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Homepage > Blog > The Complete Guide to Mobile App Marketing for 2024

The Complete Guide to Mobile App Marketing for 2024

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In 2023, customers spent an estimated $45.63 billion on Android apps, not counting in-app purchases, which makes the true market cap much higher, estimated at over a couple hundred billion dollars worldwide. According to Consumer Affairs, over 90 percent or over 300 million Americans own at least one smartphone.

Every smartphone user needs 5-6 applications to operate smartphones smoothly. In addition to hundreds of other apps that are designed to make smartphones brighter, the app market has gained its giant size and tends to grow more. For example, in just the first quarter of 2023, there were an estimated combined 35 billion app downloads from Apple and the Google Play store.

combined app downloads

This guide will give a comprehensive overview of how mobile app marketing works, how to choose the best services to market mobile apps, and which marketing strategy will be the most effective.

 

What is App Marketing?

Mobile app marketing is marketing a mobile app, advertising and selling your app on the Google Play store and places like that. Like any other product or service, mobile app marketing tactics should have a workable and responsive strategy to stand out in a highly competitive market.

There are over 6.84 billion smartphone users in the world today. This means you can easily be swallowed by competitors, even if your apps are the best ones. Mobile app marketing makes your app stand out, drives downloads, and increases revenues. In such a large and competitive global market, you need effective marketing strategies for mobile apps to get your share of the market. 

The Importance of Developing an Effective Marketing Strategy for Mobile Applications

Due to high competition and market saturation, the only way for your app to stand out is with an effective app marketing strategy and advertising campaign. You just can’t make money selling your app without app marketing. In fact, few are even likely to see it in the app store. It doesn’t matter how good it is. Good apps without app marketing may as well not exist. Bad apps still make a ton of money through effective app marketing.

Simply put, marketing a mobile app is even more important than making an excellent mobile app if you want to turn a profit and the goal is to make a lot of money. It is worth contacting an app marketing agency to work out the best strategy.

How to Build a Marketing Plan for Your Mobile App 

how to build a marketing plan for mobile app

It is necessary to develop a step-by-step plan to achieve your marketing goals. The mobile app market is highly competitive, so the strategy should consider many factors, including the following:

  • competitors’ analysis
  • target audience
  • properly set goals
  • budgeting, and 
  • risk assessment. 

To avoid oversights or improper steps such as overbudgeting, weak marketing steps or research failures, you should take on definite steps in a setup order. Below are six essential steps to get, implement, and monitor an effective marketing plan.

Define Your Target Audience 

Identify the demographics, preferences, and behaviors of your ideal users. Understand the specific needs your app addresses for your target audience. It’s ok if it doesn’t fill a “real need.” We don’t need mobile games to pass the time, but we still enjoy them. It is ok to get creative here if you need to. It does really help if your app has a specific purpose and use case and fills a need. Just try not to answer a question that no one is asking unless you are sure of your innovation. 

Your app marketing strategy can work better when you tailor it to your target audience of users. But don’t worry if it appeals to others more, too. Simply use that information, adjust your strategies, and include more people in your target audience. 

Competitor Analysis

Research and analyze competitors in your app’s niche. Identify their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The mobile app markets are highly competitive, with a few very big players. In 2022, mobile games made over twice the revenue of AAA games for PC.  The mobile games space is saturated with competition as a result of this trend.

You need to know your competition, know what they are doing, and learn from their mistakes. But, try not to worry or stress too much about competitors either.   It is all just information to help you follow the market trends, not just what is trendy. The trend is your friend. Being well-informed helps you become successful.

Set Clear Objectives

Establish measurable goals for your mobile app marketing. Remember that a SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely and you should set SMART goals. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to track success. One of your main KPIs should be app downloads. You may also want to track in-app purchases or in-app ad revenue. As always, avoid vanity metrics.

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For mobile app marketing, you may also like to track 5-star reviews. Google Play and other app stores aren’t interested in marketing or promoting your mobile applications in particular until you’ve already proven you are successful with a lot of verified 5-star reviews and downloads. So don’t rely on that early on. Make sure your KPIs make sense for your mobile app marketing strategy.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Your unique proposition should include the following steps:

  1. Clearly articulate what sets your mobile app apart from others. 
  2. Highlight the unique features or benefits that attract users. If it isn’t that unique, that’s ok. You can be creative about how you are different. 
  3. Play to your app’s strengths. With so many other competing apps on the market, it is important to stand out with a unique selling proposition. You have to provide some real value with your app in order to sell it. 

