Pre-Launch to Post-Launch Marketing Strategies for Mobile Apps

Every brand spends so much money to create a mobile app for its customers. After they design an app, the next step will be publishing it on app stores.

But then what?

They will wait to get their app downloaded by customers. But the chance of happening will be less. There is no point in worrying about not getting enough exposure to the app after publishing it. There are more than 4.5 million apps on different app stores. It is not easy to stand in the competition without a proper strategy and strategy implementation.

As per a Survey, app marketing challenges more mobile app developers rather than building a mobile app. You don’t need to spend money or hire a marketing team to promote your mobile app.

Use these tips to see how you can improve the number of app downloads and customer retention. These tips fall into two categories pre-launch and post-launch strategies.

Pre-launch strategies (30 days before launching your app)

1. Define your target audience

The target audience is the group of audience you are targeting to promote your mobile app. It is the first step of every marketing strategy. Understand the audience who can benefit from your mobile app. Ask these questions to find out your target audience

• Who are you targeting with your app?
• What benefits can you provide your target audience through your app?
• Why is your app better than other competitor’s apps in the market?

If you find answers to these questions, it is easy to define your target audience. There is no point in promoting your app without knowing the target. For a consistent brand image, you need to communicate all and reinforce this statement. 

2. Create a landing page for your mobile app

A landing page is something that acts as a source of information regarding your mobile app. You need to register a domain with your app name and build a website for your mobile app. You can add app features, descriptions, demo videos, images, and ways to use your app on this landing page. Add a call to action and form for visitors to sign up for your email alerts or promotional programs. After designing the page, test it for any issues before publishing the live site. 

3. Create social media pages to start attracting target customers

One cannot avoid social media promotion at any point in marketing. You need to create social media pages for your mobile and start posting relevant content. Start to promote your app on social media and try to bring it to your target audience. More than 80% of smartphone users social media platforms. They will follow their favorite brand to get any recent updates about it. Encourage your audience to follow your social media page for any updates. Post contents and share it within various platforms to inform the customers about your mobile app. 

4. Create a promo video

Create a promo video to show your customers a small outlook about your mobile app. You can share it on your social media pages, emails, and video publishing platforms. Customers prefer to watch video content to understand the concept easily. You can keep a 30 secs video that clearly shows the benefits, features, and how to use your app. Also, add them on your website landing page for your customers to get a clear picture of your app. 

5. Find out influencers and promoters

Create a list of influencers in your niche who can write about your app. You can connect with them to know whether they are interested in promoting your app. These influencers have many followers on various social media channels. Their words can influence their followers to take any action. Influencer marketing is a popular strategy to market a product or app online nowadays. So, find a suitable influencer who can write a compelling story about your mobile app. It can help their followers to learn more about your mobile app. 

6. Be part of niche-specific communities

You can find relevant online communities that are active in your niche. There are subreddits, blogs, message boards, and online discussion groups that discuss topics from your area. Spend some time online to be a part of these discussions. You can provide solutions relevant to your category to be a thought leader. When the participants see names more often, it is easy to get popular in such small groups. You can give a brief introduction about your app as an answer to relevant questions. This way, you can make your app more popular and increase the downloads. 

7. Create a success metric

Every app release with goals and marketing objectives. You need to define your target and create a suitable marketing strategy to achieve these results.  It can be more downloads, better ratings, lifetime value, % of customer engagement, return on your investment, and so on. You can design the framework to achieve these goals and to measure the success of your app. Find out the metric to measure the success of your app and the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Pre-launch strategies (Three weeks before launching )

8. Have a press kit ready

You can get maximum press coverage by creating a press kit ready. This information will help anyone who wants to write content on your mobile app. Nobody has the time to search online and find information about your mobile app. So you can include all relevant information about the app by compiling all your assets into one online directory. Include below points while creating a press kit

• App’s logo, screenshots, promo videos, and icon
• App description and features
• Link it to your social media accounts and public marketing sites
• Your contact information
• Link to recent press coverage and the latest information.

9. Search engine optimization

You need to add relevant keywords to your app description, app title, and other related details that need to post to your app and landing page. There is a point in posting content on your website if nobody sees that. You need to know the language and terms used by your target audience to make keyword selection. 48% of smartphone users check for new apps on app stores. If you want them to find your mobile app among search results, add relevant keywords to your app’s content. 

