If the marketing budget is the biggest hurdle to make your app find traction, you have several low budgets and highly effective options at your disposal. Fortunately, often, these marketing strategies and channels are also sought after by leading and high-budget apps as well.
In this respect, the first piece of advice for any new app is to have a detailed pre-launch marketing plan followed by a buzzing launch event and a robust post-launch campaign involving multiple channels. While you can always do away with the expensive and cost-intensive options and go for the affordable marketing channels and low-cost strategies, starting the marketing right from the pre-launch period is the key to success.
Let us explain here the four low-investment app marketing strategies that already have been proven to be highly effective for many apps across the niches.
App Store Optimization (ASO)
App Store Optimization is the basic and fundamental way to create a buzz among your target audience. If the App Store or Play Store listing for your app looks perfect with all key elements such as the screenshots, keyword-rich app description, and some quality reviews and ratings, your app automatically enjoys higher visibility compared to other apps in the respective niche. Let's explain below the key assets that app developers and marketers should consider for ASO.
- Keywords: For an impressive App Store visibility and to ensure frequent search ranking to the intended audience of the app, you need to have a clear idea about the most search-friendly and relevant keywords of your niche. This requires conducting extensive research on keywords.
- Visual Assets: When creating the visual assets for App Store presence, you should start with an app icon that must be attention-grabbing and simple in look. Offer some visually appealing screenshots and images to deliver a look and feel of the app. Additionally, you can provide a short and interesting video describing what your app does.
- Ratings and Reviews: To validate your marketing message and claims, you need to use reviews and ratings. Some positive reviews explaining specific app benefits and 4-5 star ratings together can pull a lot of users.
Referral Marketing to Push App Downloads
Referral marketing is one of the most popular and widely acclaimed marketing strategies that allow rewarding customers to recommend the respective app to their near and dear ones. Also referred to as word of mouth marketing is highly effective to create leads and convert leads to sales.
Through referral marketing, you can easily drive millions of signups and app sales in a quick time. With a pre-launch waiting list of potential users, you can reach out to a lot of people and further create a bigger audience.
When it comes to creating a pre-launch waiting list, you need to create two separate pages to create leads. The signup page works basically as a highly effective landing page to receive people onboard just when they decide to sign up. Just by providing the email address at the time of signup users can enjoy free access to the app. The thank-you by thanking new visitors, who decided to sign up, can list them in the free subscription list and invoke their position further against social reference they make.
Another way to boost referral marketing is to use email marketing campaigns. After making the referral campaign live, you can email prospects the signup landing page links and push them to refer the app to more people. Referral emails also help you to build a close and intimate relationship with your team members.
A Highly Efficient PR Strategy to Create Buzz
A vast majority of users directly get influenced by the branding of the app, and this is why a comprehensive and fully-equipped PR strategy plays such important role. When taking up a PR strategy, be careful to weave the channels effectively to create a robust impression. Remember, PR strategy is not for your core market, but the people who have a marginal or vested interest in your app product.
To effectively implement a PR strategy, always try to identify the ideal prospects that deserve to be contacted on priority. The second most important thing is to make an analysis of the backlinks of the competitor to find deserving prospects who need to be contacted. Lastly, always try to get the contact details of the most relevant and influential personalities like reporters, marketers and media persons.
As for creating highly engaging emails, always try to make them brief, direct and concise. As influential people are very busy and hardly have time to go through large blocks of email texts, keep the message short, crisp, straightforward and easily understandable. Lastly, try to personalize the emails wherever possible and follow up with the recipients within 2 to 3 days.
Recommended: How to Build a Foolproof Communication Strategy for Your Brand
Utilize Your Own Channels
The last piece of advice would be to use the channels that are under your direct command. If you already have a business website, you already have a great platform to reach out to a big audience who can take a serious interest in your app. Provide the link of the app in all places of the website where users are likely to find it interesting in relation to their user context.
You can also make use of newsletters to reach out to a wider audience. You can provide the app link in the newsletter and can give users a basic glimpse of the product. Newsletters also offer a powerful and effective channel to inform your web users about any app update.
If you already have social media pages and profiles for your business, you can promote the app there as well. You can create eye-catching banners, visual content and screenshots to grab the attention of the users. Through social media presence, you have the scope of making your app viral.
Recommended: How to Effectively Promote Your Social Media Channels
Conclusion
App marketing strategies are fast evolving with innovative twists and marketing tricks. While all are not friendly for every marketing budget, fortunately, the most effective ones are still the most affordable as well.
Juned Ghanchi is a Chief Marketing Officer of IndianAppDevelopers Company. A Prominent Mobile App Development in India for iOS and Android mobile app platform. Along with marketing journey, he is a very passionate writer, and his expertise is in UI/UX, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, App Development Updates for every branch it has, and you’ll be amazed by his storytelling skills in every Article to convey and explain the topic of the Article.