Budget Allocation

Allocate a budget for mobile app marketing activities. Prioritize channels that align with your target audience and mobile application marketing objectives. Use SMART goals, information from your KPIs, and research to make the best ROI by allocating your budget and resources carefully.

It is a cliche because it is true that it takes money to make money, and you need capital to be a capitalist. The best app in the world may not be downloaded once without a good-sized budget for app marketing.

Choose Appropriate Marketing Channels

Choose the right channels, such as social media, influencer marketing, email, and so on. Tailor your approach based on where your target audience is most active: 

  • Your strategy should be made highly available to your audience wherever they are. It doesn’t help if you are in the wrong place. 
  • Defining your target audience and their behavior helps make sure that you are in the right places where your audience will see and engage. 
  • Obviously, you’ll want to be on the screens of their phones and tablets. That way, they can immediately convert by downloading your app.

Still, don’t overlook desktop PC users, smart TV users, and the physical world. If you want to make it really big, you’ll need to be everywhere your target audience is and choose multiple marketing channels. That way, you reach the largest number of people and remind them to download or use your app.

Proven Mobile App Marketing Strategies

proven mobile app marketing strategies

The best way to get a workable strategy is to involve a team of experts who will be able to execute complex tasks that demand deep knowledge and practice. Why do you need an expert team? Because your strategy must be tracked and improved 24/7. The only way to be on the same page with your users and successfully compete with other apps is your total commitment to your plan and goals. Please view below the steps vital to implement your marketing strategy and answer this question.

Create a Landing Page for a Mobile Application

Your mobile app marketing strategy must include a good landing page. Make sure your app and landing page both have good mobile interfaces. You can allow users to create accounts that are used on both your website and app. Be sure to include at least one good call to action (CTA). Those CTAs are when you ask people to do something like download your app from the Google Play store. Another example of a CTA is “Please contact NinjaPromo about your app marketing strategy after reading this article.”

You should showcase your app and benefits on your app landing page. You can also link to any other apps and projects that you are promoting. Tailor your landing page to appeal to your target audience. Show any promotional offers or incentives and maybe your affiliate program. 

Leverage App Store Optimization (ASO)

Your mobile application marketing needs to include ASO, the same way your content needs SEO. There are two good methods for good ASO and getting more downloads. Because the top goal is growing your number of downloads and your regular user base. Those are two important KPIs that show return on investment, your ROI.

One way is to follow the best ASO practices. The other way is through a paid campaign. That comes with a cost per install (CPI) that you can pass on to your customers.

Following ASO best practices has significant benefits.

  1. It increases the visibility of your app in the app stores. It also lowers the cost of acquiring new loyal users in your community. 
  2. It boosts downloads and conversion rates organically. 
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Of course, companies like Apple and Google are not sharing exactly what the best ASO practices are. Like SEO, it is more of an art. Comparable to SEO, ASO uses keywords that help the right users find the right app, your app.

Run App Store Ads

Advertising is an important part of mobile app marketing. App store ads on Apple and Google Play store can seem expensive to new developers, but they are required if you want to have a best-selling app. ASO, like SEO, can only take you so far. Having developers pay for advertising is part of their business model. As part of a large app marketing strategy, app store ads can have good ROI if you have a good app.

Without app store ads, it is less likely your app will be seen and discovered by new users. While they do care about selling apps in general, they don’t care about selling yours in particular unless you give them more of a reason to, and your advertising dollars go a long way with that.

Execute Strategic Social Media Campaigns

It is easy to integrate social media into a mobile app with APIs (application programming interfaces). That makes it easy to integrate social media into your mobile app marketing strategy. Maybe your app generates user content that can be shared or is a social game, so your users share that they want to play with their Facebook friends. 

