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“If you
build it, they … may or may not come.”
It doesn’t
have quite the same ring as the famous line from “Field of Dreams,” but when it
comes to getting users for your new app, building it isn’t enough. If you want
to stand out from the thousands of other apps, you need to market yours
effectively.
Apps are
like any other product — people won’t buy it if they don’t know it exists. Even
the most well-polished, innovative app will fall flat if the only people
downloading it are your friends and family.
Mobile
entrepreneurs, or “appreneurs,” sometimes blow their entire budgets on
development — they don’t think to plan out short- and long-term marketing
plans. To launch an app successfully, you must know whose attention you need to
grab and how to grab it.
Proven
Success
Two of the most
popular apps on iOS and Android wouldn’t be where they are today without
tenacious, effective marketing.
The first,
Clash of Clans, primarily took a business-to-consumer approach. Users who try
the app stay for the fun and engaging gameplay, but Supercell (the creator of
the app) maintained a constant stream of ads on multiple platforms to get users
there in the first place.
Whether
through click-to-install advertisements in other popular apps, social media
targets, or high-dollar TV commercials, Clash of Clans put itself in the
spotlight so loudly and frequently that it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t
heard of it.
This
strategy worked extremely well for Supercell — the company went from making
$2.4 million per day in April 2013 to making $5.15 million per day in February
2014. To double an already impressive daily figure in less than a year takes
more than great design; it takes great marketing.
The second
app, Candy Crush, also advertised through traditional channels like Clash of
Clans, but this app from King relied more on word of mouth and in-app social
media shares to establish its strong user base.
In Candy
Crush, users get a limited number of failed attempts before a timer starts,
telling them they can either purchase more attempts or get free attempts by
sharing the game on social media. Users who enjoy the game share it with
others, creating a rewarding cycle where users get to play longer the more they
help the app grow.
For Candy
Crush to succeed, the app’s gameplay had to be good enough to merit shares.
Great gameplay preceded great marketing, but without advertisements and social
media shares, Candy Crush’s audience never would have reached the numbers it
did.
Growing
Your Brand
Like Clash
of Clans and Candy Crush, your app needs great marketing to accompany great
design. These tips will help you put your app in front of more people willing
to download it:
1. Know your
audience. Identify your target audience and bring your product to them. Don’t
pitch a lighthearted game to business professionals; use concrete data to
identify the right demographic and design your campaign to appeal to the
members of that group.
2. Be
tenacious. Once you identify your audience, be relentless in the volume and
frequency of your message. Try not to annoy — don’t send out the same tweet 15
times a day — but keep churning the message.
Social
media isn’t like a newspaper that’s written, locked in ink, and then read the
next day. Different users get on Facebook and Twitter during different time
windows, so make your ads visible during the right time to put them in front of
the right people.
3. Add
marketing levers. Make your app functional without marketing content, but
promise (and deliver) premium features or a bigger experience when the user
participates in the social aspect. For example, a social media app could allow
25 posts a week but provide more posts if the user shares the app through other
channels.
Don’t make
the sharing requirement too frequent, or people will delete it. Keep the core
focus consistent, and make your bonuses enticing rather than annoying.
4. Keep it
fresh. Game of War, a popular mobile game app, skyrocketed in popularity with
its first spokesperson, Kate Upton. However, it swapped Upton for Mariah Carey
during its next ad campaign — the switch brought the game more attention and
made potential users keep an eye out for new commercials and content.
If your
marketing campaign is working, grow it with new narratives, media channels, and
promotions. If it starts to lose steam, find a new angle. Many apps appeal to
multiple demographics, so target different groups with slightly different
versions of the same central message.
5. Communicate
constantly. Your marketing efforts should provide feedback to development and
design teams. Marketing knows better than any other department what users want
next or what users feel is missing in the current build. Tap into that
knowledge to discover how you can make your product better.
Don’t wait
for a competitor to disrupt your success — disrupt it yourself. Marketing can
just as easily help create new features and versions as it can advertise them.
When you
develop a great app, it’s tempting to want to let your work speak for itself.
Even if your app starts out strong, however, user interest wanes quickly in an
industry where the next big thing comes out almost every day.
Marketing
is about more than pushing the product; it’s also about feeding back into the
product. Create an environment where one success begets another, and stay
vigilant by keeping your app in the spotlight. If you follow these tips to make
your app unforgettable, the next marketing success story could be yours.
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