4 Effective channels to APP marketing

If you’ve just invested time and money into creating a new app, your next priority is going to be to promote it as widely as you can to grow your users through app marketing.

Effective app marketing means you’ll be covering a number of channels, both traditional and new, while honing your messaging to attract the right users who your app is best suited to.

Here are some of the most effective ways to market your app:

#1. Pre-Launch Build-up

The most successful apps tend to have begun their marketing well before their app is ready for launch. You can start doing this with:

Landing Page

Some companies will start even earlier to court interest, especially to ensure that they’re on the right track with what they’d like to build. This is where a pre-launch landing page to capture the email addresses of interested prospects is a great idea.

Outline some key benefits and give a clear call to action — you don’t need anything complicated or a ton of detail at this point. Keep it simple, attractive and on-brand. By seeking out potential users early, you have the opportunity to gather feedback from them and possibly even have them champion your app later on.

Email

Communicate with interested potential users early and often. Use email to build buzz and give sneak peeks into new features or the look of your app.

If you would like to test on beta users, put the call out via your email list — the advantage of doing so is that you already know those people are interested in what you are building.

#2. App Store Optimization

When you’re ready to launch, it’s important to work on app store optimization early. This means ensuring that your app will meet ranking criteria for app stores.

Here is a blogpost I wrote explaining in detail how ASO works.

Create an Icon that Pops

When you scroll through the app store, it’s often a cool icon that will grab your attention, right? This is why it’s important to give thought to how you can give your app an image that stands out.

Mashable published an article which goes into the “good, bad and ugly” of app icon redesigns which happened this year. The best app icons are simple and clearly convey what the app is about, such as the Netflix redesign below, which takes into account newer, cleaner design trends:

On the other hand, what is going on with Medium, as shown below? The redesign at the right is barely recognizable. Besides creating a logo which people notice in the app store, you want people to be able to pick it out among the crowd of apps on their phones too!

Drive More Downloads

More downloads equal better ranking in the app store, Here are a few ideas on that:

Include screenshots in your app description. There are many people who are more visual and are more likely to download based on images than reading through a whole lot of text.
Keep your app description updated with any new features or fixes you have made. People like to see that an app is regularly maintained and that you are responsive if there are any bugs.
Localize your app listing if you’re targeting international markets too. Google and Apple both allow you to do this and it helps to improve discoverability of your app for people in different areas.
Encourage more ratings and reviews. These are often one of the first places interested browsers will look to see if your app is for them. Ask the early adopters you found to go ahead and review your app.

#3. Engaging Content

We covered apps that are nailing content marketing recently, but it’s worth highlighting that producing quality, engaging content is proven to be one of the best ways to promote and drive more traffic to your app.

Another thing to consider is your in-app content — how will you keep people interested and coming back for more? Creating fresh, original in-app content regularly not only helps to keep up the user engagement, but it helps with your acquisition too. As we pointed out earlier, people tend to look for apps which are kept regularly updated as a sort of quality assurance.

#4. Loyalty Programs

Which would you prefer; casual app users or highly engaged proponents of your app? The purpose of loyalty programs is to boost the profile of your app and generate more of the latter type of user.

A loyalty program may take many forms, including strategic partnerships with relevant vendors. The idea is to create a win/win: you get more user engagement and attract new