Are you wondering how you can take your app growth to the next level, but you’re out of ideas to do so?
Have you come to your App Store Optimization (ASO) knowledge limits and don’t know what you can do to increase traction and get more app users?
Given today’s complex and competitive world of apps, needless to say that app marketing is tough and overwhelming. This article will give you five app growth hacking tips that will help you improve your app and achieve higher results.
1. Update your ASO regularly
A very important aspect to understand is that App Store Optimization is not static but rather an ongoing process requiring a lot of time and effort.
This translates to the fact that you need to make some regular updates and iterations in order to benefit from the best ASO results. Updates can help to improve your rankings, conversions, downloads and retention.
Depending on your app’s purpose, on your competitors’ strategies and on the various trends, it is recommended to update your ASO about every two months. Too frequent updates could confuse the algorithm (keyword indexing takes usually six weeks), harm your store position and give users a bad impression (e.g: changing your app name too frequently could create confusion).
However, updating your app every six to eight weeks gives the algorithm proof that your app is fresh and alive. Plus, it will help you find the right keywords to target and the most converting visuals (if you monitor closely the impact of your changes).
Another advantage behind frequent updates is that your negative reviews will be “hidden” and less accessible, so you can hope to collect more positive ones and get a higher average rating.
Of course, don’t simply make an ASO update alone. Rather, benefit from new releases to update your app as well, fixing bugs for example, refreshing your design or implementing some new features.
2. Always measure your app marketing efforts
It is crucial to gauge the response and the impact of every of your ASO and app marketing changes in order to better understand what’s really working and what’s not.
A great way to do so is to implement some A/B testing in order to see which visuals or copy work the best. Some of our favorite A/B testing tools include Optimizely, Apptimize, Leanplum and Spliforce.
A/B testing helps to increase your conversion rate and, ultimately, increase your user base.
Ideally, you should try to measure all different kinds of metrics and elements of your app, as much as possible. Don’t be afraid to expend time and resources into app analytics; it is really worth it.
There are a lot of powerful analytics tools like MixPanel (available for both Apple or Android apps) that can help you track precise in-app events.
The first step is to define a few microconversion objectives in order to determine the right funnel leading to your final macro-objective. Once your conversion funnel is defined, keep track of the most important metrics and adjust your actions accordingly.
3. Use cross-promotion
One of the most effective ways to drive new installs is to cross-promote multiple apps between each other. The point here is to benefit from the audience of one app in favor of another.
In order to get the most out of cross-promotion, it is more effective to use apps that are more or less related to each other.
For example, if you want to promote a puzzle game, you will have better chances to convert if you promote your app on another game, rather than on a food delivery app. Chances will be even higher if you choose another puzzle or an intellectual game.
You can use your own apps or your friends’ apps, but also other apps that are part of specific ad networks and platforms, such as TapDaq.
4. Use push notifications
According to a study from Localytics, app users who accept push notifications for an app open the app 171 percent more often than users who disable them.
These short, prompt- and time-limited messages are indeed a powerful weapon to increase app retention and prevent app abandonment.
Whether they are promotional, contextual or simply informative, push notifications have the power to awaken sleeping users and encourage them to use your app again.
Push notifications will also benefit your app from an ASO aspect, since the store algorithms take into account app retention and engagement.
It is therefore essential to implement a push notification strategy that will prompt your app users with interesting or engaging content at the right time.
Push notifications should also be used to encourage your users to leave a review of your app. Try not to reach out directly to new users but rather wait for at least three sessions.
5. Optimize your social signals
Last, but not least, it is crucial to work on your social signals if you want to take your app to the next level of growth.
Your app marketing strategy must definitely include a strong focus on social media, with different actions according to the various channels you chose to tackle.
Social signals include likes on your app’s Facebook page, tweets mentioning your app, YouTube viewers, Pinterest followers, Google +1’s and more.
The more interactions and engagement you drive, the more your app stands to gain in brand awareness, reputation, visibility and even in app rankings and indexing. Indeed, the app store algorithms do take into account these signals to rank apps.
It is therefore important to increase your efforts at building a strong social media strategy that will stimulate, interest and engage your users. Try to get involved as much as possible.
Summary
Building an effective app marketing strategy is more and more complex. It should include a whole set of various elements that must all create a powerful synergy that will increase your app awareness and ultimate drive downloads.
It is crucial to understand that a constant renewal and frequent updates are required in order to keep growing.
Keeping track of your marketing efforts is more than ever important. This is actually made easy with the emancipation of analytics and event-tracking tools. The 2016 digital era offers plenty of tools and resources enabling you to take control of your app business in depth.
Finally, don’t forget to use push notifications to prompt your users and never underestimate the power of social media.
Did you find these five growth hacking tips useful? Share your feedback in the comments below!