There is a very subtle yet significant difference between app marketing and commodity/service marketing.
Although an upcoming app’s overall marketing plan is very much similar to how brands frame their product marketing strategies:
There are a few elements that are exclusively applicable when it comes to marketing an app.
Ignoring these elements can badly affect your app’s long term survival and revenue generation in the market.
Let’s have a look at four such important elements:
1. Focussing on app-specific KPIs
Although app marketing may not have significant points of difference when compared with conventional marketing, it still shows some perceptive uniqueness.
A common attitude that is seen among marketers is to ignore these unique app marketing KPIs while framing strategies.
The common outcome is an app marketing strategy that closely resembles that of a product or service.
App store rankings, cost per download, app store optimization, organic and loyal user acquisition etc.
These are a few notable app marketing KPIs that can make or break the game for your app when it comes to its initial response and overall longevity in the market.
Therefore app development companies need to find ways to include these unique KPIs into their overall marketing plan.
In other words, your primary marketing mediums, namely content, social media, PPC agency, should be adequately prepared keeping these KPIs in mind.
2. Marketing the emotion, not the app
You might have heard the age-old marketing adage, “don’t sell the product, sell the emotion attached to it.”
However, surprisingly marketers seem to ignore this element when it comes to framing their app marketing strategy.
In fact, if we look back at the history of app marketing, it was more acceptable to actually market the app itself and not the benefits/emotions attached to it.
However, as of now, following this conventional app marketing approach can be a disaster.
The primary reason being the sheer number of apps that are operating in the market nowadays.
Therefore it’s almost impossible to launch a completely unique app with never seen before features.
And as a result, marketing an app simply based on its functionalities would turn out to be completely futile.
What appeals to today’s app users is the manner in which an app’s features can make their life easier or more interesting.
3. Focussing on Organic Ranking
High organic downloads are something that every app wants at the end of the day.
However, the only manner in which you can get your customers to download your app organically is to rank in your category on a particular app store.
However, the truth is that, until your app is one of a kind, it’s tough to rank among the top 5 apps in a particular app store.
What if I tell you that there’s a paid form of app marketing methodology that can significantly hike up your organic download numbers.
Heard of the term Burst Campaigns??
A burst campaign refers to aggressive media buying over a short time period, say 24-72 hours.
The main aim is to expose the app to the largest audience possible.
Contrary to spending your ad budget over a long period of time, the aim is to create maximum impact within a short time period.
This sudden boom in your app’s popularity will help it to climb up quickly through google and app store ranks generating a very high number of organic downloads.
4. Focussing on creating Loyal Users
It’s quite common for app developers and marketers to singularly focus on rankings and downloads, especially in order to nail the initial few months of their app launch.
As a result, what happens is that they try to develop an app that appeals to a mass/quantity customer base.
In this process, they completely ignore creating an app that can earn them a quality user base.
A Quality userbase can be defined as one that downloads an app to use it regularly in their daily lives and not just download it previously and uninstall it within a few months.
In other words, these are the loyal customers or fans of an app that can ensure its survival in the long run.
User experience is one such crucial factor that determines the amount of loyal and long-term customers an app would be able to earn in its lifetime.
The number of unique features, an app has generally doesn’t play a huge role in this as the consumer would anyways find alternative apps that provide those features.
Secondly, something that app developers should diligently monitor, post the app’s release is the app’s Churn Rate.
This is because, even though a lot of users who would download your app in the beginning, won’t use it that frequently.
An app that has a high churn rate definitely has some problems with its app designing such as some particular functionalities or a User experience that is highly cumbersome.
In such cases, diagnosing these issues have to be in your priority list as you can face severe drawbacks while trying to organically lifting your apps through marketing campaigns and download boosts.
Wrapping up:
A crucial inference that can be drawn from the above-mentioned points is that its high time marketers have a long-term approach towards their app marketing strategies.
Simply creating an app with the mentality of “Maximum Downloads “ in mind would do nothing but reduce its life as it is almost impossible to generate organic and a loyal customer base with such a mentality.
Author Bio- Hi There, I am Shaun Williams, a content writer with Goodfirms, a research platform for DevOps and Game Development companies, among many others. I enjoy communicating ideas and knowledge creatively and also ensure that the readers never suffer from boredom while reading my posts.