10. Integrate analytics app

Use relevant software apps to measure the analytics of your mobile app. When you publish the app on the app store, you need to track the performance of the app to measure the success. You might need to pre-register this app while launching your mobile app on the app store. You can also integrate the in-app messaging app and feedback tools. It will help you to track customer’s feedback to improve the app performance. Incorporating these tools into your mobile app will allow you to drive high engagement, get high-quality customer feedback, and help to give relevant information to your customers. 

Launching time strategies

11. Submit your app to different app stores

Most app developers submit their apps to two well-known app stores. As you know, they are Google play store and Apple store. But you need to know that other app stores are less common in the market. Submitting your app to these less popular app stores can improve your app visibility by 30%. There are other app stores you can concentrate on while publishing your app other than the Google play store and apple store.

• GetJar
• Mobile9
• Upodown
• Aptoid
• SlideMe
• Amazon App store

12. Notify your email list about the app launch

You can now start to send notifications to your email list. It will help them to get information about the launching date of the app. It is the best way to market your app to your target customers. Most customers check their emails regularly. They always like to receive updates from their favorite brands. It will also help you to get more downloads when you launch your mobile app on the app store.

13. Notify your journalist friends and influencers

The next step is to notify your press list and influencers about the launching of your app. They need to start their promotions right away. You already contacted them and have every resource ready for them to verify. You can create a mail with app store page links and a press kit. Boost them to download and try your mobile app before starting the app promotion for better results.

Post-launch strategies (3-weeks after launching)

14. Monitor customer feedback and reviews 

You can use suitable feedback tools to get customer opinions about your app. This data will help you to provide better service from your mobile app. No app comes without any bugs or issues. You can understand the concerns associated with your app and give updates to avoid such problems later. Early feedback and reviews are useful for your brand promotion. A customer typically decides whether to use an app in the first 30 secs. So, it is essential to hook them within a short time to get the response you want.

15. Get your app reviews on niche-specific websites

Some websites write detailed reviews about the app in their niche. You can improve your app reach by submitting your mobile app to get reviewed. They will write about your app features, benefits, and finally, rates based on performance. More than 50% of customers check reviews before downloading a mobile app. Having positive reviews online will also help you to improve your online presence and increase its credibility within the target audience. Other than expert reviewers, user-generated reviews are useful to boost app downloads. Encourage your users to write their feedbacks and share it on social media channels to improve credibility and app visibility.

16. Run app store ads

Another way to promote your mobile app is to invest in mobile ads. It always helps to improve the visibility of your mobile app and boost the downloads. When you spend on mobile ads, they will target your audience and show the advertisement on the sites they visit. This way, you can get a better return on your investment and achieve your marketing goal within a short time after the app release date. 

17. Push notification will do wonders

Push notification is a great way to communicate with your customers. With a good user-base, this app marketing strategy will work better than any other marketing strategy. If you can do your research and provide customised pop-up notifications useful to your audience, it can bring positive results. Mobile users get many marketing notifications a day. So be creative and design outstanding pop-up marketing notifications to market your mobile app. 

18. Try content marketing

Good informative contents always help to increase the online visibility of your app. Customers try to find online content regarding the app they use. If you can give more information about your app to your customers, it can increase app downloads. Create informative and useful content about your app and publish it on your website to get more popular online. Customers share valuable content with their friends and family, and the chances of getting more downloads also increase. 

19. Use QR code

QR code is one of the most effective ways to transfer information to customers nowadays. You can add a QR code to download your mobile app on all the correspondence with your customers. It can be included in your app landing page, marketing emails, push notifications, and any other form of communication. It can help customers easily download your app by scanning the QR code without going anywhere else to search it. 

20. Do your analysis

After implementing the above strategies, the next step will be to analyse the performance of your app. You may want to use a proper marketing analytics tool to check whether the app performs as you expected. Based on the result, you can modify the existing strategies or create new marketing strategies to achieve the target result. Use your mobile app to engage, monetize, and retain your customers by creating new marketing strategies to reach the outcome. 

Conclusion 

Try out the above tips and tricks, and see how it works for your mobile app marketing. It is a continuous process where you have to work hard to get the result you want.

Engage the existing user-base by providing new updates, and attract new app users by designing proper marketing strategies.

Continue to engage customers, collect information from them, test, do your research and launch new app marketing strategies for better results.