How To Boost Your App’s Growth With Strong Branding

Dana Kachan
Product Coalition
Published in
5 min readFeb 22, 2019

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What do you first think of when you hear about luxury men’s watches? If you’re like most people, the odds are that Rolex is one of the brands that pops into your mind straight away.

That’s the power of branding.

Regardless of which industry you’re in, brand awareness is one of the most important things to keep in mind.

Mobile app development is absolutely no difference. If you have developed an app and you want it to perform, its brand must be strong — there’s no way around it.

While there are plenty of reasons for your company to have a mobile app, it’s just as essential for it to have a strong and trusted brand.

The importance of mobile app branding is clearly outlined by the fact that 31% of mobile app budgets is spent on marketing in 2018.

And yet, many people tend to neglect it. “Build it and they will come” is a prevailing understanding which, unfortunately, no longer stands. There’s so much competition out there that unless you manage to strengthen your appearance through solid branding, your chances of success will be narrowed down.

That said, we’ve taken the opportunity to provide you with a few tips and tricks on how to boost your app’s growth through strong and solid branding.

#1 Prepare to Spend

Remember the 31% mentioned above? That’s the real deal. App marketing isn’t cheap, but it’s definitely necessary.

Without beating around the bush, you should be prepared for an investment in this regard. Failing to do so in advance will definitely get you stuck and you wouldn’t be able to pull ahead. Keep in mind that a lot of mobile app developers themselves advise using a comprehensive marketing strategy in order to promote your applications on as many channels as it is possible.

#2 First Impression is Often the Last Impression

Have you heard about the rule not to judge a book by its cover? Forget it.

There’s no such thing when it comes to branding. If someone doesn’t like the way your product looks or feels, chances of him giving it a try are as slim as you can imagine.

The truth is that even in our regular daily lives we break this rule more often than we’d like to admit.

Now, when it comes to our purchase decisions, we are all superficial. There’s no other way around it here — if you see something shiny and you like shiny things, chances are you’ll want it over something less shiny. It’s as simple as that.

The same is true for mobile apps. If you’re looking for an app within a certain vertical and you come across a well-wrapped application with awesome visuals, proper descriptions and good ratings on the app store, you’re likely to go ahead and test it out.

That’s all there is.

The key takeaway here is that you need to make sure your mobile app is well-presented. One way to do so is through a killer landing page. There are plenty of tips on designing an effective landing page you can take advantage of.

#3 Get Influencers On Your Side

Inviting niche influencers is an awesome way to start increasing your brand awareness and to even drive some sales along the way.

When an influencer has an established audience which trusts him, mentioning your product will definitely expand your reach and increase the awareness of people. Not only that, because it’s recommended by someone trusted, your app will also be perceived as something users can put their trust in.

You can use all types of influencers within your vertical. The good thing here is that it’s not absolutely necessary to go big right from the get-go.

If you don’t have a substantial budget, you can easily start working with smaller scale influencers on a local basis and transition from there as you start to sell more and more.

#4 SEO is Here, Whether You Like it or Not

Fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, search engine optimization is just as important for strengthening your brand as it is for making you discoverable.

Let’s leave all the well-known facts such as that nobody looks past page 1 on Google aside.

SEO matters because you can leverage a lot of different content ideas and make them reputable.

Imagine you’ve developed an app for measuring your blood pressure. You can immediately start creating a lot of educational content on a range of different topics which circle around your main niche — blood pressure optimization. Foods, exercises, even basic daily habits — all these you can write about.

By creating valuable, accurate, educational, and powerful content, you will eventually be able to rank well with certain content pieces. This will automatically strengthen your brand and increase people’s awareness of you.

#5 Dominate Social Media

It’s absolutely impossible to stress out enough how important social media is for your brand. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and a bunch of others on the list — all of them should see you being omnipresent.

Of course, your presence should be well-devised based on your niche. If you’re building an audience for your blood pressure measuring mobile app, you probably don’t want to spend as much time on Twitter and Pinterest as you’d spend on Facebook and LinkedIn, for example.

All social media channels have the capacity to substantially empower your brand, it’s only important to use them properly.

Conclusion

To wrap it up, we’d like to stress the fact that there is a ton of other things you can do to build a solid and trusted brand for your mobile app.

However, the above will most certainly help you out along the way. Consider them as main pillars that you ought to construct your mobile app marketing strategy around.

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Digital Marketing Strategist. Ex-CMO @ GamesPad & BullPerks. Contributor to Entrepreneur, VentureBeat and UX Magazine.