Having a mobile app as part of your business is a very appealing and sexy thing for consumers and prospects nowadays. Unfortunately, many companies, big and small find it extremely challenging to get real traction on their mobile app once they launch it. It is becoming increasingly harder to survive in the competitive world where there are millions of mobile apps in the supersaturated App Stores.

Whether you are a brand who is creating an app for an additional stream of revenue or building brand recognition and product awareness, the chance for failure is high largely due to a poor go-to-market plan.

Gartner predicts that less than 0,01% of all mobile apps will be considered financially successful in 2018.

These are the main reasons why the mobile apps fail:

Poor product discovery and definition

Weak monetization and business strategies

Poor knowledge of App Marketing

Weak Marketing & User Acquisition Plans

Improper product launch strategy

There is a famous quote by Milton Hershey.

“Give them quality. That’s the best kind of advertising.”

Many of us strongly believe in this and this is true, don’t get me wrong. However, when it comes to app marketing, it is only a small part of the greater picture. Many of us are so focused first on building a high-quality app by addressing the pain point of the market and leave the marketing as an afterthought. But in reality, if you want your app to be successful, you need to start first strategising around your marketing and go to market plan before you start developing your app.

My goal with this article is to help you succeed with your mobile app and avoid common pitfalls when it comes to app marketing.

1. Define your product

Defining your product is the first step in creating a go-to-market plan for your app. It’s doesn’t guarantee success but it will lay a strong foundation for a market presence and competitive advantage.

Without properly defining your product you wont be able to align your business goals with your marketing goals. Start by asking questions like:

What is the app?

Why this product or service is being developed?

When will it be available to the market?

Who are your competitors?

How will your app add value beyond the existing pool of mobile apps?

These questions will help you guide in creating an app that is useful and not just usable.

2. Choose your monetization strategy

A monetization strategy is a very sensitive and tricky part. It can either make or break your mobile app. It will have either a positive impact on your user experience or a very drastic negative impact. The million-dollar question is, how do you generate a steady stream of revenue from your app without sacrificing the overall user experience?

The type of app you’re building will ultimately determine your monetization plan. Is your app intended to be a leading source of revenue like a game or an organisational tool like DropBox? Or does it support your e-commerce website or another product or service, like AliExpress’s retail app, for example?

These are the most common mobile app monetization models:

Advertising

Advertising is a good approach to use if you are not charging per app download. However, you need to be careful which style of ad you choose for your app. Some advertisement formats include interstitial, banners, rewards, and native ads.

Native ads aren’t as frustrating for the user compared to an interstitial ad that takes over the screen and this ad format is typically used in apps that are content-based and generally appear in the News Feed. A few good examples of apps that use native ads are Tinder, Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. This type is a preferred option for both publishers and advertisers.

Paid Download

A paid download is another option, it’s harder to succeed at and easier to fail. It’s important that you convey the value of your app provides to users right away in the app store listing if you want to boost app downloads. You need to showcase the uniqueness of your app and how it’s the best option among your competitors. You must do a good job of convincing users that your app is worth the amount they’re paying to download it over a free app. Basically you are asking your prospects to trust your app by asking money upfront.

In-App Purchases

With in-app purchases, you are selling something within your app, whether that’s a virtual good like a token or a physical good like the millions of products on Zalando. With in-app purchases, you are relying on the sales of goods within the app, which requires a strategy behind selling these goods. You need to make sure the path-to-purchase is frictionless so that the life time value of your app stay’s higher. Make it easy for users to purchase goods within your app by ensuring security, and reducing the amount of effort a user has to take to click “Purchase”. But don’t do it to the point that it becomes annoying.

Freemium

With freemium model, your app will include gated features. Think of a dating app where you need to pay to unlock extra features like Badoo. Your app is available for free in the app stores but includes different features that users will need to unlock to experience the full app.

This strategy can be very effective as the users that have downloaded your free app are more interested and engaged with the content, and are thus more likely to pay for the features or tools your app offers at a price.

Subscription

The subscription model is similar to the freemium model, but instead of unlocking features, the app limits the content instead, for example, The Economist, where you have to purchase a subscription to view more content. The app allows the user to view a specific amount of content before they have to pay to view more, or all of it.

Another good example is the Spotify model. Just remember that the free content you allow your users to view needs to be valuable enough so that they’ll want to invest to see more.

3. Marketing and User Acquisition Strategy

A marketing and user acquisition strategy should be tailored to your target audience and the type of app you’re building. You need to understand where your target audience spends their time. Your target audience is out there and they want to find and use your app, you should need to find out where they are spending most of their time and focus on acquiring them from there. It wouldn’t be worth your while to market your app on a publication they don’t read, or an influencer they don’t follow. Make sure that your efforts are well spent by marketing your app in the right places. It is very easy to blow up your acquisition budget.

Your user acquisition tactics should include:

Pre-launch to press and outreach lists, partnerships, influencers, etc.

Teasers and early access offers (closed beta lists, early sign-up pages)

Press kits and media kits

Product sites

App store optimization and search engine optimization

Collecting positive ratings and reviews

Building a social following online

4. Determine Your Initial App Launch Approach

Now you need to think about setting up your launch for success. Will you launch a Minimum Viable Product? Or a mature product? Will you have a soft launch? Or choose a hard launch approach? Or do you want to combine them all? It all depends on your business goals.

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

An MVP allows you to launch an app with a core set of features which will enable you to test and validate fundamental concepts so you can improve your product. With iterative enhancements, you will be able to understand what your users want so you can better address their pain points.

Developing an MVP will also shorten time to market as well as reduce the cost of development. The product discovery phase should include your prioritized product road map, which will allow you to determine what you need for your MVP.

A Soft Launch

A soft launch is a smart approach to take if you want to release your app to a restricted market before spending a lot of time and money on a full launch. The main reason why soft launches are beneficial is that it’s similar to a test run. You can identify bugs and determine feature improvements in a smaller, more targeted market by running a beta test. With a soft launch, you can gather user feedback to drive future product iterations and better prepare for the hard launch.

It will help you to validate which marketing and user acquisition strategy to go forth with.

A Hard Launch

Choosing the hard launch approach will allow you to launch your app fully to the market, faster. Hard launches are more expensive and are often used by large companies that have the budget to support it. The reason why companies would choose a hard launch approach is to get to market faster, giving them a competitive advantage.

Closing Thoughts

Marketing your app shouldn’t be an afterthought; instead, it should be an ongoing, iterative process that includes interrelated and dynamic areas of focus. You can have the most amazing app in the world, but if no one can find it or get in touch with then all of it has been in vain. By including these four essentials steps in developing a go-to-market plan, you’ll be able to gain a competitive edge in the saturated app market.

Preparing a go-to-market plan for your app will help you define your product properly, identify market demand and target audience, determine a monetization strategy, and plan a robust marketing and user acquisition strategy to increase your chances of mobile app success.