3 Powerful Mobile App Marketing Strategies For User Acquisition

Even the best apps can fail without users, these 3 mobile App marketing strategies will boost your user acquisition and drive sales.

Image by Parampreet Chanana from Pixabay

No matter how great your app is and how much time it took to build, it will not sell itself. Just like with any other product, creating a high-quality app is not enough. You need to choose the right channels to reach your target audience and persuade it to download the app. 

There are many ways to acquire users for your mobile app, but here are three of them that every app must use. 

1. App Store Optimization (ASO)

When people download an app, they are looking for a way to fulfill a certain need. They open their app store and search for an app that would fit their needs best – or the very first app that shows up after they type in their request in the search bar. That’s where App Store Optimization (ASO) comes into play. Every user you gain goes through the store, which makes ASO the keystone of organic user acquisition. 

Make your app page as informative and concise as possible so that the intended audience can find it. Just like SEO helps the websites make it to the top of the search results, ASO can improve your app’s discoverability and visibility in the app store. 

ASO is a continuous process – you should update your app page regularly to make sure you showcase all the features and updates that make your app stand out. 

Here are the aspects of your app page that play a key role in ASO and user acquisition.

App icon

Although the app icon does not play a key role in the conversion process, it is a crucial creative asset that follows the person all along their customer journey. The users see the app logo on the app store page, in the search results, in top charts, and in their app menu once they download the app. 

When designing a logo, consider the purpose of your app, the mood you want to convey, and the competitors’ logos. Is there a certain trend that will help the user instantly recognize what kind of app they are dealing with? If yes, it might be a good idea to follow the trend but also add something that will help the app stand out.

App Name 

Coming up with a perfect app name isn’t easy — it should be memorable, but easy to spell and say; it should be descriptive so that the users know what kind of app it is, but it should still stand out among the competitor apps. 

Besides the app name itself, you can add keywords to your title in the app store to make sure your app ranks high in relevant searches. App Store allows you to add up to 30 characters to your title, and for Google Play the limit is 30 characters too, but remember that quite often, less is more. 

App Screenshots 

App screenshots are the best way to give your users a feel of the app. Your screenshots should showcase your app’s key features as well as its unique aspects that could persuade the user to make the download. While the app’s interface is the key visual element of the screenshot, you can add other design elements such as captions that could help the user understand what feature they are looking at. 

At first glance, users see 1 or 2 screenshots, so choose them carefully and make sure to include your unique selling point. Although the screenshot gallery is a very important ASO aspect, not many users will take the time to scroll through all of your screenshots. Focus on the ones people see immediately when they click to open your app page.

App description 

Unfortunately for copywriters, nowadays, users don’t like to read. If you’ve got time on your hands, you’d much rather download the app and see for yourself instead of reading a paragraph about it. Unsurprisingly, very few users actually read the descriptions. But for the ones who do, ask yourself – what kind of information could they be searching for? Most of the time, the main features of the app and the reasons why that particular app is better than the alternatives.

When writing your description, keep the algorithms in mind. The text you include in the description will impact your app’s position in the store, so it’s better to stick to facts and be precise for the algorithms rather than write an entertaining text for the readers. 

App ratings and reviews

Since they are written by real users and not the app’s developers, many users pay much more attention to ratings and reviews than to other parts of the app page. Moreover, the number of reviews can give the users an idea of how popular the app is since App Store doesn’t disclose the number of downloads, just the reviews. It is also a chance for you to show how you deal with feedback and how you interact with your users. Reacting to negative feedback is a much better idea than deleting it — people tend to be suspicious of the apps that have a spotless 5-star rating. 

2. Social media presence

You cannot build a proper user acquisition strategy without social media. Social media marketing is a fast and affordable way to reach your target audience and persuade them to check out your app without being too pushy. Your social media content should be a good balance of “sales” – content that would encourage your users to download the app – and creative content that would build their loyalty towards the brand. 

Content strategy

Depending on the audience you’re trying to reach, you can opt for more entertaining playful content or something more informative and straightforward. Make sure your tone of voice stays the same throughout the app and your social channels. If your app has several target audiences, consider creating separate content for them. Something that would work great on LinkedIn will most likely flop on TikTok.

Feedback source

Social media is also a great tool for collecting feedback and gaining insights about your followers. Create engaging content that they would appreciate and add a few posts and stories here and there to bring the users back to the app. A great way to showcase your app is to repost your followers’ content – it’s cheap, simple, and trustworthy. 

Long-term benefits

One thing to keep in mind about social media is that it won’t help you acquire new users straight away. If you have a unique app that has no alternatives on the market, simply showing up in someone’s feed could be enough, but most of the time, that’s not the case. However, social media works great for building and maintaining long-term relationships with your customers. When the users feel seen and heard, they are more likely to give you valuable feedback and stay on the app instead of leaving for your competitors. 

3. Influencer marketing

One area of social media advertising that deserves special recognition is influencer marketing. Even though there are countless advertising formats in the world now, people’s trust in conventional advertising is only getting worse. Influencer marketing is one of the few formats that many people still find trustworthy.

Benefits of influencer marketing

When it comes to user acquisition, influencer marketing works as large-scale word of mouth. We tend to trust the opinions of people that we know or people we look up to, and influencers we follow fall into the latter category. Social media influencers can include a direct link to your app in their content, and you will get new traffic in no time. Besides, there are so many influencers with different price lists, following sizes, and niches that every app will find someone that would be a good fit. 

User acquisition through influencer marketing 

Taimi app is a great example of how you can use social media and your influencers’ network to bring new people to the app in an organic way. Every year, Taimi, which is a social network for LGBTQ+ people, hosts an in-app event where famous speakers host live streams. Taimi uses its social channels to inform people about the event and introduce the speakers, while the influencers also announce their streams on social media. Many of them have large loyal audiences, so their fans download the app to see the streams. Since those influencers and their audiences are also mostly LGBTQ+, there is a high chance that the user who installs the app to watch the stream will stay on the app later on.