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When you’re in the beginning stages of app development, putting together an effective app marketing strategy to promote your product can be difficult and time-consuming. In a world where new apps can easily get swallowed in crowded app stores, it’s crucial to have a well thought-out plan in place in order to stand out in today’s competitive market.
Our step-by-step guide will walk you through the best ways to streamline a marketing strategy using our printable mobile app marketing template.
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A mobile app marketing plan is a built-out strategy that involves thorough and extensive research to help you better understand your customers, which ultimately leads to long-term success. The process begins as soon as users first learn about your product and continues to when they become a frequent and loyal customer. A truly meticulous strategy involves making sure your app is reaching the right target audience and retaining users in a competitive market, which can be done through measuring a variety of metrics.
Essentially, it’s pointless to spend time and resources building a functioning app if you’re not also going to create and put into place an effective marketing strategy to acquire users.
If you’re inspired to create a plan of your own, this downloadable mobile app marketing plan template will get you started. Follow these steps to create the ultimate mobile app marketing plan:
Now that you’ve got the template ready to go, we’ve listed some tips below to help you elevate your plan and create a seamless strategy that will boost your marketing efforts.
With roughly 4 million apps* out there and more coming every day, implementing a powerful marketing strategy for your app is crucial. Reviewing the benefits can help you understand why it’s necessary to have a built-out strategy. Benefits may include:
Now that you’ve identified the importance of an effective marketing strategy for your business, translate that into a couple of formalized goals to help you centralize your plan. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you get started on formulating your goals:
Answering these questions will help guide you in the right direction and pinpoint specific goals and KPIs you should create and track for your business.
A strong mobile-marketing app plan requires extensive research on users in your specific app category. You’ll want to gather any useful information you can to thoroughly understand your audience.
Here are some important factors to consider when filling out the “Target Audience” section of the template:
Once you nail down the type of people you want to reach, you’ll be ready to take your app to the next step.
Ensure that you’ve done extensive research on your competitors and keep a list of what strategies they’ve been implementing. An easy way to conduct competitive analysis, or SWOT analysis, is by downloading apps in your category and familiarizing yourself with their features.
When filling out the template, call out any strengths and weaknesses you come across amongst your competitors— this will provide critical insight that will help you understand what your target audience is looking for and give you an idea of what you’re up against.
Building a presence on social media is an important step in the planning process. This not only spreads brand awareness but also keeps the conversation going even before you launch your app.
Review your current social media setup and re-evaluate each platform. Track the ones that you’ve had success with in the template and jot down any that you’re interested in creating a presence on.
Take a look at your current content marketing strategy and see what areas you need to improve. We recommend taking a look at your site and adding the following:
Content such as promo videos and blog posts helps establish your brand’s reputation as a leader in your app category. Without an effective content marketing strategy, you’ll find it very difficult to convert users once your app is launched.
Creating a presence online isn’t the only way to get your app to the top of the charts. Just like you have to optimize your website to rank in a search engine results page, your app’s listing has to be optimized to appear at the top of a search result in the app store. The higher you rank in the app store, the more exposure you’ll have to potential new users.
App store optimization is essential for getting your app to stand out among the more than 4 million apps found in Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
Once your app is officially launched, consider setting aside some of your budget for paid promotion. This step is essential and will help your app gain market share. Research some advertising channels that fit with your brand and note them in our template.
Here are some ideas for paid promotion:
Though this can get pretty expensive, you’ll quickly realize that advertising channels are effective when done right.
Setting goals and tracking the performance of your plan is a great way to help you improve any areas that need a little extra attention. This can be done over time and tweaked as necessary. Consider tracking the following with our behavioral analytics tool and writing these measurements down in the template:
These key mobile app metrics will differ depending on the purpose of your app, but implementing them into your plan is crucial for conducting regular performance reviews and tracking data.
Give users an opportunity to provide feedback on the app and express their opinions — this will help you gauge what you’re doing right and if there are any areas you need to improve. You can do this by:
Keep in mind that when and where you place these review requests is important for user experience. You don’t want to frustrate anyone with constant notifications to leave a review, so be mindful of how you’re going to present the opportunity with engagement metrics.
Ready to create your mobile app marketing strategy? Our printable template will help you get your app where it needs to be and allow you to feel confident with your marketing efforts.