The mobile app market is growing by leaps and bounds. This huge industry is expanding every day and is not going to stop. Mobile apps are replacing websites and are more convenient to use on a smartphone. They are always at hand and allow you to directly communicate with the user.
The number of mobile app developers has rapidly increased, whereas the number of apps themselves is breaking records. The revenue generated by the mobile app industry has reached sky-high figures – it was $310 million in 2019, and it’s not going to stop.
In such conditions, it has become difficult for developers to make their apps go viral, as they have lots of competitors. Therefore, it is important to keep abreast of the current trends and make sure that your app meets the needs of the target audience. In this article, you will learn about some tips that will help your app go viral and beat the competition.
Tip #1: Integrate social features
According to research by The Manifest, more than 1/3 of social media app users typically spend 10-20 minutes on a social media app after opening it. Additionally, users tend to check social media apps such as Facebook at least once a day. This research shows that social media apps are addictive to users because they return quite often.
Just a couple of years ago, app developers were trying to engage their users by creating communities on social media, such as Facebook pages or groups. However, today it’s possible to build a user community directly inside the app. App developers can use modern technologies to implement in-app chats, news feeds, and the like/share functionality.
As a result, the users can communicate directly in the app and invite their friends by participating in referral programs. By integrating such social features, you can save quite a lot on user acquisition, as the community will be growing on its own.
Duolingo is an example of an app with a loyal user community. The company involved the app users to take part in the Incubator project by adding new language pairs to the app and thus sharing their knowledge with other community members.
Tip #2: Introduce deep linking
When you launch an ad campaign for a product in an online store, you use the product page as a landing page. In this case, the ad attracts a potential client with a specific offer, and the client has certain expectations from clicking the banner. A common mistake that reduces the conversion is leading the visitor to the homepage of the website. In this case, you confuse the visitor by forcing them to search for the advertised product.
The same is true for mobile apps. However, mobile development is different from web development. To transfer the user from the ad to the desired page and not to the main screen, app developers use deep linking.
Deep linking is a technology that allows you to lead a targeted user to a specific page of a mobile app, increasing the conversion and efficiency of mobile advertising. It is also one of the tools of personalized marketing, which is based on the “personal” relationship of business and user. The business seeks to learn as much as possible about the user, and then it offers the user something that fits their preferences and needs.
Mobile stats services allow you to segment app users by actions. You can create a segment of users who ordered a specific product at a specific time. And here’s when a deep link comes into play – when you click on an ad, the user goes to the landing page with an offer that matches their interest.
SkipTheDishes is a Canadian food delivery app that uses deep linking technology. When a user creates their order at the website, they can download the mobile app for iOS or Android. After that, they are forwarded back to the exact step that they were taking. They don’t have to manually go through the entire process again to get back to where they were.
Tip #3: Target users with personalized notifications
Mobile push notifications are messages that an app sends to the user’s smartphone even when the app is not open. The user sees the message on the screen after they turn on the screen. To send such notifications, you do not need to receive special permission from the user – they automatically give consent by installing the app.
You should always give the user an option to turn off those notifications. However, your key task is to actually provoke the user’s interest by those messages so the user does not disable them. The best way to do so is to send personalized notifications. Here is a great push notification example by Amazon: “Deal of the Day: 50% Off Select Infant and Preschool Toys.”
This notification is based on the customer’s purchase history and shows that Amazon cares about its customers by crafting a personalized message specifically for each of them. On the contrary, an example of a bad push notification would be something like “Check out our deal of the day.” This example shows that the brand sent this message to each app user without any personal data in mind.
Here’s how you can personalize your push notifications:
Collect the user’s demographic data, such as age, gender, family details, location, birthday, etc. This will help you create a buyer’s persona and adjust your communication to this data. For example, here’s how Uber informs its users about the taxis available nearby:
Study the user’s behavior within the app and see which actions they are most likely to make. For example, e-commerce mobile apps can study the actions that lead to cart abandonment, or see which items interest their potential customers the most.
Create custom CTAs (calls to action) for your users. According to a study by Jeffrey Vocell, an author at HubSpot, personalized CTAs convert 202% better than generic CTAs. In the same study, Jeffrey suggests that the brands create different CTAs based on the status of their target audiences, such as visitors and leads.
Tip #4: Automate marketing activities to improve user retention
Marketing automation refers to the optimization of routine tasks. Marketers automate the email, social media, and mobile ad campaigns to simplify the promotion and improve its efficiency.
As a rule, mobile marketing automation is used to: optimize the delivery of information about the app, grow and segment leads, evaluate the interest of users in the app, analyze the level of customer satisfaction, increase customer loyalty, improve user retention.
According to a survey by Emailmonday, 75% of companies are currently automating their marketing routine. Additionally, 81% of respondents named customer retention as their top organizational goal for the next year.
Here’s how you can optimize your marketing-related processes:
Social media marketing (SMM)
At the lead generation stage, you can write a series of social media posts and schedule them to be published within specific time intervals.
As a result, your brand will stay in touch with its target audience on a daily basis. Moreover, your website will be getting more traffic while you will be saving time on repetitive actions that are required to write social media posts.
Onboarding sequences
If the user has already installed your app, you can help them finish their onboarding and bring them closer to the conversion stage. To achieve that, write a sequence of onboarding notifications, e.g. a set of short and crisp instructions on how to use your product.
Integrated automation software
There are lots of specialized tools on the market that you can integrate this software with your app to engage new customers, retain the existing ones, and re-engage inactive users.
The Bottom Line
To stay ahead of competitors, your app needs extra effort from your side – it’s not enough just to create it, upload it to the store, and wait for new users. Even if you get thousands of downloads, users can quickly churn if the app does not win their interest.
To market your app to the target audience, you can do the following: Integrate social features, e.g. create an in-app community. Introduce deep linking – links that guide the user to a specific place in the app. Target users with personalized notifications based on their location, age, preferences, etc. Automate marketing activities to improve user retention.