Marketing for mobile apps should also include social media marketing. Anything from managing pages and scheduling posts to social media advertising should be a part of your strategy. It is another way to interact with your audience and just good mobile application marketing. Things go viral on social media, and that helps generate growth and app awareness. While omnipresence across all social media platforms is a goal, it takes a lot to achieve that. So just go where your customers are. Most phones have the Facebook app preinstalled, so that’s an easy choice for marketing campaigns. 

Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Mobile Apps

Content marketing, such as SEO articles, is an important part of mobile app marketing. It is a chance to explain more about how to use your app or things about your industry. You can make blog posts on your changelogs as you add new features, fix bugs, and keep your app up to date.

SEO content marketing should be part of your mobile app marketing funnel.

The content should be informative and stand on its own, even if the point is to sell your products and services. In this case, the point will be to generate new users and free trial registrations for your app. Content marketing requires a lot of time and expertise. That’s why many companies prefer to use mobile app marketing services like NinjaPromo to run it for them.

Launch Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing campaigns are another part of marketing for mobile applications because everyone uses their Gmail account to access the app market on Google Play. That can make it seamless to link to your app in the Google Play store and use marketing email campaigns. Like social media integration, email integration in your app and app marketing is required.

Email is a good way to remind people to keep using your app after they downloaded it and run promotional offers. That makes email good for retention and growth. It is also pretty easy to track the results of email app marketing campaigns.

Collaborate with influencers

Before going to influencers for your mobile app marketing. It is a good idea to see an example of what not to do. D’Angelo Wallace explains where the infamous company behind the mobile game Raid: Shadow Legends went wrong with their influencer tactics as an influencer on YouTube. They provided a bad user experience playing their mobile app game and left a lot of evidence of allegedly lying in a way that breaks US Federal law.

Networking with influencers can bring your branding strategy many benefits for the following reasons:

  1. Some influencers may only choose to promote your app organically because it is good, and that’s good enough payment for them to do some mobile app marketing for you.
  2. Influencers can be good customers and a great way to grow your community. Working with influencers on YouTube makes sense. 
  3. Many will also want to turn the attention they receive, their large audience, views, and likes into dollars. Sponsors help them do that better than YouTube’s ad monetization. Also, it places your marketing inside the video, where it is less likely to be blocked or skipped.

Harness the Viral Loop

Yes, the phrase“viral loop” is a term that became unfortunately associated with the events of 2020, and it is still the industry term for when something spreads online to many, many people because it is popular. They share it with their contacts, who share it with others, and so on, which creates a viral loop. Integrating ways to share on social media and in email increases your app’s chances of generating a viral loop. Things tend to go viral on social media, after all.

If you want to go viral (you really do), then your marketing needs to be contagious. Your community of users should have a lot of easy ways to spread your app. 

Build a Community

Build a strong community of app users and include them in your mobile app marketing strategy. New influencers may emerge in your community. If you have a good app user experience that people like, then your community will generate a lot of mobile app awareness for you.

A good, knowledgeable community will have people who like to help with troubleshooting, tech support, and bug reports. Above all, they will help your app go viral as they will be enthusiasts and suggest others try it out, too. A good community is good marketing.

Collaborate for Cross-Promotion

Cross-promotion is simply promoting your product with the cooperation of another platform or another developer. You will have to collaborate with others so that you both benefit. 

  • One good thing is that cross-promotion can be free or very low cost, but you both make money and get additional traffic. Different cross-promotion deals and networks have different rules and agreements. It often is or at least includes an element of barter exchange.
  • Cross-promotion with other developers works best when you have overlapping audiences but you are not direct competitors. Of course, if you can get a deal with device manufacturers or carriers to sell their mobile devices with your app preinstalled, that’s worth a lot. 

The subject of cross-promotion can be complicated because it can mean different things depending on the kinds of cross-promotion deals you can get. 

Really, the point is to collaborate with others to sell your app and make the most money that you can from your mobile application marketing. By sharing an audience, you can get a much larger audience than you would in other ways.

Manage App Reviews and Ratings

A great way to improve your marketing and app reviews is to respond to negative reviews and address the problems that they bring up if you can. A good app makes for good marketing and more five-star reviews. You can show improvement and response to criticism, and get them to improve your rating. You can also remind them to rate your app five stars on the Google Play store with a popup after they’ve used your app for a period of time.

