I was catching up with my long lost friend over call and the technology as well as multiple apps thing came up. He mentioned that he’s just kept 3 social apps and 2 gaming apps while chose to uninstall rest all. So has been the choice of my many other friends across the globe to keep very limited and relevant apps only.

Yes the culture of making a successful app has evolved. Making an app can be a quick process by hiring any remote developer or open the app development IDEs and other tutorials to get it done yourself.

The focus is now on sustaining the app or at first place, how to market your app so that it reaches to maximum customers who download it and use it everyday. The organisations with most successful apps are the ones which now put maximum resources and vigour in app marketing vertical.

CURRENT SCENARIO

A 2011 university study suggested people check their phones 34 times/day. It’s 2018. Industry insiders believe that number is closer to an astounding 150 daily sessions.

The year 2015 was titled as “Year of the Mobile”. This is because the number of people using mobile surpassed those using desktop by approximately 200,000 people between 2014 and 2015. Since then, there has been the debate if we should claim this title it to particular year or merely declare the current era as the “Age of the Mobile”. This all is possible just because of user friendly mobile apps, which are just flews clicks away in the pocket. The customers demand and expect a mobile app to be a major touchpoint between them and their favorite brands. In fact, 90% of the time spent on mobile devices is devoted to app use alone.

And with floods of apps and app development firms, it’s certain that if your app isn’t intuitive or appealing, it wouldn’t take moments to be replaced by a better version for same purpose. And even if your app is pitch perfect and amazing in all aspects, the challenge to make it reach to maximum people does remain.

BASICS TO KNOW ABOUT APP MARKETING

The biggest challenge in the evolving need to market apps is “To know what to know?”. That means people aren’t yet completely familiar with the options they got or just understand the different concepts like downloads vs active users, app store rankings, and so on.

Make sure you’ve dived enough in the basics. The following 10 tips are proven to be fruitful and shall certainly help you.

1. Set goals with bull's eye on KPI's

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicators. The list of KPI’s for app marketing incude:
App store rankings; Organic and loyal acquisition; Cost per download; App store optimization. It’s moreover like the basics you should know of.

The process is to strategize your app marketing plan with different weightage on these verticals based on your app type. This should be the must consideration factor while planning for Velocity and Revenue.

The set goals should be realistic and measurable enough. Where in prioritizing the long-term and short-term goals along with primary and secondary goals helps. It’s just like any other marketing strategy yet consider the KPI’s. It’s better to assign a dedicated team for app marketing nowadays.

2. Gold Vs Diamond Marketing Tools

Hoardings and billboards in mega events or malls have been gold type marketing tools. So be ad jingles on TV. But, it does take a lot of effort and budget to market your product via ad jingles. Once it comes to their notice and they’re impressed by it, they still got task to look out for your app in store and download it.

It’s more preferable to put it as ad which is there just a click away. We are talking about the diamond or platinum type marketing tools. That is, to give ads where your customers are already browsing. This turns out to be easy and low-cost method to target a specific audience segment. Companies have found that the more they invest in the ad networks, the more success they get. This has also helped improve their app store rankings as well.

3. Market the App experience, not just App

In a Play store, look for any featured service you want the app of, you’ll be prompted with thousands of options to choose from. Thus, in addition to catchy tags and images or story lines, it’s now essential to show what outstanding experience your app gives. This not only gives a compelling appeal to try use it but make your team and product look better and a step ahead in comparison to others.

For the adage still stands true, “ People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” Make sure that the experience you promise in marketing is not a myth and in coherence with what it promised.

4. Burst Marketing

We are aware of the circle of events that, more the ad networks, more be the clicks and app store ranking improves. As the store ranking improves, apps visibility increases even more. Thus, targeting the users that discover and install your app by their own, though it begins with paid media buys.

The most prominent strategy that helps uplift the above mentioned circle’s output is a Burst campaign. Nike is one of the best in the game at capitalizing on the burst. This is short-term, focused advertising method that drives high volume of downloads.

Do not forget to find the right balance between ad spend, app store ranking and no. of downloads, for relatively higher money you put in for the burst. Once at the top, your app and user experience denotes your sustainability.

5. Maximum no. of downloads doesn't denote success

Achieved your download goals with planned velocity and revenue. Bingo! But you’ve more things to consider yet. The more downloads you get doesn’t make you successful. The user experience you created isn’t worth unless used by the people who downloaded it. At end, that will help sustain your revenues.

There are three types of users that you’ve to focus on: valuable, most valuable and loyal users. It’s also an add on to consider how you would convert the the valuable users as loyal ones. Merely, notifications don’t help. Strategies do. After all, it’s frequent users or the loyal users that denote your ROI and success.

6. Allocate app based resources only

All apps pertain to their specific segment of market and users. Thus, it’s necessary to distribute the defined budget in different verticals wisely, based on the type of app. The main target is to keep sustained app rankings round the year with rising graph of downloads. According to the Mobile Marketing Association’s study on marketing effectiveness in mobile apps, we should be spending more, as much as 7-9 % (considering overall app involvement), of our marketing budgets on mobile ad marketing.

One can also identify a time in year, say summer holidays where-in, more revenue would be used to get extra edge of visibility in the market.

7. Analyse all but focus on one

It so happens that bigger the firm and larger the team, different app development teams put their perspectives for app marketing with different angles. In such circumstances, it becomes necessary to keep all on same page.

One can assign a dedicated team just for app marketing or club a mobile marketing expert with a existing team. Though, the latter one provides a major chunk of budget but keeping a perfect balance in mobile marketing, app analytics, targeted media buy and other verticals of app marketing. Otherwise, it is good to analyse all perspectives of different teams and align the entire team to one strategy.

8. Smartness and Perseverance outweigh Perfection

Nothing is perfect. So is the case with advancing technology market. There’s always a better version of a tech product or software that we use today, that comes by within a year. The time limit may vary for different products.

Its good to not run behind perfection but be tactful enough. The mobile ad marketing campaign is in trend and yields very effective results today. Same may not stand true for tomorrow and maybe some new concept shall take over. So the message is more of psychological rather pertaining to marketing strategy. Persevere with technical updates to sustain.

9. Be in the Action Loop

We just discussed above that, one has to keep updated with current effective marketing trends. This is because no matter you’ve catered a lot of downloads in predefined time, the app marketing task never ends. It just goes on. This is because the app environment keeps changing. So does the update versions based on customer feedback.

Thus, marketing the updated app versions and retaining loyal customers always keeps one engaged in marketing plans and strategies.

To sum up..

Mobile has become integral part of our lives and apps be the main interface between us and mobiles. Making of app is no more a rocket science though making of a real good app needs a good team. The focus in now on making your app reach to it’s targeted customer segment via sound app marketing strategies. It’s must to distribute revenue or budget in different verticals of app marketing for effective results.