The Best App Marketing Strategies to Follow In 2022

Who doesn’t want to get the most from their app marketing campaigns? Whether the end goal is to create awareness, increase downloads, grow profits, connect with audiences, or maximize retention, incorporating the right app advertising strategies can go a long way in helping you achieve the said goals.

However, the fact is that with over 1,500,000 apps in the App Store and Google Play store, standing out from the competition takes a lot of time and effort, and most importantly the right mobile app marketing strategy. Even if your app offers a mind-blowing and engaging experience, prospective users won’t be able to find out about it if your marketing strategies fail to be effective.

The Focus for App Marketing in 2022

From being a storyteller to a data analyst, app marketers would need to be a forecaster too. They need to face out against the competition and put into effect an end-to-end advertising approach that will increase app visibility, user acquisition, and user engagement. This will inevitably cause them to excel in both organic and paid app user acquisition (including app store optimization and advertising), brand strengthening approaches, and app onboarding. Before we get onto marketing, consider reading our 10-point App Store Optimisation Checklist

Top 11 App Marketing Tips and Strategies for your Advertising Efforts to Thrive

Here are a few time-tested ways to keep you on the app highway.

1. Run Paid User Acquisition Campaigns

As you are well aware, Paid User Acquisition is the process of paying for advertisements of an app or game on user acquisition channels in order to drive relevant traffic to the app store and get new users. This can be done via:

1. App Install Ads: App install ads encourage users to download your app straight from the advertisement. These ads can be shown on social media feeds, blogs and websites, on other apps, and also within search results. Having a direct CTA to download the app is essential in these types of ads.
2. App Store Ads: App Store Ads are sponsored text ads that appear on Play Store and Apple App Store. These ads are used to increase brand awareness and drive app downloads within an app store.

1. Ad Retargeting (Remarketing): Ad retargeting is the act of advertising to the people who have already interacted with your app in the past. It is a great tool for nurturing brand awareness. Ad retargeting has a significantly better conversion rate than the initial marketing messages and communications.

(Here’s an example of an App Store Ad by Policy Bazaar)

While Paid User Acquisition is one of the biggest growth levers that help get more downloads and installs, it cannot be left completely on guesswork. It involves a whole lot of strategizing, analyzing and testing to come up with a mobile app marketing strategy that fits your end objective.

2. App Store optimisation – A Must In Your App Marketing Plan

App Store Optimisation (ASO) is the process of getting your app at the top of app store search results. The aim of ASO is to drive traffic to your app page on the app store and to get maximum downloads. To successfully optimize your app store, you need to know your target audience, identify and use appropriate keywords in the app description and include screenshots of your app and possibly a video or two of how to use the app.

3. Build Social Media Presence

Social media is a great way to market your mobile app. It’s extremely influential and helps you create a buzz instantly. Some ways in which you can leverage social media to help with your app’s success are:

• Creating engaging content
• Making use of user-generated content
• Focusing on community building
• Putting hashtags to good use
• Collaborating with influencers
• Using paid ads on social media

Understanding different platforms of social media and figuring out which one is the best for you is an important aspect of building a social media presence. For example, Instagram can be used for pictorial content, Quora can be used for explaining product specifications and answering app-related questions, and Facebook can be used for building loyal communities.

4. Collaborate With Influencers

Building on the point of leveraging social media, you should definitely consider collaborating with influencers to successfully market your app. Influencer marketing lets you present your app to an audience that is already engrossed, engaged and receptive to the influencer’s recommendations. Also, since brand handles and pages generally have fewer followers as compared to influencers, you get to expand your reach.

A perfect example of influencer marketing done right is Souled Store. They have 933k followers on Instagram (in Feb. 2022). A popular Instagram influencer they have roped in is Ashish Chanchlani who has 13.1 million followers!

5. Email Marketing- One Of The Easiest App Marketing Techniques

Email Marketing is a potent tool that you can use to acquire, engage and retain users. For a successful email marketing campaign, it is critical that you have an exhaustive mailing list.  Be sure to opt for the correct email marketing campaign to achieve your app marketing goals. While sending out campaign emails, do keep in mind your target audience, the tone you want to use, and the end goal of your campaign which will ultimately lead to the perfect call to action.

Apart from using email marketing to promote your app and its new offerings, you can also use it to pamper your loyal users with discounts and benefits.

6. Get Your App Reviewed & Rated on App Stores

In this day and age where all of us go through the reviews of a product or service before spending our hard-earned money on it, having an app with less number of reviews or more negative ratings can raise a red flag in a potential user’s mind. Your app ratings and reviews also affect your app store rank. They also contribute to your app’s overall branding. According to App Radar, 79% of prospective app users check the ratings and reviews before downloading an app, 53% check the ratings before updating an app and 55% of users check the app ratings and reviews before making in-app transactions.

