September 2016

How to promote your app: 10 useful tips

Mobile strategy

How can you promote your app increasing number of downloads? This is one of the most common questions in the world of mobile marketing, as well as one of the main obstacles whenever a new app is in the process of being developed. This is the reason why we came up with some useful tips to help you face this problem.

10 steps to promote your app and increase downloads

Nowadays apps are key contact points between companies and clients, and their development is growing exponentially. In fact they represent a great opportunity to create engagement with customers by involving them through their smartphones, the most commonly used device, in an entirely new way.

In recent years a gradual shift from websites to apps has been happening in an attempt to better accommodate users’ behaviors that, as described by ComScore, tend to choose apps over websites when looking for information.

Even though apps are crowding the stores, a big chunk of them are not being downloaded. One of the main reasons of this is that companies are not convincing users to actually download the app. Therefore there is a need for an efficient communication strategy.

How to convince users to download your mobile app

Which characteristics should your app have to convince users about downloading it?

According to research by Modomodo con NuMediaBios, here are the main reasons that convince users to download apps

38.2% of the respondents choose the presence of social and mobile functionalities, while 41% prefers a direct link from the app to the social channels;
36.2% is persuaded by the presence of a section devoted to entertaining, games and quizzes;
39.2% appreciate content of interest such as vouchers, coupons and promotions, which are not necessarily connected to the brand.

Additional useful explanations are provided by a survey carried out by iTune. According to it users download apps when:

They receive a suggestion from a friend (31% of the cases) or see an interesting ad (1 out of 4 people);
It shows up as a result from a search in Google, generally happening to 13.5% of the interviewed;
The app is developed by either Google or Apple, and thus 13% of the respondents consider it trustworthy.

7 useful tips to promote your app and make it more attractive

Analyse the needs of your clients, work hard to understand their demands and the type of experience they are expecting. Your app in fact has to be perceived as valuable in order to increase downloads;
Work on user-friendliness for every feature and use mode especially in the setup phase. Users need to understand the purpose of the app and what they can do with it;
Develop an app supported by all devices;
Adopt a push-notification strategy to ease the user experience with notifications directly showing up on the screen;

Offer an economic incentive such as discounts or free gifts to boost downloads and create a user base potentially valuable in the future;
Add useful services for the user which depending on your type of business may be
- One pass for skipping the line;
- Practical advice for handling situations that may happen in your clients’ daily lives;
- Offer unpublished songs or contents to your fan.
Create a digital word-of-mouth in line with the key role played by friends in the process of downloading an app (as explained above). Offering discounts or prizes for every friend invited to download the app may be a good way to drive the buzz.

Your app has now been downloaded: don’t get too excited just yet, your dedication on it is still vital! According to the data from Adobe:

77% of the users stop using the app after the first 3 days;
90% of the users use it for a month;
26% of all mobile apps are used only once after the download, thus implying that 1 out of 4 apps is abandoned after the first access.

Therefore, once the app has been downloaded, you still have to carefully look at your users’ needs to avoid losing them later on.To help you in this phase, here are some useful tips:

Create engagement with your users to encourage them in using your app, thus reaching a good ROI. To do so, take into consideration the adoption of context-based technologies such as beacons and geofencing;
Create in-app messages starting from the very first app use to encourage users to come back and help them in navigating your app. One example could be to give free gifts (such as in games) when users open the app more than once in a specific period of time. In-app messages will help you creating a very friendly user-experience;
Create a progressive first experience and login process to avoid being too intrusive for the user.

How to promote your app on the stores

How can you encourage users to download your app if your are not visible on the stores?

To increase the number of downloads for your app it is important to ease the research on the store, to accomplish this is important to publish it correctly. This will prevent the app from being hidden in the universe of apps that users see on the stores.

Follow our precious advice to promote and make your app visible:

Work on your app ASO optimization, meaning the position of the app on the store. This is extremely important as the ASO represent the SEO for websites and thus influences the number of downloads;
Be aware that Apple Store and Google Play follow different logics and metrics to evaluate apps. Take advantage of those parameters to create different descriptions for the app on the two stores;
Monitor the variations on the stores to keep updated on the latest news and be ready to act accordingly. Keep an eye on the new categories, releases, rankings and logics;
Put some thought on how the review mechanism for your app works and what it tells you: Choose when and how to ask your users for a rating or feedback as it influences the evaluation. This point is very critical because reviews have a strong impact on the stores. Therefore you have to:
- Create a good relationship with your clients as well as a pleasant experience before asking for a feedback;
- Ask users to leave feedback and information about any issues with the app, so that you can directly reply and foster your relationship with them.

Developing a successful and engaging app is not easy but by following our valuable advice, it’s possible!

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