Utilize Localized Marketing Strategies 

Different locations have different demographics, slang, languages, and customs. Even if you want to conquer the world with mass appeal, you need to localize your strategies to different areas. That way, you are more relatable to more people and can cater to different audiences in various markets.

Different localized markets may have different mobile device preferences and spending habits. Obviously, you’ll want to target major cities and population centers that have good service and lots of mobile traffic. Some affluent areas have less people, though they are likely to have nicer phones and be able to spend more. When you place advertising in the physical world, localization can be important. Especially if the locals have a different language and culture.

The mobile app market is global, and in order to tap into that global market, you also need to be able to adapt your design to different parts of the world. Consider hiring mobile app design services to help your app look attractive to local communities in every market you are going to enter. If you are thinking smaller than that, that’s fine, and localization will be even more important for you.

Implement Referral and Loyalty Programs

This doesn’t have to cost you much. You can incentivize referrals and daily use of your mobile app with in-app virtual items or features. It is one way to include your user base in your mobile app marketing strategy. Consider that referral codes and vanity URLs are not perfect for tracking the performance of influencers and affiliates. Many will simply search your app on the app store or visit your app landing page without using the referral code or special vanity URL after encountering the sponsored content of an influencer. They may not take full advantage of a promotional offer that way either, but it is still good because they still download your app.

It does help anyway to track referrals by using referral codes and vanity URLs, so use them even if they aren’t perfect. In the case of a popular influencer on YouTube, also be sure to check if there’s an increase in downloads the first 30 minutes after sponsored content first appears.

Loyalty programs and affiliate referral programs are a great way to encourage daily use of your app with incentives. Again, it doesn’t have to cost much of anything. Virtual items, in-app currency, small features, and quality-of-life improvements all work as great incentives for your mobile application marketing.

Continuously Update and Enhance Your App

Having a good app that you update and improve over time is good. The mobile app marketing trends show that you can use your changelog as a part of your strategy. Get your users excited about new features. Show that you actually respond to their feedback by fixing bugs and problems or by adding commonly requested new features. Manufacturers release a new mobile device every year, and you’ll want to make new updates to make sure to keep up with the new devices.

A minimum viable product might be cute at launch, but you still need to provide much more than the minimum over time. 

The Importance of Testing and Optimizing Your Strategy Based on Results

It’s money. That’s the importance, and that’s the reason you need to optimize your app marketing strategy based on results. Yes, you sometimes have to spend a lot of money on marketing. Failures happen sometimes and give you more information about marketing mobile apps. Successes make you a lot more money than you spend. That’s what you want: a big ROI for your budget and efforts in carrying out your app marketing strategy

Unique Strategies, Unique Results: Mobile Marketing by NinjaPromo

NinjaPromo is a full-service company. They can help you create a unique mobile application marketing strategy for your unique company and mobile app. NinjaPromo can provide you with unique, successful results, too and offers a high ROI for your app marketing and advertising dollars. NinjaPromo really is full service in that even if you don’t have an app to market. They can create one for you from your ideas. NinjaPromo is more than an advertising or marketing agency; they are also a mobile app development agency.  

NinjaPromo understands marketing for mobile apps, because they are also mobile app developers themselves. So, don’t wait to contact NinjaPromo now!

Conclusion

There is a lot that goes into mobile application marketing. In fact, marketing and advertising have proven even more important than just developing a good mobile application. Bad apps have still made money and gained temporary popularity with good marketing. That means you can beat the competition with an even better app.

Managing marketing strategies for mobile apps is a large undertaking, with a schedule and multiple steps with many different parts. The formula for success is not simple or easy to follow. You are doing well to study and read this far. It is a good idea to work with others on your app marketing strategy and delegate what you can. Remember to set SMART goals. You’ve got this, and you’ve got the help of NinjaPromo.

The Importance of Unique Ninja App Marketing Service

It is the dark truth that having a quality app is not enough. You have to have great marketing. You need to be unique and have a unique value proposition. Even then, it is enough. You still need great marketing. You need a good ROI because, let’s face it, great marketing and advertising isn’t cheap or easy. No matter how SMART your goals are, you need ninja marketing to achieve them. You need NinjaPromo. That’s the importance of a unique ninja approach.

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