The Three Stages Strategies to Promote Your Mobile Application

Developing an app is still easy. Surviving in the market with it is not.

If you are here reading this, there is a high chance that you would have nodded your head in Yes for both.

The answer to how to promote an app usually takes users to a whole variety of different promotion methodologies, more often than not, being almost as expensive as the mobile app development life cycle itself. Without a clear explanation of the timeline as to when to choose what.

Let’s put a stop to this confusing labyrinth called mobile app promotion strategies today. Let us, in this article, tell you the exact ways to promote your app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

We have divided the flow of the article into three launch stages which look at the promotion journey and strategization on the layout of how an application is launched and matured.

[If you want to take a step back in the process and look at the development step, follow our guide to efficient app development for startups.

Let us start with the Pre-launch stage.

The time between the last stages of app development and its publishing in the store is categorized as the pre-launch phase of the application.

This is the stage where the foundation of promotions is set – the first answer to How to Advertise an App. The phase where the hype is created and users are given something to look forward to.

Promoting this part can get a little tricky if you do not have an app store link and no download app cue to share with the world.

Here are the steps you can follow to ensure your mobile app, developed by a top mobile app development company, has a significant user base eagerly awaiting its release from the factory to hit the market.”

How to Market Your App in the Pre-Launch Stage

Market Research

With some weeks left to go before the big launch day, you will have to start looking at how your competitors are promoting and how your shared user group is reacting to it. While it is immensely to follow your competitors everywhere online, it also helps to go backdate in Google SERP and see what was talked about them in the past.

At this stage, you will also have to focus on your users – what platform they are on, what time of the day or on what event they open your application, what features they most interact with, etc.

This information will help you plan your promotion campaign in a way that best suits your user’s time, intention, and psyche. This is a crucial stage in your mobile app launch checklist.

Create a Landing Page

While we do not emphasize having a website altogether, you should have a landing page. This web page can then be used to show what the application stands for, what value it would offer to the world, etc., and in many ways become a very important answer to how to promote your app in the world.

Having a web page dedicated to your application will directly create a sense of identification among the user group, meaning you will now have to spend not much time explaining your offering and what it stands for. It will require the latest UX techniques to follow for building an engaging landing page.

Be Present on Social Media

In your approach to creating a massive presence online with mobile app advertising even before its launch, it should be of utmost importance that you bring your app on social media.

Your content plan should now include not just a landing page but also regular updates of social media content with creative photos – the type that would help create awareness and excitement about your offering in the market.

Now, even when we talk about social media, while you should make a profile and be present on all social media channels, the first step – market research – will give you a better understanding of which platform is frequented by your users.

Curate Video Teasers

While a little heavy on the pocket, video teasers can turn out to be a great option to creatively showcase your application to the world and become a good answer to how to promote an app. So, in case you have a budget to invest in a video platform or an app video creation agency, go with the option for it can get you all the eyeballs you need to get your offering to the world.

You can start with something as simple as a basic explainer video highlighting your app’s core feature and the problem it is poised to solve in the market.

The next part, after you have strategized your pre-launch mobile app promotion is the section where you publish the application in the stores.

Although the actual process of posting the application is short-timed, there are several things that you will have to prepare at the marketing backend – Things that are categorized under the mobile app store optimization guide, whether you are looking for iOS app marketing or Android.

The idea of App Stores Optimization or ASO as it is normally called is to follow practices that would get your app’s ranking high in its category and thus if anyone searches for your parent category they would see your app first before others.

Now, while the whole concept of ASO is very detailed – so detailed that we might not be able to contain it all in this one piece – let us give you a very basic idea of all the things you can consider to bring your app on top of the list and famous in the store which millions from the world frequent.

How to Promote Your App in the App Stores

Know the Targeted Keywords

The first step of making your app famous in the stores would be to get it to show in the listings. To achieve that, you will first have to know the words people search to arrive at an application like yours in the stores.

You will first have to look at all the keyword sets that your competitors are using and then you will have to make use of keyword exploration tools to find out the words that people are searching for to arrive at your offerings  This step will also help in mobile app localization in the region you are targeting audience.
Lastly, you will have to look at the associated words that you can add along with the main explanatory ones to help your prospective users find you. After these three steps, you will get a very clear idea of how to get users for your app.

