The following is a guest contributed post from Dave Bell, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gummicube.
Budding app developers who recently released their first app have quickly recognized the challenges of getting their app discovered. The App Ecosystem is teeming with competition, meaning it is more important than ever to properly position your app.
The competitive nature of the mobile market forces developers to think outside the box when it comes to marketing. App Store Optimization (ASO) is an essential marketing tool that can be utilized by developers to help maximize their app’s visibility and target their audience quickly.
Various Marketing Strategies
Defining a clear and effective marketing strategy will improve an app’s chances of converting users within the app stores. Once a marketing strategy has been created, it’s crucial that developers continue their efforts to keep up with current user trends and behavior to reach their maximum audience.
To ensure an app is relevant to its audience, developers can utilize marketing strategies such as ASO, Paid Search, Reputation Management, A/B Testing and Social Marketing. Since there are many ways to market an app, developers need to test each method before settling on a combination of marketing strategies that works for them.
- ASO
ASO is the standard marketing tool for app developers to build visibility in the app stores. The key component of ASO is optimizing an app’s metadata, otherwise known as its app name, keywords, description and creatives.
Developers need to optimize their metadata so their app is relevant to user searches and appears before competitor apps.
Once developers set up their ASO strategy, they need to continue monitoring user trends and behavior to ensure they are properly targeting their audience. Since trends are changing all the time, developers need to pay close attention to their users’ interests and needs and update their metadata accordingly.
- Paid Search
Paid Search is a marketing strategy that has recently gained more traction. Since Google’s introduction of Adwords in 2015, and Apple’s introduction of Search Ads in 2016, Paid Search has continued to serve as a viable marketing strategy for many apps.
Developers that are interested in using Apple Search Ads need to keep in mind that they are created using their app’s metadata and creatives. Even though this means developers do not need to create any new content, it’s imperative they first utilize ASO best practices to ensure that their metadata is optimized to target their audience. If their metadata and creatives incorporate high-volume keywords, they are more likely to be relevant for those keywords.
- Reputation Management
On top of using ASO and Paid Search, developers can create a Reputation Management campaign to monitor user reviews. Monitoring reviews is a great way for developers to engage with their users and understand the current user experience.
Besides engaging with users and understanding what users are currently experiencing, developers can quickly identify and troubleshoot any issues or bugs their users have mentioned. This shows users the developer is interested in providing the best experience possible, and that they are listening to their needs.
- A/B Testing
Developers looking to improve their app’s conversion rate may want to consider conducting A/B Tests, the process that compares two or more options of metadata to determine which is preferred by end users.
This form of testing is incredibly effective because it quickly determines which piece of metadata or creatives engages with users best. Having this knowledge allows developers to understand what app name, short description, icon, or screenshots to use without spending a lot of time or money.
- Social Marketing
It’s important that developers don’t pigeonhole themselves to just one type of marketing campaign. A great way to get noticed fast outside of the app stores is by taking advantage of social media.
Developers can connect with social media influencers to provide marketing offers that display the app outside of the App Store and Google Play Store. This also allows for the brand or company to gain awareness, which will in turn improve an app’s conversion rate.
Key Takeaways
Marketing an app is imperative to ensuring that it does well on the App Store and Google Play Store. Developers need to test every marketing strategy available to see which engages with their users best.
While ASO is the key marketing tool available to app developers, they need to incorporate all marketing strategies to improve their app’s visibility and help it become more discoverable to its target audience.
