Checklist: How to Market Your App Post Launch?

Few marketers know that mobile apps require high maintenance optimization work at any given time. The general assumption in the marketing world is that once you’ve invested in the development of the mobile app and launched it with a bang, you can finally sit back, relax, and watch it generate user after user. This assumption could not be further away from the truth. In order to garner a thriving community of users, a mobile app needs to be optimized on multiple “fronts” on a weekly, if not daily basis.

To keep things organized, I’ve assembled the following checklist for each and every marketer out there looking to offer consumers the best mobile experience possible. Let’s get started:

Releasing your brand’s app into the app stores and expecting it to generate active users that fall within your target audience is extremely unrealistic these days. With millions of apps in the app stores the competition is higher than ever, and hoping for organic exposure is nice, but you have to work for it. There are a couple of things you can do in order to continually grow your user base, and if you choose not to do them, you’ll be setting your app up for failure.

• Hyper-Target Your Campaigns: Another thing that can be done is running hyper-targeted media campaigns to attract only the most relevant potential users. With innovative ad technology and appropriate creative materials, a good media buying team can nitpick individuals that fall within your target audience among the see of mobile users out there. Constantly running A/B testings and optimizing your campaign on a daily basis can boost accuracy and effectivity, and help you grow your user-base efficiently.
• Optimize Your App Store status: The first thing you can do is implement ASO into how you market your app. ASO (App Store Optimization) is the process of refining your app’s app store page to make it show up in as many relevant searches as possible and convince visitors to install. Optimizing your app’s description and title, and the keywords they both contain will help you outshine competitors in similar categories.
• Read Between the Lines: Mobile technology allows marketers to learn about their consumers more than ever before, but little professionals use that to their advantage and to that of their users. If your brand’s mobile app isn’t succeeding as you’d hoped it would, the reason why isn’t a big mystery – it’s all written in your user data. When I say “data” I don’t just refer to the amount of installs per month, but to a wide array of categories, such as the average time users spend on each screen, how they are engaging with other users in the community, whether or not they are using the app features correctly, etc.The problem is, many marketers don’t know how to interpret such data, and more importantly, they don’t know which data to look at. Whether this requires outsourcing or hiring a mobile expert to join your team, you MUST take you users data into account and learn from it as much as possible.
• Perfect Your Product: To make sure your app is always on top of its game, you must implement the lessons and conclusions you draw from your app’s data and analytics. Different analytics should be monitored for different apps in order to derive relevant conclusions and make the appropriate changes in the app based on those conclusions. The biggest challenge however isn’t fixing the problem, but to be able to point out the problem among the sea of complicated numbers.For example, a common metric measure within apps is user retention, which usually takes place after one day, one week, and one month. However, there are apps that by definition have low retention such as travel apps for example, which are only used before and during trips. In this case, this data does not indicate anything about the quality of the app and it users.If you want to make the most of your data, consult with a professional so they can tell you what information matters most for the success of your app. Then, take everything you’ve learned and make sure to fix all those negative features or elements in your product. This too, should not only be done once but on a regular basis.
• Test, Test, and Test Again: The main message I’d like to get across is that there is never a time in the process of marketing a mobile app where you can sit back and relax. You will never attain your KPIs unless you constantly work at optimizing, A/B testing, and refining every single aspect of your app. Whether this requires you to outsource for specific services, or hire and train a news team, these efforts will definitely prove their worth in no time and guarantee your brand optimal mobile success.