Businesses with two negative reviews on the first page of Google search risk losing 44% of their customers.
If you’re an app owner, this is frightening news. Reputation management is vital for the growth and survival of your business, especially if your app is new to the market.
Luckily, there are a few simple marketing tricks you can use to help improve the reputation of both your app and your company.
Keep reading to learn 10 powerful ways you can use digital marketing to leverage your app’s reputation.
What Is Digital Marketing?
Before we dive into the digital marketing tips themselves, let’s review what digital marketing is.
Digital marketing refers to all your company’s marketing done over the Internet or on an electronic device. Businesses connect with current and potential customers using various digital channels, such as social media, email, and search engines.
Digital marketing helps you get your app in front of more people. It also lets you nurture relationships with current customers, whose feedback helps you fine-tune your app to make it even better.
Once your app hits the app store, you need to start using digital marketing right away so that your brand creates a positive reputation from the start.
1. Get Clear on Your Brand
Before any company creates a digital marketing plan, it must identify its brand. Branding includes not only your company’s logo and colors but also the value you provide and how you stand out from your competition.
When defining your brand, you want to figure out your brand’s unique value proposition. This shows your customers why they should pick your company over your competition.
If the other apps in your niche are slow and difficult to use, perhaps your unique value proposition is that your app is 2 times faster and has a smooth user interface.
Getting clear on your brand is also vital for your online company communications, from emails sent to customers to your brand’s voice on social media.
2. Know Who Your Customers Are
To properly leverage your brand’s reputation, you need to make sure you know who your customers are. When you market to the right customers, they’re more likely to find your app helpful and recommend it to others.
What are the pain points of your ideal customers? How can your app help them? What makes your app different from the apps of your competitors?
If you’re having trouble defining your ideal customer, create a buyer persona. This is a fictional representation of your ideal customer that is based on your research.
When you are clear on who your ideal customer is, you can keep improving your app to solve your customers’ problems and pain points, creating the reputation of an app that’s useful and helpful.
3. Create a Useful Website
Imagine if your customers are thrilled to buy your app but run into a problem. They try to contact you for help but can’t find your website.
You can guarantee that this customer will get frustrated and will most likely take their business to your competition instead.
Website Tips
One helpful thing to include on your website is an FAQ. This way, you decrease the number of help emails in your inbox to provide faster support for more complex problems.
Your customers will also feel supported because you took the time to compile these questions and answers.
Your website also needs to create a smooth user experience. This includes having a website that is easy to navigate and loads quickly.
You can also publish previous support tickets on your website, as some people might have the same question. This is especially useful if some customers are using the free version of your app and aren’t entitled to support.
Just because a customer is using the free version of your app doesn’t mean they won’t leave a review or want to upgrade to the paid version later, so you need to be careful that every customer has a positive interaction with your app.
4. Use Email Campaigns to Your Advantage
Email campaigns are some of the best digital marketing tricks for app owners because they provide a personalized touch to your interactions with customers. They also have many advantages, from keeping your brand top of mind to helping you grow your customer base.
You can create several different email campaigns. First of all, you could create a “welcome series” for your new customers.
You can thank them for buying your app and encourage them to contact you if they have any questions. In follow-up emails, you could include helpful tips to help them get the most out of your app.
For Existing Customers
For existing customers, use email to notify them of any app updates. You can also let them know when you have new apps or products coming up and offer them a loyalty coupon toward a future purchase.
Think about sending a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly email with helpful tips, updates, and industry news.
Remember to always keep value in mind with your email campaigns, as you don’t want to annoy your customers by constantly trying to sell them something.
5. Have a Blog for Your App
Having a blog for your app is a great way to boost your SEO and give your customers an unbeatable value.
You can include keywords in your blog posts to help you rank on the first page of search engines. This way, even people who aren’t current customers will find value in your company and might then become interested in buying your app.
This is also why writing about more topics than just your app is helpful.
For example, let’s say your app helps people manage their time using calendars and notifications. You could write a blog post on how to make the most of your morning, which would help both current app users and others who are experiencing this problem.
