Small businesses, brands, startups and established companies — nearly everyone in the global business landscape is trying to ride the mobile tide for business growth.
According to Statista, the number of app downloads will pass 258 billion by the end of 2022. It was just 178 billion in 2017.
In an ecosystem where everyone is hooked to their mobile phones, a lot of growth opportunities have surfaced for your business. Having a mobile app is pertinent if a business wants to grow in modern times.
Customer acquisition, being the greatest challenge, has caused businesses to focus on new ways of attracting buyers by persuading them to download a mobile app.
Developing a Marketable & Download-worthy Mobile App
The latest figures concerning the number of mobile apps reveal that there are approximately 4.1 billion mobile apps across platforms. In such a competitive market, getting user attention is a monumental task for developers as well as businesses.
Total Number of Mobile Apps
Before you start planning your app marketing strategy, it is important to develop an engaging mobile app.
For your business growth strategy to be rewarding, your mobile app should have the required intuitiveness if you plan to go the mobile route. Here are some ways you can build a marketable & engaging mobile app:
- Focus on Refining Your Product Offering
- Outline Your Core Objective
- Research About Target Audience
- Focus on User Experience
When it comes to mobile application development services, all your energies should be channelized towards adding value to a user’s life. In a competitive app landscape, if you offer a delightful user experience & something of value, users will definitely take note of your efforts.
You should have a great product and your app should offer the most engaging user experience for successfully marketing your mobile app.
Perfecting an App Marketing Strategy to Increase App Downloads
If you want to grow as a business through the mobile route, you need to have a solid mobile app marketing strategy. Even if you sign up the best mobile app development company and build a great app, without a documented marketing strategy, everything will be futile.
Here are some great tips to fuel your app marketing strategy and increase your app downloads:
1. App Store Optimization
App Store Optimization (ASO) is the process of enhancing the visibility of a mobile app across the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Do not let your app be lost in the crowd. You must properly optimize!
App Store Optimization (ASO) is a cost-effective strategy to increase app downloads. To optimize an app for discoverability, align the app’s metadata elements such as title, description, keywords, screenshots, etc. with industry trends and best practices.
When an app is optimized, more users are able to find the app in the store which increases the downloads, organically. A great way to start with ASO is by using free resources like Google Keyword Planner or Apple Search Ads Recommendations for keyword ideas.
ASO Ranking Factors
2. Grow Your Online Presence
To ensure users know about your app, it is important to come out of your cocoon and invest in increasing your brand awareness online. You can start by building a dedicated website or landing page for your app that gives users information about everything they can expect from your mobile app.
Also, having a website will help you increase reach as you can post valuable content on your blog and attract potential users to your mobile app.
Once you have a website in place, you should start creating awareness about the mobile app’s features, design improvements and more using social media.
Social media is a place where almost everyone is present. This means you have a high chance of attracting your target audience. Start with having a Facebook page and Twitter handle. You can go for as many social media platforms that you can manage.
Make sure you keep every handle updated with highly-relevant content. When you create an online presence, you are seeking to benefit from word-of-mouth publicity and virality quotient of your mobile app.
If your app offers great value to the end-users, your app downloads will increase phenomenally when you start promoting across multiple channels.
3. Encourage Users to Leave Reviews & Ratings
When people are talking about your mobile app, it is expected to garner more downloads. App store algorithms are known to boost app rankings of apps with a large number of positive reviews.
This not only increases your chances to be discovered, but it also creates long-term goodwill for your business.
In a world of social opinion, users rely on the opinions of others before taking action. So, if your app has several glorious reviews, you will be surely rewarded with a greater number of downloads.
One way of motivating users to leave a review is to target them at the right time. Using in-app analytics and push notifications, you can prompt a user to leave a review when he is constantly hooked to the app.
Though reviews help, keep in mind that even a single negative review can tarnish your reputation forever. To eliminate the chances of a bad review, focus on creating a mobile app that offers a great experience.
Identify and correct bugs as soon as possible and provide excellent support to aggrieved users by giving them an easy-to-find option to contact your support team.
4. Collaborate with Media, Bloggers & the App Community
One of the best ways to market your mobile app is to get people to talk about it. There is nothing better than word-of-mouth publicity. And when it comes from reputed sources, it does wonder for your business reputation and mobile app downloads.
There are a number of ways to get others talking about your app. You can go to the media with an attractive and engaging press kit, top it up with a well-written press release and contact journalists and influencers with the same.
Find the most relevant influencers as per your industry segment and convince them to collaborate with you for app promotion. Don’t pitch as a salesman but show how your app adds value to their as well as their followers’ lives.
You can also collaborate with industry bloggers as well as other startups for app marketing. If you manage to get their attention, you will see a phenomenal increase in downloads when they cover your app in their video or blog.
It is essential that your app should possess a value-quotient if you want to increase app downloads. The app that offers best user experience, is easily discoverable and offers needed utility in a user’s life is sure to become popular, soon.
Keep the above tips in mind to increase your app downloads and be a successful entrepreneur in the dynamic digital world dominated by mobile apps.
Want more tips from Rajat? Check out his Q&A in the BizSugar Mastermind Community: details in Designing Websites for Optimum Mobile User Experience (UX): AMA with Rajat Chauhan.