Mobile Application Marketing Strategy: Dominating the Mobile App Store

June 27, 2011

Developing a mobile app? Cutting edge social media marketing techniques can be combined with classic marketing tactics to ensure your success in the App Store.

After scoring millions of downloads and millions of revenue, popular mobile apps like “Angry Birds” or “Tap Tap Revenge” have become the gold standard for independent mobile application developers everywhere, as every new app strives to reach the weekly top downloaded app ranking or to become featured in the App Store. Clearly, besides being superlative products, both in their ease of use and their entertainment value, these apps also owe their commercial success in no small way to successful marketing, especially through viral marketing and word of mouth.

However, what should mobile developers consider if they were to emulate those experiencing success with their own applications? Is there a surefire secret sauce of mobile application developments that only a few savvy companies know and utilize to their great benefit?

I did a bit of research to learn about mobile apps marketing strategies and I found a good number of resources and examples. What is not surprising, though, is that successful mobile application marketing is all about a good combination of tried and true software/technology marketing techniques and creative, innovative marketing tactics that rely on the unique mobile application distribution model.

Here are some key takeaways:

– Pre-launch: To ensure launch success, mobile application developers should use a number of tactics to generate interest in their upcoming apps. These include word of mouth marketing allowing  sneak/exclusive preview,  developing an attractive app website or landing page, distributing an app video, etc., and implementing tactics that come from the game developer’s marketing playbook.

– Immediately after Launch: Mobile application developers should focus intensely on user feedback gathering, lead generation (through paid advertisement), continuation of word of mouth campaigns, and immediate submission of the app to various mobile apps review websites. These will be important to power the download momentum of the apps.

– Post Launch: Important tactics include app store listing optimization, submission to popular mobile app blogs, user generated content, creating user videos to maintain the marketing momentum and ensuring that the app continues to raise interests.

– On-going maintenance: Continue to grow the app’s presence online and in the app store by encouraging user generated content, considering the creation of a user community, pushing automatic updates, and maintaining blogs.

– Classic web marketing strategies can be used to help gain momentum for the application in the beginning. Paid advertisements, a launch website, and PR 2.0 efforts are all important in getting the app out of the gate.

– There are some tactics that are unique to the mobile application market such as App Store listing management and optimization (so that the apps can be found in as many relevant searches as possible).

– Cross-selling and up-selling are important since the mobile app, once in use, has a captive audience that is perfect for these techniques.

Developing a great mobile application is just half of the battle to App Store domination. Savvy marketing techniques and judicious combinations of traditional and new age marketing tools are important to the ultimate success of your application and your revenue from the app.

Chief Business Officer at UserTesting

Tien Anh joined UserTesting in 2015 after extensive financial and strategic experiences at OpenView, where he was an investor and advisor to a global portfolio of fast-growing enterprise SaaS companies. Until 2021, he led the Finance, IT, and Business Intelligence team as CFO of UserTesting. He currently leads initiatives for long term growth investments as Chief Business Officer at UserTesting.