Tips for introducing an advertising campaign for a mobile application

Any product needs advertising, and mobile applications, of course, were no exception. Advertising a mobile application is a high art, because in order to build a working marketing plan, you need to analyze a lot of parameters and do no less work.

Let us consider in more detail the approximate checklist of the organization of advertising an application:
1. Determining the type of application and the general strategy for advertising it.
2. Calculation of the advertising budget.
3. Pre-release activity:
• Setting the trailer.
• Preparation of banners.
4. Viral mechanisms.
5. Work with the media.
6. Work with ratings and reviews.
7. Push and Email notifications.

Determining the type of application and overall strategy

To understand how and who needs to advertise the application, you first need to determine what kind of application it is and what should be achieved through advertising. To do this, you can refer to the following table, which helps to choose the optimal advertising strategy:



Let us consider each of the strategies in more detail:

1) Tops and charts are applications for the popularity of which it is necessary to organize mass demand and guarantee their presence in the charts (the best free ones, editorial choice, etc. .). They are always shareware.

2) The number of installations - the driving force of this strategy is the presence in the first places of the search by category. We recommend using batch monetization of the application and demo version.

3) Targeted - when distributing the application in this case, the emphasis is on targeted advertising for the end user. Our tips for advertising this type are similar to those for the second type.

Budget calculation

For applications such as "Targeting" advertising sites for the most part provide statistics, thanks to which you can easily calculate the budget of advertising. For the “Tops and Charts” and “Number of Installations” types, it is first necessary to analyze competitors in this area.

For example, you created an application. In order to get into the "Tops" you need to generate within the first 72 hours from the release of 8 to 15 thousand downloads, while paying special attention to the last 24 hours. For the “Number of Installations” type, you need to study the categories in which you would like to see your application in the highest positions. In this case, an average of 1 to 5 thousand downloads is required for the selected category.

To understand the percentage of downloads, we present the table:

Prerelease activity

At the considered stage, it is already necessary to form the main consumers of the product, product or service you are offering, as well as prepare the main tools:

1. Landing page or in another way, the landing page is a page that is referenced in advertisements, search engines, banners, social networks, etc .;

2. Preparation of banners. Even the most skilled advertiser, carefully and for a long time developing a “perfect” banner, taking into account full information about the target audience of advertising, cannot give a 100% guarantee that this banner will definitely attract the user. That is why we recommend developing at least 10 banners. In addition, it is important to regularly expand this banner package, since in a month literally all interested users will see your advertisement, and it will either get tired or stop paying attention to it. Users need to be surprised!

3. Setting the trailer. All trailers can be divided into three main types:

• teaser - this is a production video designed to describe all the advantages of your application;
• video presentation of the application offered by you;
• gameplay video used for advertising games and representing a record of the interface and directly the gaming component of your application.

4. The pre-order tool is an interesting technique. For example, when you request an email from a user, you promise to notify him of changes in your application (the beginning of the promotion, discounts, launch, a new interface, etc.), for the installation of which he will receive some bonus in the application after the release.

Viral mechanisms

Often, viral mechanisms turn the application into a source of spam, which is extremely annoying to users. This is the main mistake of the developers of these products. In the case of viral mechanisms, the following should be considered first of all:

• “Viralka” is a word of mouth, and by no means spam.
• The quality of the application is the main thing, its mechanism is secondary.

The main problem, in our opinion, is that the developed application as much as possible does not intrusively push the user to tell acquaintances, friends and colleagues about it. For example, it can be tools such as buttons “share with friends” or “ask friends” on social networks.

Work with the media

An important point is the availability of a complete “press kit” application, as well as its free version for bloggers and journalists, who will also create free good advertising for you, making information about your application public. A good press kit should contain:

• the logo of the application and the developer;
• screenshots;
• detailed description;
• features of your application (its competitive difference);
• art drawings (most often used in game development - the main artistic concept).

In addition, it may be very useful for you to publish articles on thematic portals, where the end consumer will see them more likely.

The so-called “let’s players” also work as an excellent tool for advertising games - people who record and comment on the process of passing the game, describing the essence and details of the game, and publishing them on their channels.

Work with reviews and ratings

Directly working with reviews is currently only possible on Google Play, but unfortunately, this functionality is often ignored by most publishers. But there are also a number of techniques that allow you to not directly work with these indicators:

• Sowing grades. For example, a pop-up window asking you to rate applications with only two options: "rate at 5" and "rate at 1-4";

• Ability to leave reviews within the application and sow them;

• “Cheat” ratings. A number of services, including ours, offer the order of positive ratings for the application.

• Barter with the user, that is, some kind of mutually beneficial cooperation. For example, an offer to the user to receive an in-app bonus for a positive rating.

Email and Push Notifications

Email newsletter is by far one of the most effective and cheapest means of returning a user to the application. The main problem here is getting the user's email address, because this is a kind of invasion of personal life, which often causes negative consumers. The most optimal way to get customer data is a barter system with the user in any form.

We have identified two basic rules for Push and Email notifications:
1. A maximum of one notification per day is possible;
2. Notifications are allowed to be sent only in the daytime until 21:00, taking into account the time zone of the consumer.

All notifications are a kind of spam, and not every application can afford to consistently “spam” a consumer without the risk of being deleted. For example, if your product is a tool for communication between users (social networks, pagers), then you can send push notifications that a user has received a message without risking being considered a “spam” application.

We continue to collect questions that you are most interested in working with the promotion of mobile applications. Leave your questions on our website and our specialists will promptly answer you.
Regards, top4app.com Team