These days going viral all but guarantees your success as a company. If an influencer shouts out your company or uses your product in a post that then gets millions of views, it can be a game-changer for your business.
If you’re a software development team, the same can happen with your app. App virality will ultimately help to increase app downloads.
But how do you make your app go viral? Is it all up to chance? It’s easy for it to seem that way.
But it isn’t. If you use the right app promotion strategy and app marketing plan, your mobile app could be hitting seven figures in downloads before you know it.
You probably can’t wait to hear more. Well, you’re in luck! We’re going to talk about app virality and exactly what it takes to make your app take off like a rocket to the moon!
Let’s get to it! We’ve got a lot of information to cover.
Why Is Viral the Goal?
Smartphones have become a huge part of our everyday lives. Anywhere you look, you’ll see people doing something on their phones. Some people like to read the news, others like social media, and others play smartphone games.
This trend in society has resulted in many app development companies popping up throughout the country. And the production of some of these companies is amazing.
Bigger operations can pump out several apps per day. But not all of them go viral.
It can be a cost-intensive endeavor to hire a development team to design your app. Going viral is the best way to ensure it’s all worth it. Not to mention, going viral can bring your app revenue that’s somewhere in the millions, maybe even the billions.
Need we say more? Trust us; you want your app to go viral. Now, let’s get into the marketing tips, tricks, and tactics that will get you there.
Marketing Strategies For App Virality
The goal of any marketing campaign, as well as mobile app marketing, is to get your name out there. You want to get the best bang for your buck. Your marketing strategies need to get in front of the most people for the lowest cost.
Here are some of the strategies you may find effective and want to implement for your app.
1. Offer A Free Trial
This is one of the oldest techniques in the book! In sales, this is called “the puppy dog close.” The idea is that if someone is looking at a puppy, you let them take it home over the weekend.
Once they get the dog home, they fall in love with it, and the family closes the sale themselves.
Offering a free trial works on the same basis. When you offer a free trial for your app, it’s an opportunity for them to fall in love with it. They’ll be able to use it and see how much their life has improved from it. They’ll also be able to tell their friends about it.
This brings us to the next effective form of marketing.
2. Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is widely considered one of the strongest forms of marketing, regardless of industry.
One of the biggest barriers businesses have today is overcoming trust and credibility. There’s no better way to do that than have other users recommend your app to their friends and family.
Mobile app marketing has taken this concept to the next level. Apps will incentivize users to get other people to download the app. They will offer rewards, points, or rebates for every extra person a user brings in.
These incentive-based marketing strategies are very popular in the smartphone game app and e-commerce space.
3. Social Media
App developers love social media for marketing because it’s cost-effective. The amount of people using social media is somewhere north of the tens of millions. That kind of exposure for your app goes a long way in making it go viral.
If you can launch an effective marketing strategy on social media, your app can take off in a concise amount of time. Facebook also has a lot of AI and targeting tools built into its ad platform.
This allows you to zero in on your target demographic. This makes sure your app advertising is only being seen by the people most likely to download it. It may take some research, but building a buyer persona is the first step in any effective marketing strategy.
It’s also the best way to fully utilize all of the tools Facebook and other social media platforms have to offer.
4. Email Marketing
Many businesses think email is dead. Is it? Sure, emails may not have the same open rate as text messages, but an effective email campaign can wind up being your most lucrative marketing channel.
The key is your copy. You need to say something in your subject line that makes users want to open your email. Once you get them to open it, there’s no limit to what your message can be.
You can invite people to download your app when it launches. You can also inform them of special incentives associated with downloading the app. You can even provide education about what this app can do for your users.
We see email marketing is used a lot when it comes to e-commerce apps. These companies will send out an email offering discounts at their store for downloading their app. They may even offer a special promo code if you download and buy something by a certain date.
The opportunities are endless. Don’t sleep on e-mail marketing!
5. Optimization
We’re sure you know about search engines and website content optimization if you’re in the digital marketing space. What you might not know, however, is that you can optimize your app to perform better in the app store.
Optimizing correctly for the app store is a powerful tool. It increases your visibility and allows your app to get more organic traffic. What does organic traffic mean to you?
