How to Increase Your App’s Success with Strategic Marketing Tactics
Most companies understand the value of integrating a strategic marketing plan into their app development process and see it as one of mobile app success factors. It is essential to create a planned marketing strategy in order to ensure app success.
Still, although your company wants to implement the best marketing campaigns, it can be difficult to know how to start.
This article will describe the best marketing practices for your mobile app and how to effectively build a successful marketing strategy.
1) Plan Your Marketing Budget
Companies should dedicate a significant amount of funds to promote their app. Over one-third of companies (35%) spend 31–50% of their app development budget on marketing.
Budgeting appropriately will allow you to plan your future marketing strategies and implement effective long-term campaigns. Your company should know which marketing channels to invest in to maximize your return on investment.
Remember to consider these factors when you plan your marketing budget:
- Long-term goals: what do I hope my app achieves?
- Brand voice: how does my brand voice sound and how can my app enhance that tone?
- Launch campaign: how can I launch my app and catch user attention?
- Channel marketing: what channels will I primarily center my marketing in?
- Target audience: who is your app intended for?
- Future spending: when will I need to invest more money into my marketing campaign?
You should match your marketing budget with how much you spent on app development. You need to dedicate as much money into selling the product as you did into making it. But, even more importantly, you need to understand where your product fits into the market and what audience you are targeting.
You need to invest in your marketing strategy to see a profit on your app development. You should continuously put more money into your marketing as your app becomes more popular, so it can continue to grow.
What makes a mobile app successful is that while planning your budget, identify your target audience and who your app will most appeal to. With 5.135 unique mobile users worldwide, you cannot appeal to everyone in your advertising. You will have more success focusing your reach rather than trying to sell to everyone.
If you tailor your marketing campaign to a specific group of users, then you will more likely curate a loyal fanbase. You should consider your audience from the beginning of the app development process so you can integrate this focus into your marketing budget.
2) Engage Your Users with Multiple Platforms
Apps thrive when users are engaged.
You need to foster customer engagement at all times. You can create a better user experience by:
- Creating a website for your successful mobile app in order to reach more people. Your website and app should encourage users to subscribe to your content. The more time users spend on your site, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
- Generating personalized content to make users feel more connected with your product. Include messages that reference users by name to create a stronger, customer, relationship.
- Making sure your brand has a positive association. Gamify your app. Make your website interface match your app’s design.
Websites and apps tend to engage with users differently. Websites usually have a targeted, buying, path while most successful mobile apps function more as tools or experiences for the users. You should create a distinction between your website and app so users have a reason to visit both.
Further, apps can send push notifications directly to your phone, which immediately alerts users to updates. These notifications grab user attention, which can be difficult for websites to mimic.
Raj Aggarwal, CEO of Localytics, discusses how mobile apps have changed the functionality of websites.
The rich and interactive experiences we have come to expect on mobile apps have created new standards and expectations for all digital media including the web. The result is websites are evolving to become more app-like in their rich functionality.
As more people rely on their phones to deliver information, websites have to adapt and find new ways to compete for time. Sites should offer a different experience from your app so users have a reason to utilize both of your platforms while also complementing your app graphically.
Among the examples of successful mobile apps, there are The Nike Fit app and Nike website both have a similar user interface with the sleek graphics and thematic coloring. The Nike Fit app, however, helps users keep track of their daily fitness while the Nike website main purpose is to streamline the buying experience and sell products.
Further, consumers are more likely to check their phones upon receival of a notification rather than an email sent to their inbox. Still, email marketing can be effective, especially for businesses.
There are over 74 trillion emails sent every year with 85% of adults using emails. Considering this high volume of content, you should make your emails stand out to possible buyers. If you implement email marketing campaigns to highlight your app, then make sure you have a subject line that grabs user attention. 81% of millennials use “inbox triaging,” which is a process that helps you evaluate whether content is relevant or not. You need to make sure your email connects to the user.
After you gage consumer interest, you need to ensure a user will return. The user design experience can be extremely important for a successful retention rate. Your app should work consistently and quickly with an eye-catching interface. Great user experience will motivate return.
Keep your users invested in your app with multiple platforms to interact with. You can include gamification, giveaways, and premium content to motivate users to return to your app. Great customer engagement will improve your app’s popularity and increase its number of downloads.
