Mobile apps have increased in popularity over the last few years, to the point where it seems like everything and everyone has an app. The growth in this industry has been so extensive that we are now ordering and paying for our morning coffees from our phones, paying for parking and even tracking our nutritional information with apps.
With the widespread knowledge and availability of the app industry, developing the app isn’t the challenge anymore; it’s attracting users and getting them to engage with it regularly.
In my experience, attracting and engaging users to sign up and continually use your app is the main challenge facing many businesses using this digital marketing tool. I’ve outlined below a few ways you might consider to help you increase and retain users for your app:
- Attracting the Audience
Incentives in the form of a referral program, for example, are great ways to spread awareness of your app. When a current user refers a friend, both of them get a reward, which may be anything from a gift card to app credits. For apps, referral programs really work. In the digital age, referral programs for your app could cause a ripple effect and before you know it, one referral has turned into hundreds if not thousands of new users. Invest the time to understand your target audience and create the “right” incentive program because they have to value what you’re offering.
- Building Partnerships
You may not have considered this, but partnerships with other apps (particularly those that have users that would not necessarily be interested in using your app), seems to be building strong alliances and benefits for users. For example, the MyFitness Pal app has partnered with Pedometer and other distance calculating apps, making it easy for people to integrate their physical and nutritional data and great for the app owners who have been able to extend their user base.
Finding relevant partners that would work for your app is key to making this a success. It is important to again invest the time to think about what apps would give you the perfect symbiotic relationship that would benefit you, them and your users.
- Leveraging Social Media Sharing
Your current users are your best brand ambassadors, so treat them as such. Happy customers share their happiness with their friends, so think about implementing a sharing program on the app. Is there an easy way for users to share their experience on the app to their social channels? For example, if a user is using an app to record their morning jog, can they issue a distance challenge to their friends via Facebook? Allowing this capability on your app will expose the app to your current user’s network, multiplying the exposure of your brand. In a culture of sharing, users are happy and proud to share what they’ve done, so think about what aspects of your app can be easily shared to networks like Facebook and Twitter, as the reach here is endless.
Whether your app is aimed at B2C or B2B, these suggestions are sure to provide you with valuable direction for increasing user acquisition.
CreativeWorks Marketing 