It means people download your app without spending any money to advertise to them. Imagine the profitability of a campaign that costs $0 to set up.
Optimization saves you money; however, it will cost you elbow grease. If your app has a website set up, you can use traditional SEO and content optimization on your website to drive traffic to your app. Optimization in the app store, however, can be a little trickier.
You may want to reach out to app marketing professionals to see what they can do for you.
6. A Burst Campaign
This might be a new concept for some of you. The timing of a burst campaign is critical.
One to three days before your app’s scheduled launch date, you and your team will start to blanket our marketing channels with advertising for the app. This means both online and offline channels. Companies will typically use social media, TV, radio, other websites, etc.
Anything they can to get the word out. This aggressive type of “guerrilla marketing” can be very effective when done right. If your burst campaign is successful, your app may even go viral before your launch date.
7. A CTA Campaign
CTA stands for a call-to-action. If you go shopping, you may see a big, bright “get your quote” button. If you’re shopping for a mortgage, you may see a website with “see if you qualify” on a giant button that leads you to a form.
CTAs are usually referred to concerning internet marketing, but they don’t have to be. It’s an advertising campaign that asks your target to take action in the name of your company, app, or cause.
Over the past several years, a few viral internet crazes have been good examples of call-to-action campaigns. The best example that comes to mind is the ice bucket challenge.
While it wasn’t for an app, the ALS foundation benefited from having millions of people all over the world pour ice-cold water over their heads. It raised awareness for the disease, and those that didn’t do the challenge were asked to donate instead.
That was probably effective in increasing donation amounts that year.
Consider Hiring A Mobile App Marketing Firm
If your team’s focus is app virality, it doesn’t make sense to take a chance on your mobile app marketing. You may want to consider working with professionals.
These guys have already spent years in the industry. They’ve done the market research, and they know what works.
When you work with a mobile app marketing team, you’re also dealing with professionals who already have a marketing system in place. Most app marketing firms have their “marketing recipe” figured out already.
All they need to do is plug your app into the system, and you should experience great results.
They also have a handle on some of the more difficult aspects of mobile app marketing strategy. For example, app store optimization.
If it’s something you’ve never done before, you’ll want to work with someone who knows what they’re doing. Marketing is one of the best investments for any business. It’s also one of the biggest expenses.
If you choose to go it alone and your marketing campaign flops, you could leave your team in a financial situation that they cannot recover from.
App Store Promotions
Another effective strategy that a mobile app marketing team can help you with is using promotions from the app stores on both Android and iOS.
The most effective way to do this on Android is to get your app featured in Android community marketing. This could mean their community forum, developer forum, or anywhere else the Android community is talking about apps.
Your app team can do the same on the iOS platform as well. It’s a little different, but it can still be just as effective.
App marketing experts suggest the most efficient way to market on iOS is to offer 2 versions of your app. A free version and a paid subscription version.
The free version will get most of your downloads. And then, from there, you’ll have some people that transfer over to the paid version. But you can increase the downloads of the paid version by offering discounts during the launch window.
There are more rules and regulations that Android and iOS recommend following for the most effective results with app store promotions. This is the type of knowledge that working with a team of mobile app marketing experts gives you.
Your App Itself
Finally, besides all of the other marketing strategies mentioned, one of the most powerful is your app itself. You’ll want to make sure you maximize the effectiveness of a few key elements of your app. This will help you to maximize the results of your marketing.
Things like your app’s name, the icon used, the rewards offered, and the integration with other platforms are all vital to the success of your app.
Your app design should make your users curious. They should also feel like they’re missing out on something if they don’t give your app a download. You’ll also want to do whatever you can to keep recurring users.
Yes, new users are important, but users that keep coming back will increase the staying power of your app.
Your App To the Moon
Mission accomplished. App virality isn’t as hard as people make it out to be. All you need is the proper marketing plan in place and ensuring that your app gives your users what they want.
Get those items ironed out, and you’re well on your way to your app going to the moon! If you have any questions about app development or app marketing, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Our team is more than happy to answer any questions you have. Who knows? Months from now, you could be walking down the street, and your app will be on the screen of everyone’s smartphones around you. Wouldn’t that be nice?
