You have launched your ecommerce app!
After spending time, money and energy on creating a perfect ecommerce app, you’ve managed to publish your mobile app in all the app stores.
But that was weeks, maybe even months ago, and you’re not getting the results you were expecting. Only a few downloads and hardly any revenue.
Now you’re starting to question if a mobile app was the right channel for your customers after all.
The good news: ecommerce apps are seen as the prefered shopping channel worldwide, even for gen Xers and baby boomers, who are older.
When done correctly, ecommerce store owners triple their mobile conversion rate and boost mobile sales.
The bad news: ecommerce apps are not a ‘launch and they will find me’ project. Odds are, there is nothing wrong with your app. It’s just that nobody knows your app exists.
That’s why it’s important to increase your app installs. In this post you’ll read 11 brilliant app marketing ideas that will help you grow app installs fast and with limited resources.
1. Promote your app on your website
This is probably the easiest and most effective app marketing tool: show that you have an app on your website.
A prominent banner on your site (a ‘smart app banner’), will promote your app to all your mobile visitors.
It’s a fairly unobtrusive banner at the top of your webpage. It shows your app icon, some details of the app and ratings.
If the app isn’t installed, clicking on the banner will take users to the app download page. If the app is already installed, users can just click on ‘Open’ and the app will be launched. You’ve probably spent years on attracting visitors to your website by blogging, social media campaigns and SEO.
If only 5% of those would download your app every month, imagine how many extra app installs you can get!
2. Promote your app on the best performing pages
Promoting your app needs a little bit of extra research in Google Analytics.
Find out what your best performing pages are. Once you do, promote your ecommerce app by adding a banner or app logos to these pages. For instance, if a few of your blog posts are doing better than the others, add these elements there.
You’re sitting on a gold mine with these high performing pages so use them. Optimizing them only takes a little bit of time, but is very effective in quickly winning over more mobile app installs.
3. Promote your app in confirmation emails
Approach app marketing with a ‘growth hacking mentality’. How can I boost app installs with as little time and money as possible?
This brings me to the next smart app marketing idea: confirmation-emails.
E-mails that confirm a transaction, are opened 800% more often than any other kind of e-mail. They also generate 600% more revenue than the average e-mail.
Use this to your advantage! The confirmation email offers the perfect opportunity to promote your app.
4. Get your customers excited before launch!
Customers should be your primary target for getting more mobile app installs. You’ve already invested time and money in making them customers: now use them as a valuable asset in your marketing. How?
It’s a fact that customers will stay longer, buy more and return faster once they’ve downloaded your app.
Getting more of them is the easiest way to increase your mobile revenue.
- Let customers know your app is coming, even before launching it.
- Make announcements on your website, include it in your newsletter, post it on social media.
- Make a video and screenshots of your beautiful app.
- Spread the word and build anticipation!
5. Let influencers do the work for you
Did I mention I like fast results and using as few resources as possible? Instead of you doing all the work, why not you let others do it for you?;)
This brings me to the next app marketing idea: influencers.
There are probably thousands of influencers within your niche that have thousands of followers. Imagine the total potential and reach! Find influencers that can help you get more app installs (if you don’t already know a few), contact them and ask them for a partnership. Tools like Brand24 or Buzzsumo are great for finding the right influencers.
Using influencers for your app marketing strategy is a fast, effective and cheap way to expand your reach with the right audience and get more app installs. Usually all it takes is to send a few freebies to your influencers.
6. Use guest bloggers for app promotion
Another easy peasy way to increase your app installs: find the right guest bloggers. For instance, if you’ve got a fashion store in the UK Google ‘best fashion store apps uk’, see what pops up and find out what you can do to be mentioned.
If mentions are not an option, see if you can leave a comment in a non-spammy way.
This smart app marketing idea will definitely boost your reach!
7. Traditional SEO tactics to promote your app
Using the right keywords will make sure customers find your website, but it can also help them to find and download your app.
SEO-techniques, which you probably know by very well already, can be very effective for getting traffic to your download pages.
Create an awesome landing page where you promote your app.
Once you’re found through organic search results, it’s free exposure and traffic forever.
8. Facebook ads are cheap and effective
Posting about your ecommerce app is a no brainer. But make sure you use paid Facebook ads in you app marketing strategy, too.
The reason is simple. Facebook has more users than any other platform. With Facebook ads you can target your audience based on things like age, gender, culture, country, etc.
It’s a great – and fairly cheap – app marketing idea to expand your target group and boost app installs. Facebook offers an easy way to promote apps.
How?
- Go to Ads Manager
- Choose App installs as the objective for the campaign
- Fill out the criteria for your target audience
- Choose a format section
- Fill out the details of the ad (headline, text, CTA)
- Run it
Use Facebook ad best practices, like the fact that videos are a great format for app promotion. Also, your ad title and description will feed information to Facebook’s targeting algorithms about the topic of your ad.
So you want to include all the right keywords in your Facebook ad. Keep in mind that some phrases in titles work better than others.
Based on a study of Wochit, who’ve studied over 33,000 Facebook videos, these phrases worked best:
9. Instagram is the other gold mine
Instagram marketing is also an effective app idea for driving app installs and retaining users. This social network has over 700 million active users per month, has the highest engagement numbers of all social platforms, and shows no signs of slowing down.
Hashtags are one of the most important ways for discovering cool things on Instagram. Dive into what hashtags would be suitable for your app.
Posts with at least one hashtag have 12.6% more engagement. So be sure to use hashtags with every app marketing post. #besmart.
Another easy way to gain hundreds of new downloads in a short time, is to run contests and giveaways on Instagram. Accounts that run contests grow their follower base 70% faster over 3 months, than accounts that don’t.
10. Share and win drives app installs
‘Download, share & win’ campaigns to get more app installs are not just great for Instagram; you can use the tactic for basically every channel.
It’s a super simple app marketing idea where you let others do the work. All you have to do is think about a reward and how people can win.
You can make it as easy as: ‘download this app, share it on your social media channels, tag our company and win a new outfit.’
You can distribute this contest on Facebook, Instagram, your homepage and your newsletter.
Let the games begin!
11. Utilize App Store Optimization (ASO)
App store search is very important for app discovery.So make sure you utilise the opportunity for exposure with the right App Store Optimization techniques (ASO).
Research shows “65 percent of downloads come from searches on the App Store”.
But what keywords should you use? TUNE studied the 500 top app store keywords.
The main finding: 9 out of the 10 top keywords are branded. Users tend to search for apps they already know.
But outside your brand name, use keywords that relate to your app and brand. For instance if you’re into conscious fashion, make sure you use keywords like: conscious fashion; conscious clothing; vegan bags; vegan clothes; vegan lifestyle; etc.
In addition to that, getting more positive reviews will also affect your ranking.
Ask customers to review your app (maybe through a ‘review & win’ contest) to boost your ranking.
Follow us:
