How to advertise your app for free on a shoestring budget
In-depth market research is critical to all mobile marketers, and it’s even more critical when you need to find a way to achieve your goals on a smaller budget. Comprehensive market research can ensure that your time and energy are used effectively. You need to understand who your audience and target market are, and develop user personas to get the best results. You should also use research to understand current market trends.
Your market research will help you determine the best partner for your target audience and budget. View case studies and success stories and find partners with a proven track record in helping your size and budget business.
Competitor research
Knowing how your competitors market to your target audience allows you to see that your team can do better. In addition, you can use this research to identify marketing channels with untapped potential.
Key performance indicators (KPI)
KPIs are metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign. Your market research will help you determine which KPIs to focus on and which events to track to collect the most useful data for optimizing KPIs. Examples of KPIs for mobile marketers include impressions, installs, sessions, events, and retention rates. Remember, market research is not a one-off and should be ongoing, but once you are confident in your findings, you can consider these mobile marketing strategies.
Here are six key marketing strategies that you should use to achieve your goals without a large budget.
Launch a website for your mobile app
The official landing page is commonplace for all mobile applications, and it provides an opportunity to reach users in a cost-effective way. First, this allows you to rank on search engines and invest in search engine optimization (SEO) to rank higher than your competitors. This is important because 93% of online experiences start with search engines, but only 25% of users scroll through the first page of search results. With this in mind, effective SEO can lead to significant results, connecting you with users who are genuinely interested in search terms related to your mobile application.
The mobile application landing page must show the value of the application, leave a strong visual impression, let users know what will happen after installation, and provide links to various application store pages.
Create a blog on your website
After setting up a landing page for a mobile app, you can create a blog to expand reach and create more opportunities to optimize content for search engines. The content of your blog will depend on the nature of your application: mobile game blogs may want to share tips and tricks to help players, while fitness applications can share nutrition guidelines.
Both your landing page and blog should generate leads and build mailing lists for email marketing campaigns. Regularly posting on your blog will also help your social media marketing efforts and create a community for your company.
Utilize social media marketing
The average user opens 9 apps every day and spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on these apps, so it’s important to use this usage to achieve your marketing goals. Social media marketing is essential for almost all mobile marketing strategies-it is especially useful for small companies that do not have a large advertising budget. Social media managers who understand the target audience and how to interact with them through different channels can play a role with little budget. In fact, as long as you have a little expertise in social media marketing, it can be a cost-effective way to increase engagement, increase blog traffic, generate potential customers, and increase revenue. However, the core of social media marketing is to build a loyal fan base and dedicated community especially for marketers who don’t have a budget. You should also consider the following:
Focus on the most useful social media channels
It is important to note that you do not need to visit every social media channel. It is best to focus on the most critical networks—the ones most likely to help you achieve your goals—and execute your strategy effectively.
Develop a marketing strategy for each social media platform
Once you have decided which platforms you need to be on, develop a customized plan for each network-after all, Facebook is very different from Tik Tok. The unique strategy of each platform will ensure that you make marketing decisions based on user behavior and social media trends.
Social media integration
Integrating social media into your app is a great way to encourage users to share their in-app content on social media. For example, if you have a mobile game, you can give users the option to share their high scores on social media. This is a smart way to generate natural installations and build stronger communities on social media.
User Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is just what the name suggests-content is created by users, usually in your community, whether in the app or on social media. For example, this can be as simple as a tweet related to the fan art of your app or your mobile game. This type of content is a valuable asset for mobile marketers with small budgets because it has no cost. You can share UGC on social media to build your community and make users feel recognized for helping spread people’s liking for your app.
App store optimization
ASO is the practice of improving your app store ranking in the App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. Like SEO, ASO can increase conversion rates and promote organic installations—the most valuable users of mobile applications. Improve your ASO ranking by using the right keywords in your name and description (including useful and visually appealing images) and localizing your entries for different regions. You should also consider details such as the app’s icon and the name of the in-app purchase.
You can also perform ASO by considering behavior patterns and cultural trends, such as updating your application on Christmas, Halloween, and Valentine's Day. You should also make sure that your changes match your ad creative. According to Storemaven, an expert in mobile growth and app store optimization, if your product page ideas are not updated, the high level of engagement brought by theme ideas will decline rapidly. Jordan Bennett, content marketing writer at Storemaven, explains: “Although visitors spend more time browsing your product pages, once they see the contradiction and realize that there is no app or game update, they will eventually give up.” Therefore, it must be consistent.
Influencer marketing
Business Insider estimates that influencer marketing-working with social media stars to promote your brand or product-will be worth as much as 15 billion U.S. dollars by 2022-an increase from 8 billion U.S. dollars in 2019. Your market research will tell you which influencers you might need to collaborate with depends on your target audience, the size of their followers, and whether you have a compatible brand identity. Influencer marketing can be used to drive installations or branding campaigns to build your online followers through association with specific influencers.
Research shows that 17% of companies plan to spend more than half of their budget on influencer marketing. But this is not necessarily expensive-small businesses can also use cost-effective influencer marketing strategies:
Free products
Send free products to influential people in the hope that they can make your brand exposure cheap and easy. For e-commerce, this means sending them available products through your app. For mobile games, you can give them in-app purchases. In addition, any mobile application with a subscription service can provide influencers with premium memberships in exchange for exposure.
Reviews
In addition to giving free gifts to influencers, you can also trade for specific types of exposure. For example, you can send products in exchange for reviews, outlining detailed information, such as the minimum length of the video. When arranging these details with influential people, remember that they are content experts who have a deep understanding of the audience. The more freedom you give influencers, the more authentic content they will produce for their audience.
Discount codes
Mobile marketers can provide social media influencers with discount codes to share with their audience. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement. An influencer can provide free rewards to his or her audience, and can also bring installations and revenue to your app.