Mobile App Marketing for the Startups: 5 Invaluable Strategies

As a development startup, a company is both exposed to opportunities and constraints of all sorts. After you have produced your unique app, it is the marketing challenge that you need to pass through. A unique is just the beginning of a long haul of procedures that any development company has to go through. Compared to the established companies startups are likely to face a bigger challenge in reaching their audience and making their voice heard since they often lack workforce, infrastructure, and capital. The question is how a startup can circumvent these constraints and can ensure a successful marketing for their app. Let us introduce here five indomitable strategies that can help startups marketing their mobile apps more effectively.

1. Low budget pre-launch marketing

From the initial concern like ‘where can I find an app developer’, you have moved forward and ultimately is on the verge of getting your app published. Now, it is time to prepare for the launch, right? But wait, you still miss something called pre-launch marketing.

These days your marketing initiative cannot just wait until your app development is over and ready to hit the marketplace. You need to start your marketing way before it is developed. This is something widely conceived as pre-launch marketing. When your product is not ready but still you need to sell the idea and create buzz among your target audience, this is precisely what pre-launch marketing is all about.

Now thinking of pre-launch campaign you probably started to consider all those prime time media ads and first-page newspaper ads that from time to time announce upcoming products and offerings. Yes, you have guessed it correct. They are mostly expensive and used by big businesses. For a startup affording such capital intensive campaigns for even a month or two just before the launch of the product is very likely to be out of reach. So, a startup needs to consider affordable means to reach its audience. Here are some tips for low budget pre-launch marketing.

• Make a social media page for the app and start a pre-launch campaign in selective social platforms.
• Reach out to all your existing customers, peers and well-wishers with the app idea and seek their advice as well as suggestions.
• Reach out to all the potential industry influencers with your future app idea.
• Start a small website. A single website expressly for the app is not a bad idea.
• Roll out promotional campaigns like a free subscription for the premium version, some gift items, promotional coupons, etc.
• Start blogging about your app and how it can add value to the user experience.
• Try to coincide your launch date with a significant event related to your niche or industry.

2. Social marketing: it's almost free

For a small business or a startup often social media marketing comes as the invaluable first choice since it comes almost free. But just because it is free and unrestricted it does not guarantee success without a sustained, focused and disciplined approach. Consider the following tips to help your social presence produce an effective outcome for the app.

• First of all, limit your social presence to a minimum number of platforms which are most effective. Since as a startup you are less likely to have a dedicated social marketing team and all the automated tools, it is better to concentrate on a minimum number of platforms.
• Choose your social platforms as per your chances to gain attention from your target audience. Facebook and Twitter are invincible with gross presence from all types of audience. Apart from that LinkedIn is good for B2B apps or enterprise audience. Pinterest and Instagram are good for visual contents, and among them, Pinterest is particularly recommendable if your audience is predominantly women.
• Have social media content strategy with a mix of contents ranging from visual, media and text. Never bank upon too much on text contents as users these days have a lower attention span.
• To engage with the valuable audience, you can troll some influencers and frequently engage in conversation.
• Always focus on relevant and trending topics to engage with your audience and draw their attention.
• You can also run social media paid ads in selective regions to gain some quick attention.

3. Measure KPIs that are crucial for the market of your app

While professional marketers always and almost invariably focus on setting a goal for their campaigns, often startups without dedicated marketing team lacks such focus. But even having an objective for your app marketing is just not enough. They need to be specific, realistic, achievable and measurable. Now ever marketing objective for an app is associated with certain KPIs or particular parameters.

These parameters vary as per the type of app, and it's target audience. If you have a game app that can attract gamers quickly with its unique gameplay but cannot stay as a source of amusement for long, then user acquisition is a very important KPI for the said game app. But if you have a retail app for fashion and consumer goods, more than download numbers, you need to focus on retention, engagement and lifetime value (LTV) of the users. Choose the most relevant KPIs for your app and continue measuring them from time to time.

4. Unleash the power of deep linking

A startup needs to grab all the potential scopes to give its app discoverability, prominence, and traction. Deep linking is one such strategy. If you want your app to be indexed by Google, you need to do deep linking. If your website contents have the link to your app, the users either can be lured to the app page in the app store or in case he has already downloaded it, and the respective page can be opened through the app. Deep linking comes with an array of benefits.

• First of all, it boosts both engagement and retention for existing customers.
• Secondly, it continuously lures new users to the app.
• Thirdly, with deep linking across various web pages and contents, you can easily boost discoverability and reach.
• Lastly, with relevant deep links, you can help your app get indexed by Google App Indexing.

5. Focus on organic output

In the initial stage when your app still has a feeble download number, opting or paid downloads is not an altogether bad option. But paid downloads do not give an app its real user base, and hence they are as good as fake ‘Like’ counts. So, your marketing campaign must prioritize organic downloads through an array of initiatives. Here are few of the must-do measures.

• First of all, do App Store Optimisation through a keyword rich, short and straightforward description, high-quality app screenshots, a short app guide video and a few testimonials and credible reviews.
• Secondly, do content marketing with relevant topics related to your app, use relevant app keywords and deep link your app page.
• Release short video contents about your app on YouTube and other video channels.
• Give your app related contents further boost through social media, social bookmarking channels, and discussion forums.

To conclude, we must advise startups to consider the app marketplace as a level playing field rather than a market where established biggies always come as winners. The increasing number of small app companies and indie titles that are winning the tough turf of competition from big players should be your motivation.