Its an exciting time, you now have a mobile application (“App“) to offer your customers and capitalize on the time that customers are spending on their smartphones. However, without a well thought out action plan on how to promote your App, you won’t get much use from this powerful customer retention and acquisition tool. This post will focus on outlining the most effective ways for businesses to promote their App to current and potential new customers.
The Value Proposition
Before starting to promote, it’s important to understand the key value proposition(s) of your App. Some common benefits for customers include the ability to order without having to call, pay without taking out their wallet or purse and special discounts or promotions for users.
Develop a few key slogans that highlight the benefit and use these for your marketing. For example, the Starbucks App has been touted as one of the best and they use “The fastest way to pay” in the majority of their campaigns highlighting the ease of payment to their users.
“Marketing is too expensive”
A common misconception about promoting an App is that it costs a lot of money. As a successful business, you already have numerous channels in which you communicate with your customers, so why not use these to start?
– Employees: The most effective tool to promote is to have your employees tell Customers about the benefits of the App. Take the time to educate your employees as there is nothing more successful then using human interactions to drive downloads.
– Website: Add a banner advertising your App, include a marketing slogan and a hyperlink to the app stores. Tools like OneLink will automatically detect what type of device your customer is on and redirect them to the appropriate app store (http://www.appsflyer.com/onelink/ ). You can also add a mobile popup so whenever a customer visits your website on a mobile device a popup appears telling them you now have an App. Your web developer should be able to make these changes very quickly for you.
– Social Media: Use your pages and accounts on social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to tell your customers that you have an App. Use the same decal(s) and slogan(s) as you use on your website for messaging consistency. Facebook also has new Call to Action buttons that can be embedded on your page such as “Use App” that can sit at the top of your page that can lead to downloads.
Allocating your Marketing Budget
Allocating a portion of your marketing budget to App promotion is also appropriate and there are three main methods we recommend to attract users:
– Promotions: Everyone loves a discount! Offering a simple promotion such as $5 off or a 10% discount to people who use the App will drive downloads and create virality where people share the discount to their friends & family. This will lead to new customers and you can offer this discount to first time app users to limit the amount of redemptions.
– Print Collateral: Design collateral to print and place at your POS, on windows or vehicles that tell your customers about your App and the benefits.
– Digital Ad Spend: Try using Facebook or Twitter Ads, specifically app install campaigns, that allow you to target certain demographics and locations. You only pay when the ad is clicked.
Don’t Forget!
Before promoting, make sure you know where your app is available, that the app store descriptions and images are setup and links to the respective app stores all work. There is nothing worse then spending time preparing and executing a great marketing strategy and finding that your users are unable to find your App or download it!
We are always ready to help businesses promote their mobile applications at Gata Labs, so feel free to Contact Us with any questions or thoughts you have about App promotion.