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You’ve got the greatest idea for a new app and you’re determined to make it succeed – that’s a great feeling to have.
On that same note, there are another 2.8 million apps available in the Google Play Store and about 2.2 million apps in the App Store, so you can imagine the millions of people with a similar desire.
The truth is, you might turn out to be one of the lucky ones; you might also be smart about your entrepreneurial decisions and start doing mobile app marketing before launching, taking the future of your startup in your own hands and giving it a chance to succeed.
The question that sometimes doesn’t let you sleep at night without squeezing your fingers inside your palms is the following: what do I do to make my app a complete success? To answer it, let me paint a picture for you.
Why Start Your Mobile App Marketing Before the Launch?
You work hard day and night to create the greatest app. You incorporate all of your best ideas and make sure the app stands out in the crowd. Then you wait for the world to be amazed. How will they know about your app? How will they get excited about it?
Marketing! Especially pre-launch marketing…And here is why:
Before appearing from nowhere with your ready-made mobile app and marketing it to potential users, you can play the field a little and get to know the audience. And then, they might be excited about the launch of your app.
Ideally, you should come up with mobile app marketing ideas and learn how to promote an app before launching yours, and probably even before developing it. The idea that you can create something without testing it and end up with a product that you enjoy, doesn’t necessarily warranty that your target audience will. Making sure that your product satisfies the needs of its potential users is, basically, the most important thing. And that’s why having a digital marketing strategy for your mobile app beforehand is crucial. Now let’s get into the actual mobile app marketing activities that come before mobile app development services.
Who Are Your Users? Where Are They?
It’s a human survival skill, being aware of your surroundings. Take that into consideration when thinking about your mobile app, its target audience, competitors and the market. Make sure you understand not only who your potential users are, but also what they like, where they hang out (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn). This will help you when you’re learning how to promote a new mobile app. So gather some demographic and psychographic data about your target audience, do market segmentation, and try to visualize it – this always helps.
Another important step is researching your competitors: what do they do, who do they target, what marketing tactics do they use? As they say, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can use the experience of your competitors to track the expected behavior of your potential users towards your mobile app and avoid making the same mistakes.
With all of that information, you’ll know how to best position your mobile app in this competitive world.
You’re Unique, Aren’t You? What’s Your UVP?
What’s the one thing that’s different about your app? Think about that for a second. If you already know what that is, your next step would be incorporating it into your brand messaging and positioning. After all, knowing about your unique value proposition (UVP) isn’t quite enough. Your target audience needs to know it, too. What’s great about having a UVP is that users know what problem the app solves for them immediately. And what follows is a word-of-mouth marketing that will raise your brand awareness faster than you would ever imagine.
What comes next is your brand messaging and positioning: is there a story behind your app? Remember, your customers will always want more than just a product – a product with meaning. They’ll be sold on the reason your brand was created and the great features of your app will be the perks.
Building Awareness Slowly But Steadily
Remember when you were still at university? Studying day and night. Most of us would leave studying for final exams to the last day, struggling with red eyes and tired minds. But if we started earlier, we’d finish sooner and with better results. Mobile app promotion
follows the same routine. If you start building awareness before launching the app, there will already be a lot of buzz about your app by the time it goes live.
There are a couple of ways to build awareness:
- Social media profiles
- Landing pages
- Google Ads
Here’s an example of a mobile app marketing strategy you could use before launching:
You’ll create your social media profiles: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. You’ll probably also create Google Ads and lead the acquired users to your beautifully crafted landing page. There, you’ll offer them something special, for example, free usage of the app or getting access to advanced features. Pre-launch activities can give incentives to the first users to make them wait for the app launch and share the app idea with others. But you can also ask for something in return: beta testing – that’s our next step.
Beta Testing Saves Apps
Beta testing can be of crucial importance for a new mobile app like yours. The great thing is that you can save money on it by leveraging the resources you already gained from marketing: using the visitors interested in your product.
Testing your app will help understand what your target audience thinks about the app and what they need. Keep in mind, that testing brand new apps on potential users before the big fancy launch is crucial. There might be things that seem obvious to you but can end up confusing your users. Poor UI/UX can ruin everything – and it won’t matter how amazing your app’s features are.
So the earlier you get that constructive feedback from your target audience, the better. They can help determine any misunderstandings related to the UI/UX, the content and the tone of voice of your brand. With the feedback, you can improve your app, make it more marketable, and get better reactions from your target market later on. You can also figure out what mobile app marketing strategies work for your target audience and get a clearer understanding of how to promote your new mobile app.
App Store Optimization: The Queen of it All
You probably know how important SEO is for making Google love your website. When learning how to promote an app, you should also know that App Store Optimization services are just as important.
For your mobile app niche marketing strategy, consider these app store optimization best practices:
The Name of Your Mobile App
Of course, you’ve already done a lot of research when coming up with the name of your app, but know that it’s also important when it comes to ASO. For your app store branding to be killer, the name of your app has to be easy: easy to type, pronounce and remember, and at the same time, show the essence of your app. Keep the titles short, if your copy has more than 25 symbols it will get cut off.
The Description
You can make sure that your users find your app by optimizing the description. Research keywords for your niche and include those in the description ensuring not to over-use them. What helps when writing the description is keeping in mind that copywriting should create a flow of thought and not only be about keywords. Therefore, be careful not to sound robotic.
The Visuals
We start with your logo: you made sure it’s a killer one, right? Your icon is going to be the first thing your users see and associate your app with it. Engaging screenshots of your app’s main features are also a must. Create something that expresses the personality of your brand and stands out in the crowd of millions of apps.
Where All the Buzz Will Be Happening: The Media
To get a full picture of how to promote an app, here are some steps to follow. Before launching your mobile app, it’s essential to gather a list of media platforms that you’ll want to reach out to and publish a press release on. After you have your list, create a media kit, which will be unique, interesting and very convincing. It’s just like preparing for your dream job interview: you take with you all you have and try to impress them. So this media kit will be that impressive and powerful presentation of your app that will not only mention its features but also will show its personality and the problem it’s going to solve for its users.
Here are some things that should be included in your media kit:
- Review guide
- Screenshots of the app.
- Your logo and visuals
- Explainer videos
Thinking About How to Promote an App?
Do you have your media kit ready? Great! When the time comes to reach out, you’ll be fully prepared and will be able to get right on it.
When the pre-launch marketing activities of your app go just right, it’ll be time to think about post-launch marketing. Yes, marketing never stops. To help you with that, we have created this free marketing ebook with actionable ideas for small businesses that will make your life easier. And if at any moment you feel lost, remember that you can always turn to your users – they’re the ones who will provide you with the best feedback
