Mobile App Pre-Launch And Post-Launch Marketing Strategies

Our take on Mobile App Marketing Strategies in 2019 and beyond.

We have now entered in the second half of 2019 and the mobile app market is growing faster than a beanstalk. If we look back 5 years, the scenario of mobile app development and marketing was different as it was a bit easy to launch the app and to reach the end users due to the less competition. But today, it’s way more difficult. The mobile app stores have more than 2 million apps available and to launch a new app and get the attention of the audience is quite challenging now.

A large number of app publishers focus all of their time and resources on building a great app.

Submitting an app to the play store or app store is not the same as launching an app successfully. It’s highly unlikely that your target audience would rush to your app the moment you press the submit button unless you have a solid plan behind the launch.

As they wait for the downloads to come, they realize — all too late — the fallacy of this assumption. But their great app never even had a chance and gets buried somewhere in the midst of 3 million+ other apps.

The launch of an app does not mean the submission of applications only —it starts with that first insight and continues. And the successful launch of a mobile app is very important

Know your audience first and it will save a lot of time and money later. A lot of app owners believe that they know their target audience, but it’s easier said than done.

You should know the pain points that your product is going to solve. You can connect with your audience directly and survey them or do secondary research to know the issue with the other products so that you can do a better job.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Who is your app built for?
What pain point is your app solving?
How is your app delivering value to its users?

On the App Store we have more than 2 million apps available. To keep the app be successful, you need to offer something unique so that users are tempt to download your app. Now, the next step is to move towards the market research. Check out the similar apps on the Store. Download few apps use them personally from the end user’s perspective and you’ll come to know about the positive and negative points of your competitors.

In this way you can also find the latest trends and see what your potential customers want right now.After you have determined who it is that you’re targeting, you need to determine what makes your app better than your competitors.

You will need to set some goals to know the successful launch of your mobile app. What does success look like for your team? Keep it simple. For example, you can set your goals about the number of reviews, active install rates and average rating score.

You should make it as easy as possible for bloggers and journalists to cover your app to maximize your odds of getting press coverage. You need to keep an eye on the people who want to cover your app doesn’t have to crawl the web to find information by compiling all of your assets into one online directory. Once you have this press kit, your influencers can quickly scan over your assets and make the decision of whether or not it’s something they want to cover.

You’ve identified your influencers by this point. Now you can ideally made initial conversation over a friendly email or Twitter, and  it’s time to rekindle that conversation and invite them to check out your app. A personalized email can be sent to everyone on your press list .

Integrate an analytics tools and other software that can help you to measure and grow your previously identified success metrics. You should register with a push provider and install any software that you may need to market, grow, and maintain your app.

The  landing page plays an important role in mobile app marketing strategies. A landing page is the best platform to create buzz around your mobile app. It inspire people to continue engaging with your product and ultimately to install your app. With the help of landing page you can show your app creatively and can driving higher returns for your business.

A good indicator of your landing page’s efficiency is if people can find answers to the following questions within three seconds is:

Who is this company?
What do they offer?
What separates them from others?
What should I do next?

It’s very important to properly test your app before you launch it in the market. Try to find as many bugs as you can before you launch. You can always launch incremental updates with bug fixes post launch but it’s best to avoid any crashes or bugs before you put the app in the hands of your customers. Focus on giving a great user experience to your customers.

Perfect marketing plan should be created that will ensure the proper execution of all the steps for the successful launch of an app.

Now you can submit your app to the apple app store or google play store, for which you have specifically created.
Finally, its the time to submit your app to the store. You must know and abide by the guidelines and the rules of the app store for the successful approval of your app. If you want your app to have a high download and user retention rate, it needs to make a good first impression within the first few days of the launch.

After the approval of your mobile app to the app stores now it’s time to spread the word loud and proud. By this point, the contact list from potential customers who have signed up for email alerts on your landing page is accumulated by you. Now you can easily send an email to everyone on this list to notify them of your app’s release, encourage them to try it out, and thank them for their continued loyalty.