This way, people searching for an answer to their questions will get value out of your blog post and be more likely to get your app in the future. Plus, they will have a positive experience of your brand before they even become a customer.
6. Have an Active Social Media Presence
54% of people who browse social media are looking for information on products they’d like to buy.
Your brand reputation is vital on social media because your brand is visible to the public. Whether it’s an influencer or a friend, any user of your app can comment on posts, and these comments can be seen by thousands (if not millions) of people.
Being active on social media also builds trust with your customers because you can interact with them one-on-one in a public, transparent way.
While you can also do this through email support, helping your customers on social media shows others that your company is dedicated to giving the best customer service possible.
Satisfied Customers on Social Media
Remember that positive social media mentions are a great way to market your app for free.
Although someone may not leave a review of your app on the app store, they may post about your app on social media. And when they do, you might find that you have dozens of new customers.
While a review from a happy customer on the app store is only visible to those already looking to buy your app, a positive social media review can market your app to those who haven’t heard of your company before.
7. Respond to Reviews: One of the Most Important Marketing Tricks
These days, most consumers don’t even consider buying anything unless they’ve looked at some reviews first.
For the best brand reputation possible, you need to respond to reviews, not just read them. This includes responding to both positive reviews and negative reviews.
A customer who gives you a positive review would be thrilled that you took the time to thank them for their business and show your appreciation.
And while responding to a customer who had a bad experience with your app might be stressful for you, it’s arguably even more important to respond to them.
You need to show your customers that you appreciate their business and that you want to give them the best experience possible. You also need to show that you care about constantly improving your product, not just getting money.
Remember that negative reviews can be the best source to show you where your app needs improvement. Write down what dissatisfied customers are saying and consider it the next time you upgrade your app.
8. Pay Attention to Your Analytics
Analytics don’t only help bloggers and digital marketing companies. Any app owner needs to keep an eye on analytics to see where their app could be improved.
Analytics help you see this because they provide you with data about when users keep using your app after encountering a glitch. They also show you when users are using your app and in what way.
Going back to our example of a time management app, let’s say your analytics show that your users love your calendar feature and are using it more than expected. But, they are quickly exiting out of the timer feature because it keeps freezing the app after 5 minutes pass.
Gathering analytics helps you see this information and identify trends. This way, you find out exactly where you need to make changes that will help your users and give them a more positive experience with your app.
9. Create a Helpful Demo Video
A demo video is another great way to help your app users get even more value out of their purchases. It can also function to answer any frequently asked questions, which saves customers time emailing you for help.
A good demo video is a reasonable length. Sometimes even thirty seconds to a minute is enough to show customers how to use your app.
You can also include helpful diagrams or images in your video to further assist users.
Make sure to include how your app works in action in your video so that users can see what it’s like to use it. Don’t just talk into the camera and explain.
Also, make sure that the visuals and colors you use are appealing, aren’t overwhelming, and match your brand.
You can upload your demo video to all your online channels to make it easy to find. This includes your website and your social media accounts. You could also include a link to it in your welcome email or your app’s description on the app store.
10. Get Some Awards
Awards aren’t only for making you or your company feel prestigious and accomplished.
They’re a fantastic way to build trust with your customers. If a potential customer sees a seal or badge on your app, then they’ll know that your company is credible.
Rather than just telling people that your app is excellent, having an independent source back this up makes all the difference for a potential customer.
Apply to awards that are relevant to your app, niche, and category. For example, if you’re an Apple developer, apply for awards like the Apple Design Awards.
Awards are also a good way to market your app because they help you create a reputation of excellence and/or innovation.
Ensure the app award badge or logo is on your website and your app store listing so that potential customers can see it.
Ready to Leverage Your App’s Reputation?
After you’ve launched your app, you need to create a good reputation to attract new customers. You also want to keep current customers coming back again and again.
We hope this article gave you some useful marketing tricks you can use to leverage your app’s reputation to be the best it can be.
If you’re ready to leverage your app’s reputation but don’t know where to start, contact our experts today.
