How to increase app installs | 7 tactics to incorporate into your app marketing strategy to get more downloads
The app stores are crowded, and unlike the movie industry pre-streaming, your creations can’t gather dust then come back as sleeper hits and cult classics to recoup your losses. Apps are for the here and now. They need to make their mark fast to justify you updating them and developing your business around them.
There really is no time like the present when it comes to apps, so let’s dive right into our top 7 tactics to get you more downloads.
1. Market research
Before even building your app, conduct thorough market research to determine the app’s viability, and identify any essential features it would need to be a market leader. Your idea might be divine inspiration – the heir apparent to sliced bread even – but the odds are there will be competitive options already in the space, or at least lessons to be learned from competitors that have fallen short.
You’re also one person, or are part of a small echo chamber of opinions. You need to confirm that what it does for you is as valuable to a big enough group of people to be viable, and see how it can be adapted and optimised to carry mass appeal while being easy to differentiate.This is all about understanding your unique selling proposition (USP) early on, in order to save time and resources.
The best ways to approach this include:
- Competitor research (including reading their reviews, where are they failing?)
- Social media listening
- Staying on top of relevant publications and news channels
- Surveys
Pro tip: Surveys are easy to customise and distribute on gamification platforms like Drimify, and can be distributed through email and across social media by direct link, or even in print and in physical locations by QR code. These are a great way to gain quantitative and qualitative information to identify genuine user demands you can fulfil with your app. You could even set up automatic emails to registered users of your app when you first launch to help you refine the product.
2. Create clever, provocative content to promote it
Develop eye-catching, highly clickable (but accurate) content to promote your app. Highlight how your app improves on popular alternatives and better solves customer pain points. Just because something has taken the app stores by storm can sometimes just be because it’s found a gap, but there’s no reason why you can’t optimise that gap further and capitalise on the improvement through your marketing.
If your app turns out to be a monumental hit, be prepared for either app developers to pull similar tactics on you. You’ll need to keep developing and improving your app to stay relevant and maintain your position.
3. Use gamification to educate users on your app’s features
Implement gamification elements within your app to educate users about its features, or build a multi-level game to share on social media to help promote it. The more your early adopters understand all the features and the different ways your app works, the more they become passionate advocates of your product.
Modern gamification is the ideal medium for this as it’s designed to work mobile-first, and plays on quick feedback cycles in-line with the function of phone and computer apps: to make things easier or more convenient for users.
Pro tip: Adapt ready-made game engines on the Drimify gamification platform to publish your games quickly and easily. Create minigames to highlight specific features, or create a multi-level experience with the Dynamic Path™ option to run users through each facet of your app step by step.
4. Work with influencers
Depending on your app and the market it’s designed to appeal to, there could be well-placed influencers you can work with to boost app installs. Collaborating with social media personalities or industry experts who align with your app’s target audience allows you to piggy back off their audiences to grow your own.
Influencers can incorporate your app into their content to showcase your app’s benefits, and encourage their own followers to give it a try. The influence comes from their authenticity – influencers are, typically, independent, and typically only form partnerships with brands and products they already like. This gives their endorsement more traction than traditional advertising.
Pro tip: If there’s a premium option on your app, it might make sense to offer influencer partners their own personal discount code. This allows you to track how effective they are as a collaborator.
5. Use marketing games strategically to boost downloads
This is a classic double-tap approach for getting people onto your app using marketing games. Marketing games are games used by brands to engage audiences and convey branded messaging, with the aim to either raise awareness, collect data, or drive conversion (or really promote any marketing goal, it’s a broad term and they’re very adaptable).
- The first step is to release and promote a marketing game across all your public facing channels – your website, your social media, your mailing list, etc. This could be an instant win game, an engaging puzzle, or something fun and intuitive where users rack up points to climb a leaderboard, all to try and win a prize or some other incentive.
- The second step is to launch (and promote) a second game phase that’s only available inside your app. Maybe it’s a variation on the original, maybe it’s a sequel of sorts if your original game was relatively high concept – so long as it’s another opportunity for users to return to something familiar they enjoyed the first time around.
Because they enjoyed the first game phase, the second game phase is an incentive to download the app.
Pro tip: If you’re using an instant win game like a Spin the Wheel for the second game phase, make sure every player wins a prize and after, you can include a call-to-action (CTA) inviting them to rate your app, resulting in higher ratings which in turn helps the app get more downloads in the future. (Who isn’t going to rate generously when you’ve just given them a promo code or a voucher?)
6. Speak to relevant publications
It might seem quaint when marketing your app, but engaging with relevant publications could be a great way to gain exposure for your app.
Reach out to relevant tech blogs, your industry’s magazines, and other online platforms that cater to your target audience.
Journalists are always looking for good stories, often with pressure to have X-number of off-diary story pitches per week, even in the trade press, so make it as easy as possible for them to view your app’s release as newsworthy. Either target the newsdesk of a publication, or look at article bylines and approach individual journalists (or bloggers).
Pro tip: Newswriting is short and to the point and so should your pitch be. In your opening sentence, you should give them your headline. If you’d just invented WhatsApp for example, you might say: “This new app is going to replace texting and instant messaging as we know it.” That’s your “Who” and your “What.” Then you’ll need to get to your “Where,” “When,” and “Why” as quickly but as eloquently as possible.
Frame it in the most newsworthy way possible. When a dog bites a man, who cares, but if a man bites a dog, you’ve got a story. What giants are you set to challenge? What daily inconvenience are you banishing into the shadowrealm?
7. Research and invest in ASO
Investing your energy into App Store Optimization (ASO) could be very beneficial in driving more organic downloads. ASO, much like its acronym, has a lot of crossover with SEO, and there are plenty of videos on Youtube to learn more.
In short, you need to:
- Ensure you have an attractive icon and simple and relevant screenshots on the app store to entice users
- You’re using relevant long-tail key terms in your title and description
- Ask for ratings and reviews as these both carry enormous weight in ASO
- Focus on the quality of your app to ensure it has good metrics that will encourage app stores to push them
If your app truly solves a problem and stands out, it might even be worth considering seeking professional ASO services to maximise its potential impact.
Key takeaway
Creating and releasing an app successfully takes efforts on all 7 fronts listed here. It’s a very crowded market place, and if you have built an app that’s of a quality that could see it go on to be mentioned in the same breath as What3Words, Calm, and Strava, there’s no saying which technique will help it get traction and take off.
Generating more installs and downloads starts in the research phase. The more aware you are of your USP and how your app is positioned, the easier to put in place the other 6 tactics will be.
