Here’s How to Tighten Your App Marketing Strategy (4 Mistakes to Avoid)
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on July 21st, 2024 1:33 pm | 10- min read
Mobile apps are everywhere, and they’re here to stay. This year alone, users downloaded apps over 10 billion times.
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If you’re not familiar with mobile-first, the process involves adapting your mobile site for desktop, contrary to the standard approach that starts with a desktop site and adapts it for mobile. It’s now more crucial than ever to create exclusive app marketing strategies. With this in mind, we’re going to take a look at the top 4 app marketing mistakes you need to avoid as we head into 2021.
Mistake #1: Developing Your App Before Creating Your Marketing Strategy
“I think my app is great; I just want to increase my downloads.” This is an everyday issue in the app world. But your assumption that everyone else will love your product mustn’t lead your marketing. The App Store and Google Play Store house over 4 million apps. To succeed, you have to stand out. So, what’s the solution?- Fix It: Ask Your Audience and Test the Market
- Create surveys
- Run quizzes
- Ask on social media
- Seek help
- Spend as little time as possible developing a mini version of your app (not more than 40 hours).
- Be specific with your target audience and hit them with highly relevant ads on social media.
- Collect as many emails and insights and as much feedback as possible.
- Write content around your audience’s key problems.
- Make sure that it’s in-depth, highly valuable, and easily consumed.
- Publish the content on your blog.
- Promote it ruthlessly!
Hotjar invested over 3,300 hours and $200,000 in a doomed app, simply because they didn’t collect enough customer data.
Validate your idea before investing your resources. In other words, ask your target audience whether they need an app like yours.
Mistake #2: Neglecting ASO And Leaving Downloads On The Table
“Let’s focus on app marketing; ASO isn’t that important.” That's a terrible myth to fall for, as a founder. Fix it. App store optimization is critical because 70% of mobile users use in-store search to find their downloads.
- Fix It: Add ASO To Your Marketing Arsenal
ASO is much like SEO in how you apply it.
The good news is that while there are over 200 factors that each play a role in ranking websites using SEO, the number of ASO factors is much smaller.
Before diving in, understand that there’s also a slight difference in the way you optimize an app for the App Store and for Google Play.
Mistake #3: Forgetting That Mobile and Desktop Are Different
There was a 50.81% increase in mobile usage in Q3 of 2020. That’s a compelling statistic. And it proves that you have to treat your mobile app’s design and content differently from your desktop version. Sounds hard. What’s the simplest approach?- Fix It: Build Your App and Your Website Separately
- Remember that your user is on a tiny screen. Get your idea across quickly. Revise all your mobile content and make it succinct.
- Test all your CTAs; make sure all your links work.
- Make sure that your app menu has clear buttons, smooth colors, and recognizable icons.
- Add a customer support email or phone number to show your seriousness in helping your users get the best experience possible.
Let’s take Calm as an example. Here’s how their desktop site looks:
And this is their app:
Mistake #4: Forgetting Customer Retention
In 2019, 25% of apps were only used once. That’s a quarter of everyone who used your app never coming back. Combined with the knowledge that acquiring new users is secondary to retaining the old ones, this could be the death of your app. Because without retention, growth doesn't really matter. You have a leaky bucket.Customer retention has to be the lifeblood of your 2021 marketing strategy. Let’s fix that with these three proven ways to increase retention rates.- Fix It: 3 Foolproof Strategies to Increase Customer Retention
- Benefit-oriented onboarding: Think of this as demos. Essentially, the goal here is to prepare a deck or video that showcases how to use your app in a few slides.
- Function-oriented onboarding: When you’ve got a big app with tons of features, this is the best approach. Your role here is to teach users how to use those features.
- Progressive onboarding: Best for the more complex apps. Use this approach to walk your users through your top-end features and how to use them.
- Send notifications to your users at the right time. Don’t send pointless, annoying notifications to your entire global user base at the same time. They are in different time zones. Keep that in mind.
- Customize your notifications. Don’t use a one-size-fits-all approach. Your users have different interests, so customize accordingly.
- Balance your notifications. Don’t annoy them, and don’t be infrequent. Find a solution in the middle.
- Send welcome emails to your newest users to introduce yourself and teach them about your app. And most importantly, let them know that you are here to help.
- Send reminder emails. Users may abandon your cart or forget to renew their subscriptions. An email can act as a simple yet effective reminder.
- Send exclusive offers and gifts. Gifting your users goes a long way; with email you can reward them. Give them exclusive offers and more to make them feel special. And that’s it. Not so hard, right?
- Not using marketing to test your app idea and not informing your next steps based on real data.
- Neglecting ASO. It’s an incredible marketing strategy, so make sure it’s in your toolbox.
- Forgetting that mobile and desktop are different things. Don’t treat them the same way.
- Ignoring customer retention. It’s the only growth-driver. Keep your old and new clients happy.
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First things first: you have to know your numbers. I mean, what does your current customer retention rate look like?
Don’t know?
No biggie. Use this calculator.
Now that you know the big picture, we can get into the nitty-gritty.Strategy #1: Onboard your users seamlessly. You’ve poured a ton of effort and time into acquiring a new user. They have to feel that they’ve made the right decision.
In the app world, we can classify onboarding into three main categories, depending on the ease or complexity of using your product: Conclusion
With the unstoppable growth of the app market all around the world - remember those 10 billion app downloads we mentioned back at the start - it is clearer than ever that you have to avoid every marketing mistake you can. You have to stand out, or you’re out of the race. If there’s one piece of advice I want you to walk away with, it’s this: never, ever use your assumptions as a leading factor in your marketing strategy. They’re a success killer. The top 4 app marketing mistakes right now are:Related Articles
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