Mobile App Growth Hacking: Tips to Follow For Early Traction
By Ray Parker, IQVIS
Developing a mobile app and acquiring users in the first-hand tops the list of marketers. No matter, what monetization strategies you have adopted, unless you have not invested some time in marketing efforts, you might lose early traction.
It is quite challenging to get more and more user acquisition in terms of cost and effectiveness. According to the VentureBeat, the cost of acquiring users has doubled on iOS devices. Moreover, with the growth of cost per install, app publishers must get creative with their marketing efforts.
In fact, everyone loves to see their app downloaded by millions, but the question is how. The answer is hidden in a term known as growth hacking. Before we move further, let’s have a brief overview of what growth hacking is all about.
What is Growth Hacking?
Growth hacking has been around for a few years and attracting startups more than anyone else. Of course, everyone desires to build a multibillion-dollar company. But that’s not an overnight process. It needs to be done rightly.
Growth Hacking is the term used to scale up your business by finding the most effective marketing channels and make use of them to interact with your targeted customers and audience.
Getting creative with marketing is the only trick that will help you succeed or fail. The same goes for the newly launched mobile app. How to gain early traction with growth hacking and help you lead the mobile app go viral. Check it out.
Mobile Referrals and Social Sharing
Mobile app referral campaign can automate your marketing efforts if the app is developed well and force others to share. To build an app referral campaign, you need to find out whether the app is addressing the pain points of users. Otherwise, your marketing effort will fail on the first hand.
Make sure to group the users according to their likeliness of your app. The more the better. Ask them to refer your app to friends and family members. Moreover, you can add a popup or simply integrate social media icons to allow others to share your app with their respective accounts. This would also help in making your app viral within days. Keep an eye on every user’s review to make improvements in the future.
App Store Optimization
App store optimization is the core of getting your app in front of millions of user. Make sure to include relevant keywords in your app description as well as title to reach users that are searching for it. Moreover, post high quality and descriptive screenshots of your app to display your value proposition and help users to understand what the app is all about.
The ideal way to select the keywords is through Google Keyword Planner. Improve your search engine rankings by optimizing your title and description with the keywords directly targeted towards your target audience. Spy on competitors as well to improve your strategies and keyword planning. Keep watch on the number of downloads each week or month to analyze what’s working.
Push Notifications
Push notifications have been quite popular in order to engage users and tackle the app abandonment problem. It will allow users to return to the app and take some relevant actions. Moreover, it can also help you promote another app or encourage in-app purchase users might be interested in.
According to studies, “push notifications drive traffic, conversions and optimize the app use”.
Your app must be tailored according to the pain points of users and visually and contextually rich for greater effect. The push notifications can also be used to promote offers, discounts, and coupons.
Mobile Video Advertising
Mobile video advertising is gaining hype with each passing year. The majority of advertisers are finding it beneficial and useful as compared to other means of promotion such as content and visuals.
App publishers can make use of videos to gain massive hype and early traction. Dropbox for example, posted an explainer video to get more people to watch and learn about their services. This helped them to increase conversions as much as 10%, leading to 10 million additional customers and $48,000,000 in extra revenue.
Video advertising can help you engage, entertain and educate your users to give them an overview of what’s being offered.
Leverage Community
“As much as 84% of consumers trust the recommendations from the people they know”.
The ideal way to grow your app is to reach and engage target audience who will use the application and recommend it other people in their community. To get in front of the target audience, start with the contacts in your list and build an email list to show them what you have to offer.
Engage in online communities where hungry buyers are looking for solutions that your app is already offering. For instance, if the app is targeted towards health enthusiasts, you may find the communities and pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter relevant to your niche. Participate in discussions and get validation from community members. Don’t forget to collaborate with the influencers. Ask them to promote your app in their community where millions of followers already exist.
Offering a Free Trial
There is nothing as instigating as offering a free trial to the users. If you own a paid app, make sure to offer a free trial for a limited time. It will help waive off fear from most of the users, even if they have to pay it for the price of a cup of a coffee.
Make sure to ask them for honest reviews and those who actively participate in it can be offered for half the price. Without user reviews, you might not be able to gain traction of users who are ready to pay for it. The reviews will guarantee the authentication, relevancy, and trust among the buyers in the future.
Conclusion
Whether you are an individual or an app development company, growth hacking will help you gain market traction before the launch of the app. Growth strategy will be effective in enhancing your app performance, but not if your app lags user experience and fail to address the pain points.
Author Bio:
Ray Parker is an entrepreneur and internet marketer with over 15 years of experience in Search Engine Optimization, Creative Writing and Digital Marketing with Software Development Company. He has worked with several clients from all over the globe to offer his services in various domains with a proven track record of success.