App Marketing Strategy Essentials for Growth

Once again, Mobtimizers has joined one of the world’s leading conferences on App Marketing to share insights with the leaders of the app economy. The theme of the day was app marketing strategy essentials for growth and this article discusses the main highlights from the first part of The App Promotion Summit in Berlin, 2016.

(APS Berlin 2016 Takeaways, Part I)

Overall, the App Promotion Summit centered around hot topics such as: app engagement and retention, KPIs and Analytics, App Store Search Ads and App Store Optimization and the overall focus was app marketing essentials for growth. 

Important outtakes from the day

Among the main conclusions from the summit is the fact that increasingly, app developers will focus on new, emerging and cheap ways to acquire users. They will look to influencers, SOME and iOS Search Ads. We will also experience more emphasis on retention of app users, which means that developers will have to experience more, test out options and try new things to stay relevant. And ultimately, we will experience a more integrated use of data.

Acquisition trends to pay attention to in 2017

First on stage was Thomas Ruta. He is Growth Marketer at UK Founders Factory, helping portfolio companies find a product/market fit and unlock sustainable growth. Thomas addressed user acquisition:

“In the future, we are going to see a move into new – as well as emerging – channels. Simply because they are cheaper. We will experience a focus on new media types, such as Snapchat and also important and relevant influencers’ own platforms such as websites, blogs, SOME etc. Here installs can be tracked as they are beginning to have scale. And influencers will be able to co-create campaigns and products together.”

Tomas also highlighted other great new acquisition tools with novelties such as iOS Search Ads. But he emphasized that they still have a way to go. When it launches globally and integrates into Spotlight searches it will be big.

Read about Mobtimizers first experiments with Search Ads here.

What can you learn from 175 million installs of your app?

Dubsmash has the world’s largest selection of sounds – from movie and TV quotes to fun and musical sounds. The app has reached impressive 175 million installs with no marketing spend at all. Everything acquired virally and 0 Euros spent on paid acquisition. Addressing their insights on app marketing strategy essentials for growth, John Mcclelland, CPO at Dubsmash said:

“For us it has been important to honor and harness this virality. We made it possible for sharing intimately – via SMS, mail, messenger, WhatsApp and in private messages. We’ve also learned that the three R’s are super important: retention, retention and retention. Trying to acquire new users without having a plan for retention is just stupid and not valuable to your product.

Wrapping up this first segment, we want to quote participant @seanpauldenny:

“People are talking about retention as a KPI, but retention is not a number, it’s an experience. Think engagement (think fun!). #APSBerlin”

At Mobtimizers, we absolutely agree.

Make app users want to come back for more

Vanessa Estrorach, founder & CEO of e-growing, a Barcelona-based mobile marketing agency, shared her tips for engagement and retention and said that her company is currently working hard to help apps survive. Today, people only use 4-5 apps daily, which is less than 10% of the apps the average person has installed on his or her phone.

In the quest for downloads – competetion is fierce. To underline this challenge, participant @peggyanne tweeted:

“Drum roll — how may apps hit 10,000 downloads in the last 7 days from 5,000+ apps launched globally … 79!!#APSBerlin”

“It’s all about making the onboarding process, and how you welcome new users, a pleasant experience. Don’t think you have to explain everything about the app in the first visit. Instead, focus on interactive tutorials and a simple registration. Don’t ask too many questions as it will scare people off.”

Today, there is a wide range of mobile marketing automation tools to cover all aspects of engagement – AppBoy, Leanplum and Adobe all offer different solutions. 

If you are in doubt about your engagement strategy, don’t hesitate to contact us at Mobtimizers as we work with all of the above mentioned tools.