How Developers Should Market an App

It is becoming increasingly difficult for low budget app developers to get noticed in today’s crowded marketplace, due to the market saturation as well as a lack of a clear marketing strategy. Developing a strategy for promoting your app can mean the difference between a Flappy Bird and an Everpix.

What’s Everpix? Well, back in 2012, they were set to be the biggest photo sorting app on the app store and with more than 55,000 members, they had the beginnings of a loyal customer base. But they put all their eggs in the ‘development’ basket and neglected the marketing side of things. Unable to grow their user base, the company ran out of capital and the app was scrapped.

While this sounds like the worst-case scenario for most app developers, there are certain things you can do to prevent your mobile apps from suffering the same fate.

Features are a selling point

You or your team are likely to have spent a significant amount of time building & testing your app, therefore you know the features and functions inside and out. Use your knowledge of these features to your benefit and make them your app’s unique selling point.

Snapchat has their filters feature, Pokémon Go has its augmented reality functionality, and your app has something worth shouting about, too.

While it is advantageous to define your product’s unique selling point, it does nothing without also defining how it appeals to users, what solutions the app offers to consumers and how it differs from what your competitors offer. Take Uber for example:

• Unique selling point – Ability to order a car at the touch of a button
• Appeals to users – With a free, easy-to-use app
• Offers a solution – Of not having to wait for a taxi or stand in the street trying to flag one down
• How it differs from competitors – offers extremely competitive prices

Drum up interest prior to the launch

When you’ve just started developing your product, building your website or app, there’s no excuse not to start marketing as early as possible. In fact, the earlier you start the more interested users you are likely to have accumulated by the launch date. Tech giant Apple are maestros at this and often make it their brand duty to build consumer engagement right from the get go (think of all the times you’ve seen details of the latest iPhone ‘leaked’ online) – people go crazy for it.

Apple’s marketing tactics are out of reach of the start-up entrepreneur, though there are certain things you should consider when planning for pre-launch growth:

• Build a landing page – This can make people aware of your product and get users to enter your sales pipeline
• Grow your email subscribers – Featuring a subscribe button on your landing page is the first step into building an email list of interested potential users (which you can target later)
• Get niche influencers on board – Build relationships with the influential bloggers in your niche. They can help with promotion. If you can get a few to review your app it will go a long way.

Many of you have likely studied up on pre-launch marketing and know the basics that it entails, so what can we do to take this a step further?

Analytics – Having analytics integrated into your website is a big must (if you’re not doing it already you should be), but here, we’re talking about analytics to track your pre-launch campaign, and there are several things to consider:

• Define your goals – If you don’t, how do you know if you’ve achieved what you set out to do? Whether your goal is to get as many email sign ups as you can, to get a clearer picture of your target demographic or collecting data to determine where best to focus your advertising efforts (Note: If you get a large amount of organic traffic with Google searches, it might be a good idea to invest in an AdWords campaign).
• Capture the data – Data about your target audience, referral traffic and social media engagements are gold. Familiarize yourself with the data and how to analyze and implement the data into your marketing. R2Integrated have a great pre-launch checklist on this.
• Heatmaps – These indicating the parts of your website users interact with the most (or least), allowing you to introduce new content & call to actions in the most frequently clicked areas.

Rich media strategy – We can safely say we’re amid the golden age of internet use, where (according to Statistic Brain) the average user’s attention spans approximately 8.25 seconds. However, when it comes to video the average viewing time shoots up to 2.7 minutes, meaning users will likely get more engaged with a pre-launch video than a simple words-on-a-landing-page. Benefits of video over text could also include:

• Higher share rate – Users are much more likely to share a video than an article
• Videos in emails – Result in approximately a 200 to 300 percent increase in click-through rate
• Including video on a landing page – Can increase conversions by 80 percent

Viral Strategy – Many marketers aim for the viral approach, yet most of the time viral content is a freak occurrence and is largely dictated by three things:

• Public perception & cultural relevance – Many viral campaigns are well received because they speak to everyone – not just a select niche audience
• Outlandish marketing concept – Most viral campaigns are not afraid to completely jump outside the box and engage the audience’s primal emotions.

For a great example, check out this Scottish radio station giving away free air guitars! I mean, this whimsical idea is just too good not to share.

Deliver to your target users

Marketing doesn’t cease post launch. There are lots of things to do for you to maintain your momentum and keep that content getting shared and traffic coming long after your app has launched. For this, there are a few main things to consider:

Focus on user engagement & retention – Before focusing on growing your user base you must first make sure your current users are satisfied. There are some simple ways to do so:

• Reviews & surveys – Customer reviews are extremely valuable, and surveys even more so. Spend some time each week scouting your reviews in the app store to keep an eye out for any bug mentions, poor UX reviews or general feedback to better improve your app in the next update. Asking users in-app to rate and give feedback is also good to have.
• Customer support – Each developer should offer their users a support email to contact in case of bugs, glitches or essential feedback.
• Measure your users’ lifetime value – If you sell goods or services through your app or have an ad revenue stream, calculating your users’ lifetime value is a great way to forecast and get an insight into your future success & profits. There is a simple formula for this:
  Profit x customer life – acquisition = CLV. Using the amount of profit your customer brings you (per year) multiplied by the length of time the customer is likely to stay with you (in years) minus the cost of acquiring them equals your approximate customer lifetime value. Remember this is likely to be a rough estimate so take the figures with a pinch of salt and use them more as a guide.

Regroup, re-evaluate and refine

Once your marketing efforts are stable and you’re seeing promising results from your campaign, it’s time to take a step back, get your team together for brainstorming and take steps to refine your current processes. As the saying goes, “a marketer’s work is never done”, there is an ongoing need to refine your strategies, do some industry research and look for those next tactics that will expand both your audience and your revenue.

(Sourced from Silvio Porcellana via www.business.com)