Posted by App launching is one of the crucial parts of marketing that helps an app stand on a high pedestal right from the beginning. Naturally, you need to have a well laid out strategy for app launch that resonates with the market.
“How do you ensure your app continues to remain popular after the app launch?”
“How do you figure out finding regular acquisition after the launch date?”
These are the key questions to guide your app launch strategy.
Over the years, some app launch and pre-launch strategies and tactics have helped apps to maintain growth and popularity. Let us briefly describe these pre-launch and launch strategies to ensure popularity for a business app.
Decide a Launch Date
When the app is undergoing development and everything is running smoothly, you should start preparing for the app launch. This preparation begins by setting a launch date. All the marketing schedules and pre-launch buzz creation should focus on making this launch date BIG. You need to coordinate with an array of things and accordingly maintain a checklist.
When fixing a launch date, you should always try to relate the date with some important event in your niche. At the same time, you should avoid coinciding the date with another event in the tech world to prevent being overshadowed.
Build a Detailed Marketing Plan
As the app is getting ready and is about to come out of the lab, a mobile app development company needs to have a detailed and meticulously drawn marketing plan. Remember that all successful apps start with their marketing plan way before they are launched for the wider audience. The pre-launch campaign should be planned to spread the word out and create a loud buzz about the app that can reach far and wide. The buzz creation way before the launch date will help the app to spread awareness and make your launch an event of utmost importance for your audience.
Make Promotional Videos
Videos generate more interest and engagement than the text and other content types, and this is why videos launched to showcase the benefits and features of your app can quickly spread awareness and create a loud buzz about the app. Videos are the most effective and engaging ways to draw attention and make people positively learn about the benefits of apps for different user scenarios and contexts. Visually engaging videos will convince potential users to download the app more easily than other means.
There are different ways to utilize video contents for marketing your app and spreading the message. One of the leading video formats is demo videos showcasing the utility of the app in regard to different user contexts. The “how-to” videos also work great for certain feature-heavy apps that involve some learning curves. Apart from that, pure marketing videos about the particular niche and the role of the app can also be tremendously effective.
Reach Out to the Press and Media
Journalists and bloggers enjoy bigger and broader access to the audience than any enterprise starting with its own customer base. Naturally, to make your marketing message louder and to reach out to a wider audience, you should have a proper strategy in place for the press releases and media coverage. You should have a comprehensive press kit comprising all the things you want your app to get covered by the media.
You should always try to encourage bloggers and reporters to publish stories about your app at the time if the app launch. When you have a fully ready press kit, you can send the press releases and the contents to the respective media houses at the time of launch.
Create a Landing Page
The web is still all-powerful to move opinion of your audience in favour of your app if you only know the tricks and means of using the web effectively. To create a robust buzz around your app and to establish a fan following you should create a proper landing page showcasing the features, benefits, the contexts of uses and the story behind the conception of the app.
The landing page can also play a significant role in creating a buzz just before the launch date and to spread the information before launch. The landing page should also incorporate social sharing buttons and all the links to make social sharing and buzz creation easier.
Select An Elite Group of Beta-Testers
As most statistics and reports confirm, a vast majority of the users just churn out within the first few months of downloading an app. Well, there is a whole array of reasons that contribute to such massive churning. The apps that become victims of this churning in most cases are also the apps that gave the least importance to the factors responsible behind churning.
This is precisely why you need to evaluate the app with some chosen beta testers way before the final launch of the app. Choose a selected few people who will test the features, functionalities, user interface and user experience of your new app and will give their valuable feedback and opinions. The beta testing results will guide you on perfecting various issues and shortcomings of the app way before the actual launch of the app.
Promoting Across All Social Media Platforms
Lastly, there is no better way to promote an app than on social media platforms. But since there are too many social platforms, you need to select a few that enjoy more significant influence and presence for your niche. Apart from the extremely mainstream and ubiquitous Facebook and Twitter you need to choose other channels as per your business niche and target audience. For app promotion, some of the most effective social media channels include Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we must tell you something about updates and continuous value additions. Like most apps these days prefer to launch a stripped-off basic app followed by updates with value additions and other features in the pipeline, your app marketing will happen over several stages and periods. Even if you launch a fully-featured app, value addition never really comes to a halt as without incorporating new elements and without fine-tuning the app continuously you are likely to miss out the value propositions for your app.
This is a guest post by Juned Ghanchi. He is a co-founder & CMO at IndianAppDevelopers Company, offers to hire app developers in India.