You should send more personalized notes to those on your press list. Ideally, you’ve already initiated a conversation and now it’s time to rekindle that conversation.
Notify them about the release of your app and include any relevant app store product page links and press kit. Also motivate them to download your app and remind them that a little coverage goes a very long way.

It’s easy to lose track of the big picture while everything going on around launch. Ground yourself—and your app—by putting in place a system for regularly recording your previously identified KPIs. To keep you both goal-oriented and accountable to your success metrics, this performance dashboard will keep your all metrics in one place .

ASO is the process of optimising your app to rank higher in the marketplace; the higher a mobile app ranks the more visible it will be to potential users.

There are some key differences between optimizing your app for the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.

It’s extremely important that you get familiar with both platforms, even if you’re only planning to launch on one of them initially.

App titles need to be distinctive yet descriptive. When deciding on your title try and include what the app does, as users tend to search for specific functionality. You can choose to name your app based on common search terms or use a branded name that you can copyright.

When optimising keywords, focus on relevancy and search volume. Remember to test your keywords to find out which ones are working for your app. When changing the keywords, make sure to note the impact this change has on the app’s ranking.

Treat the first few lines of your description as an ad copy, with the purpose to generate curiosity and build interest in your app.  The reason for this is the app store only displays the first 2-3 lines of text before users need to tap on the ‘more’ tab.

When your app shows up in search results, an attractive icon can play a major role in engaging and encouraging users to download. It is also important to utilise customised screenshots in order to showcase how the app actually works. Treat this space like it is your sales poster.

Creating a microsite helps you to do mobile app marketing beyond the app store and implement Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques. You can showcase your app to a wide audience with the help of microsite.

Promotional videos are one of the most effective ways to show off an app’s interface and capabilities. Creating videos provides you with the opportunity to establish a voice and communicate the value of your app

It’s extremely important to emphasize on networking while your app is in development. If you do that there are high chances that the reports or bloggers pick up your PR and help you further to generate the awareness. This has also led to virality loops in few cases, which changes the game altogether.

Social media channels are best option for the promotion of your app and it will derive good amount of traffic to the app store and the microsite of the app.

Keep your eye on the Analytics. Check the analytics on daily basis so you will came to know everything about the traffic you are getting. Focusing on the right metrics will provide insight into which areas your app need to be tweaked and upgraded.

Measure user engagement, marketing campaigns, monetization etc for your apps.
Understand your app downloads, proceeds, subscriptions activity.
Break out your earnings by product, country, currency, price etc and get the financial reports for your app.
You can download any app analytic tool like Google Analytics, Firebase, Apsee etc to get the correct results. In this way you can track the performance of your mobile app on the app store.

Be aware, Even if you’re going to be the first of the first, a true innovator, the copycats will spring up very soon after (assuming your app is doing well). These copycats can easily stole and replicate your good idea. Always make sure that you launch strong and launch hard to make it as difficult as possible for your competition to steal away any of your hard earned market segment.

The launch of your first mobile app isn’t your last big hurrah. After launching, it’s time to explore ways to expand your segment of the market.

Who bought your product?
Who didn’t?
Why?
Start asking these questions & getting answers and in this way the paths forward will begin to open up.  Note down the important points like:

What worked and what didn’t
What your buyers do with your app,
What new innovations and possibilities that research suggests.
When it comes to begin planning your next app, you’ll be well ahead of the game – and have a market ready to take what you have to offer on faith.

By following the steps outlined above, you should have a successful launch for your mobile app. Hitting of few speed bumps along the way is normal and it won’t be anything that you can’t overcome. You should be familiar with the best practices for the app store that you’re planning to launch on.Come up with a really good idea and your target audience should be clearly defined. Don’t ever skip testing before you release your mobile app. Start your mobile app marketing before the official launch date.

Now get out there and do it.