3) Hire Marketing Experts
Many companies struggle to implement an effective marketing strategy. After finishing the development stage, it can be hard to figure out next steps. Selling the app, is often, the most difficult part of the process.
Marketing agencies provide expertise and in-depth knowledge of successful marketing practices. Although sometimes expensive, agencies can generate a high return on investment for your app.
- Team of experts
- Cheaper ad and software costs
- Access to all your data and metrics
- Save time you could be dedicating to other business aspects
- Industry expertise
- Experience with marketing campaigns
- Gain an outside perspective
Still, it is important to ensure that someone is conveying the company’s vision correctly. An in-house team member should communicate the brand’s message effectively to an outside party. The relationship between company and agency should be open and engaged so everyone feels comfortable asking questions and pitching ideas.
The marketing agency can offer industry knowledge and new ideas to your marketing efforts. Your in-house team, however, should explain your brand in order to maintain a consistent voice to your target audience.
Gabe Kwakyi, a founder of the mobile app marketing agency, Incipia, explains the advantages of hiring an outside marketing resource.
The benefit of working with an agency is to leverage years of experience spent working with dozens, hundreds of even thousands of apps. This generally yields a deeper understanding of the marketing strategy and tactics.
You should build a solid foundation with your marketing agency in order to maximize your app’s success. Competition in the app industry can be strong, which means you need to implement the best marketing campaign you can to stand out and find the best app marketing company for your business to increase your app’s success.
4) Capitalize on Metrics
Your company should constantly be evaluating the success of your marketing campaigns. You can use mobile app success metrics to gain insight about what works and what does not. If you measure metrics monthly, you can update your app depending on the feedback you receive.
Many companies see daily active users as one of the most valuable metrics to measure. Daily active users show your app traffic and can indicate potential, new, downloads as unique users visit your app.
Dan Steiner, a writer at Marketing Strategy, explains the importance of analyzing metrics.
Consumers spend about 30 hours per month using mobile apps. It’s a ton of data at your fingertips if you take the time to develop an app and look at how your customers are engaging with it.
Still, there can be different kinds of returning users. Not all users necessarily use an app every day, especially considering the type of app.
There are 6 main types of apps:
1. Lifestyle
These apps usually provide a service dedicated to the quality of a user’s daily life. Examples include: fitness, dating, food, music, and travel.
2. Social media
These apps streamline communication and involve connecting people through messaging, posting, or sharing content. Examples include: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.
3. Utility
These apps are normally already installed on your smartphone and make mundane tasks easier. Examples include: Calculator, reminders, flashlight, and weather.
4. Games/Entertainment
These apps try to capture user interest for long periods of time and entertain their audience. Examples include: Netflix, Hulu, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and Clash of Clans.
5. Productivity
These apps help users accomplish a task quickly and streamline work efficiency. Examples include: Docs, Sheets, Wallet/Pay, and Evernote.
6. News/Information
These apps give users the news and information about current events. Examples include: New York Times, Buzzfeed, Google News, and Yahoo News Digest.
Successful daily usage will vary in definition because the purpose of each app differs. No matter what your app does, however, you should constantly be driving revenue. You want to capitalize on your avid users and see their usage convert to profits.
Money will allow your business to grow and develop. You cannot remain stagnant in growth or your app will be quickly forgotten. You need a plan to convert your users into paying customers, especially as they depend more and more on your app.
Make users rely on your app, especially certain features in their daily life. If you create an app that is indispensable, then less people will uninstall your app and the more likely they will pay for certain features.
Measure Your App’s Success
In order to create a successful app, your company should launch creative marketing efforts to spread awareness about your app. You need to execute marketing campaigns efficiently and effectively. You should create a well-documented marketing budget from the beginning of the app development process that includes your target audience.
Make sure you keep customers engaged so you can convert their usage to sales. You need to measure metrics in order to implement the required changes. An outside marketing agency can help your company achieve the level of marketing success your app deserves. Those are the things that make a good app popular and successful.
Utilize strategic marketing tactics to ensure your app’s success.
This article about strategic marketing tactics is written by Emily Clark.
Read the original version on Product Tribe blog.
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