it. Paid app store promotion might be your app’s nudge to get going.
