How to promote a hopeless app so it finally brings you money

How to promote a hopeless app so it finally brings you money

Many developers face the same problem: they invested money and time into the application and did not get the revenue out of it. After 5-6 weeks of struggling with app promotion they put the app on the bench and take another one into development or promotion. This approach is common for 70% of all companies that create a flow of products.

Dev Teams construct the applications daily, knowing that only 1 of 7-10 apps will spearhead into the top of the Play Store or App Store search. 

But now the situation has dramatically changed. Virus, quarantine, some other weird stuff is in the air. App development cost rises, teamwork efficiency goes down, management processes are broken while your team fights with procrastination at home. For some people, it seems like a deadlock, but if you give the chance to your old apps, you can enlarge your portfolio of lucrative products. 

Here we show how to get your app ready for the top 20 positions in just 2 weeks and minimum investments.

Preparation for ASO and comprehensive analysis

You should prepare the application for promotion. First, divide this task into 2 parts: in-app problems, marketing challenges. Top problems with the app are about low retention, low in-app activity and very short usage sessions. The short session is when your user has two 20-30 second ads per 2 minutes of play. No one wants to watch ads more than play or use the application functionality. Each app has its specific problems that we can not allocate right in this article. But when you see something that your users will find annoying or uncomfortable and it requires little time to fix it, you should do it before starting your market analysis. A fair amount of real negative reviews will give you the idea of what is wrong with the product.

Now, it is time to revise your marketing progress for this app. If you have information about clicks and downloads of your application page at the store – collect and analyze them. Were your screenshots revealing all the functions your competitors lack? Or was your icon appealing enough to give you page visits from all the impressions you got at search? And the final question: for how many words and phrases your app was shown with a little percent of installs after that? Allocate answers to these questions to start ASO.

Start with ASO if you want cheap app promotion later

To fix all the problems with your app page and get first promotion results in the next 2 weeks, you need to optimize your application for the store. If you have more time to get into this topic, you can read about what ASO is. First, collect the words and phrases your application is related to. Read our article about how to choose keywords for your application and follow the instructions to collect all the keywords you will need to cover your app niche semantics. However, if you are troubleshooting, follow the list of what you should do step by step.

  • List the words and phrases you think you are searched and downloaded for.
  • If you have already had experience in the promotion of this mobile application, look through the console list to highlight the keywords you should never promote or mention in your description as they give you no conversions at all.
  • Define the keywords that you and your competitors find the most convertible and competitive in the niche. They will be needed for your app texts.
  • Check your mobile application texts. The title should include your brand name and the most important (that means most convertible keyword your app is shown for) words.

Rewrite the text of your description. It should be simple, motivating and consist of 3-4 blocks: involving and call-to-action part goes first, explanation of what your app does, core product features and specifications. Lock this text up with the conclusion of app effectiveness meeting users’ desires, problems, and fears.

If you are preparing an Android app promotion campaign, you should put the most important keywords into the description. These words should be natural to read and suit the context of the text itself. Do not use brand words and phrases as they can affect your application negatively. When the application is indexed enough, you will get first positions by these keywords.

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Incentive installs will save your Android or iOS app promotion

With app optimization made, you are now ready to market the application with keywords. What should be your objective? To get to the top position of the Market search with the most convertible keywords that fit your application. You have already picked them in your keyword research and deliberately put into your app’s texts. Now you need to find the required volume of installs for each keyword daily and dynamics of growth by ranks for your product. These metrics are complicated to calculate as they depend on various factors (up to 40 indicators) and it is easier to make a quick screening test before running the actual promotion campaign.

A short-termed screening campaign before buying keyword installs

What is screening? It is launching a 2-3 days campaign for the groups of keywords you plan to promote in the future. Your objective is to understand the next aspects: a) is the app moving at least for 1-2 positions with some 10-15 installs per keyword? b) what keywords require 10-15 installs to grow while other keywords can not be pushed by these numbers? c) what low-score keywords are easy to push? Can they give you ranking for short, convertible and competitive words and phrases? For example, can “car rent application offline” help you with ranking for “car rent”?

get to the top position of the Market search with the most convertible keywords that fit your application

When screening is already done by the keyword groups from your cloud, it is time to split them into subgroups by the number of installs they will need in their campaigns. Screening will give you the idea of an approximate amount of installs that your keyword should acquire each day. That may be 20 installs for one keyword install and 50 for the other one.

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Let’s go, push the keywords up the ranks!

Now when you can estimate the volumes of installs, created campaigns by them. Group keywords by their meaning and needed time for promotion. For example, the keyword got +5 positions while screening from the 100th position with 30 installs (15 installs daily). The competition in the search for this request may differ, but you can try to add 40-50 installs for the first day of the campaign. That may push the word 10-15 positions up. 

But do not forget that with the higher rank, you need more installs to grow up the positions. So, for the second day you can plan 50-60 installs, and gradually increase this number per each company day. 

The most effective marketing strategy is a 7 days promotion of 4-5 keywords in one campaign. With it, you show to the algorithm a firm tendency that your app is searched for these words and downloaded. Do not forget to restrict the promotion of the keywords that have already reached the 1st position in the campaign. Otherwise, installs by keyword will continue even when it becomes top 1 on the 4th day of a 7-days long order.

After-promotion results for not-that-hopeless app

When a promotion is on, your app gains the ranks. We made the icon clickable, so when other people (apart from our incentive users) see it for their relevant requests, they are more likely to click and go to the app page. With improved descriptions and screenshots they like your product, see the advantages, and are ready to download it. So finally, an old app that has never done little conversions before is performing like a new one.

Give a bad app the last chance

We will improve the app page and prepare it for promotion by keywords. Contact now make the first step to the TOP of the search!

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