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Written by: Marcos Sanchez, VP global corporate
communications of App Annie:
The mobile app market is quickly becoming saturated. With the public’s appetite for downloading apparently waning, it’s even more important that developers plan carefully how to to stand their app apart from the other two million across the app stores – as without continuous downloads the possibility of growth for an app business is near to nothing.
Marcos Sanchez, VP global corporate communications of App Annie, the leading provider of app analytics and market data, offers five pointers on increasing an app’s visibility among its millions of competitors:
1. Think international
Naturally, the first downloads you usually get are from your friends, family or your home country. But, attracting customers from further afield is beneficial too. First of all, by making your app available in countries with less competition, you will have more chance to quickly climb into the top rankings. Finally, like every other app marketer, you need to find the best market for you, which offers high revenue and low competition. By understanding your target audience, demographics and app category you can greatly increase visibility.
2. Use the right keywords to increase search rankings
Those apps found in the top 100 have a much greater chance of success. To get your app discovered amongst the million-plus apps available on both Google and Apple, having an optimised keyword strategy is crucial.
App Store Optimisation (ASO) helps you determine where your app ranks for the keywords/terms users might use to find you. Researching keywords used by the competition is also essential as it enables you to identify how well your competitors are doing and what are the best keywords to increase your app’s visibility, or as the saying goes “know your enemy”.
It’s also important to keep track of branded keywords – the search words or phrases that include the name of the app or a variation of it – and the ones related to your app. For the former, you want to monitor your territory so users are served your app whilst searching. The latter will help you to acquire new users.
3. All app stores are vital
Even if the iOS App Store and Google Play are getting the most downloads and revenues, don’t forget the others; Amazon or Windows. Less crowded, marketplaces like these can bring bigger and fresher audiences to your app, especially in emerging markets. China, for instance, has a number of smaller app stores outside of iOS and Google Play. For this, you need to study the stats! Each market has its own characteristics; determine which market and app store will be most lucrative for your app.
4. Get real-time advertising analytics in one place
Being at the top of the rankings is not easy; staying there is equally as hard and requires all the help you can get. By accessing advertising analytics data in real-time, you will be able to evaluate your marketing spend and determine the actual impact of your strategy in terms of rankings, revenue and downloads. You can also immediately identify the performance of your campaigns, which will help you to make better business decisions for future investments and focus on other projects.
5. Look beyond the launch
Looking at the long-term lifecycle of your app rather than just the launch is extremely important. You need a plan beyond the first three months of your app existence and get insights by analysing downloads and revenue history per country, category and store. To create targeted marketing campaigns and gain more revenue, don’t forget to listen to your customers too. They are, after all, the key to sky-rocketing to the top of the charts.
By careful planning and consideration of the tactics mentioned developers will make surefire improvements to their strategy to help their app stand out and in turn propel it up the ranks.
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