Follow the Optimization Guidelines

Both App Store and Play Store have listed down several direct guideline on how an app should be pushed on the stores to make them most visible in the market. Now even though they are presented as good-to-have elements, you should treat them as must-haves. Factors that should be followed to the T to ensure that no stone is left unturned when it comes to getting your ASO done.

Rethink Your App Name

Your app name and icon are the two things that the user sees first and creates a temporary image based on. And when you have the trending app ideas then the naming process is crucial to follow.

Your app name should be such that hints at what the application is about. The fact is that no matter how unique your offering is, you are no Uber or Facebook so you will have to keep it direct in the beginning, giving the users a clear idea of what they are getting into.

Besides this, there is a shortcut for getting some quick eyeballs on your application and answering how to get users to download your app – adding numbers behind your app name – this way your name will come on top of the list. However, this easy step that answers how to promote your app should strictly be treated as a shortcut and not a long-term promotion plan.

Undeviated Focus on Visuals

As mentioned in the last point, visuals are the other important thing that users see on your application’s store page. And this focus is what makes them a very important part of your whole promotion plan. It also enhances the overall UI-UX design of the mobile app through enhanced and qualitative visuals.

Every image, straight from your app icon to the screenshots that you have used to show its functioning should be designed to show the best of your application, in addition, to clearly highlighting what makes it something worth investing one’s time and probably money in.

Offer the Application for Free

Although it can be very attractive to get into a zone where you earn money by developing the mobile app from day one, it can all backfire very quickly – for people might not be willing to pay without getting to experience your application first.

So, what we suggest is that you should offer one of the freemium mobile app monetization models where you give a good percentage of your app’s features for free while keeping some locked for people to pay for and then use. This will not just entice your users to install your app but will also help them witness the true value offerings of your business.

Ultimately the crux of mobile app marketing surrounding this stage is simple – you target the right set of keywords and you give people all the visual and feature-backed reasons to install your app on their device.

Now coming down to the very last stage of the mobile app promotion – The post-launch Stage.

This is the phase where you have all the resources to promote your application in the market. A stage where there is no turning back and you have to go all in with your marketing plans to ensure that the app is well received in the market.

Let us look at how you can handle the promotion part of this crucial stage.

How to Promote Your App After App Launch

Keep Your Social Media Active

To answer how to market an app successfully, it is important to keep your social media active once your app becomes live in the market – first to inform the world that the app is now live and then to give them the reasons to install the application in their devices and invest their time in it.

Ideally, at this stage, you should not just focus on keeping your social media profiles active but also ensure that all the comments made on the posts are answered in a period of simply an hour.

Promote the Store Links Everywhere

The next step to promote your application is to pass on the link of the app everywhere! From your business card to email signatures to LinkedIn and every other social media profile. Give a search hit of your and your company’s name and add the link in front everywhere.

Doing this can indeed be the best strategy to introduce a new app to the market.

You will have to take the first step to market your app’s link everywhere and people will only then follow up.

Invest in Influencer Marketing

Although it is one of the most expensive of the app marketing methods, influencer marketing can be of great help if your user base is made of millennials.

Even if your app is concentrated on the B2B market, getting the industry’s gurus to talk about your app will help you gain a very strong reputation in the market.

Contact PR Firms and Blog Authors

While not a direct extension, the intent of this and influencer marketing is pretty similar. When you contact PR firms and multiple blog authors to talk about your application, you are mainly making an effort to get people to read about you or get your mention from multiple sources.

Both of these efforts only lead to the creation of an ecosystem where you are being written about – something which in turn instills that you are important.

Make Your Users Your Pseudo Sales Team

You will pay or incentivize your sales team to talk about you in the market and make you popular, no? So why not bring the whole activity to the horses’ mouths? Why not expand your sales team to your users as well and give them the incentives to promote your app? All the while giving them a way to become one of the most contributory participants of your app promotion services.

How Appventurez Sees A Successful Mobile App Promotion

What we are talking about is giving reasons to your users to promote your app within the circle for discounts, monetary rewards, a next gaming level, a free ride, etc. When you offer your users reasons to promote your app, they, in turn, end up becoming loyal as well for they now start vouching for the service they are getting.

With this, Appventurez has reached the very end of the piece where we saw how to promote an app successfully in all the three stages of app launch. Having researched the development of more than 700+ apps, our team of mobile app consultants has gathered a very detailed understanding of which promotion model solves which purpose and app category. Book time with them to know which mode of promotion would suit you best. 

Get in touch with them today!