To increase your number of reviews, you should start by encouraging your current users to leave reviews of your app in the app store. You can also reach out to influencers and professional reviewers. Also, don’t let negative reviews get to you, they work as feedback which you can use to improve your app and make it more user-friendly. Replying to reviews is another way to increase your app’s rating. In fact, according to Google, app developers who respond to the user reviews, be it negative or positive, experience a +0.7 increase in their overall app rating.

7. Incorporate Videos In Your App Marketing Plan

If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how influential a video can be! You can promote your app by creating small, quick videos that tell the unique features of your app, and posting them on various platforms such as app stores and specialized ad networks. These bite-sized videos can also go as advertisements on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Not just for advertising purposes, you can also create videos in the form of tutorials or videos that talk about all the FAQs of your app. The more engaging your content, and the more informative it is, the more app downloads you can boast of!

8. Regularly Publish Press Releases

An incredible branding tool, press releases are a great way to promote the launch of or new features of your app. You know your app is amazing, awesome, brilliant and pathbreaking! But you also want journalists, influencers, bloggers, and the whole world to know how great it is! Which is the best way to do so? A press release of course.

There are a few rules and syntax one must follow to make an article a press release – your app’s logo has to be present, there has to be a subject line and a summary line,  followed by an introduction of the app and a detailed description of it. The press release can also have screenshots of your app, a line about your organization, and a website address if any.

(Here’s an example of how CRED newly launched features gained mass popularity through press releases.)

A good example of how to use press releases to your advantage can be seen above. On Livemint, a daily financial newspaper, CRED  put across information regarding its new lending product— CRED Stash. Along with jotting down the product’s advantages and benefits, CRED also used the platform to talk about its other upcoming features.

9. Use Referral Programs

With referral marketing making a smooth transition to the mobile platform, why not use it to promote and market your app as well? This symbiotic relationship in which you reward your app users to attract new users can help you with:

• Increasing app downloads
• Expanding brand awareness and
• Increasing user engagement

An excellent example of referral marketing comes straight from Uber! By offering free Uber rides (capped at a certain amount) the ridesharing company encourages existing users to invite their friends to try Uber.

10. Find a Partner to Cross-Promote

Cross-promotion is a great way to reach a wider audience. If your organization has multiple apps, you can cross-promote one on the other and vice versa.

(Here’s an example of Paytm cross-promoting several apps through its flagship app.)

If however, you have one app, you can find a partner to cross-promote with and benefit from each other. In another type of symbiotic relationship, in this app marketing strategy, you allow an app to play its advertisements on your app and in return, they do the same for you.  One factor you need to focus on is making your advertisement super fun, engaging and attractive. Only then will you be able to attract users to your app store page.

11. Have a dedicated blog for promoting your app

Since you already have a web presence, why not exploit it to the fullest? Having a landing page that allows users to learn about your app is a great marketing strategy. Implementing SEO tools and principles, using appropriate creative visuals, and clearly displaying links to the Google Play Store and App Store of your app can attract new users and encourage existing users to download it.

(ET Money regularly publishes blogs around its app to attract new users.)

You should also maintain an updated blog on your website – a place where you can use SEO to come on the radar of prospective users. By exploring the analytics of the said blog, you will get to tap into data such as the demographics of your users, their country of origin, and what they are actually searching for. An app that manages to have a beautiful landing page and a super informational and up-to-date blog is MyFitnessPal. From sharing healthy recipes to publishing inspiring weight loss journeys, the app has hit the nail right on its head! Another wonderful example of how to promote an app effectively is that of the investment platform Groww. Not only does it have dedicated pages for Mutual Funds, Stocks, Fixed Deposits and U.S. Stocks, it also has a blog that talks about everything, from an Overview of the Indian diagnostic industry to Additional charges when buying a house.

Closing Thoughts

It’s clear that your mobile app marketing strategy is not to oversell but to gain user confidence and improve brand awareness. You can’t falsely advertise or over-promise as users are far more likely to call your bluff. It’s important to define your performance metrics & KPIs before setting the ball rolling on marketing. It is crucial to understand your audience and address any possible bottlenecks to keep them moving through the first to the final stage in their conversion journey. Alongside, it’s only mandatory to keep your app optimized and analyze the real-time data to ensure the app’s performance. Also, it is essential that you put emphasis on commitment to user privacy and protect users and their electronic devices from malware and security breaches.  A well-thought-out app store marketing strategy could prove to be very effective in encouraging users to download and use the app.