App marketing relies on content. For instance, just think about your app store listing – description content, image content, video content, user review content…the list goes on. In fact, content marketing is so effective for apps that you should plan and
actually start your content strategy before your app is launched! It’s pretty much a free mobile app marketing technique, well when I say free, there’s just the opportunity cost of your time creating content. If you’re worried that content marketing is complicated,
then don’t worry, it’s just a case of getting the right pieces of content ready at the right time to fit your content marketing strategy. This will make you appear to be an expert in your field while getting users to download and engage with your app!
Of course, a content marketing plan will be just one part of your app digital marketing strategy. Many app marketers focus on four essentials for mobile app digital marketing which are email marketing, AdWords, social media and content marketing. So let’s
look at some best practices and tips to promote your app with content marketing and in particular, content which enables you to run really effective email, AdWords and social media marketing campaigns.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is quite simply delivering the content that your potential and actual app users will find informative and valuable. In terms of your app, it’s content that drives people to download your app, or engage with it further. If you make sure
that your content revolves around the problems that your app solves, not only will you give people reason to download your app but it will increase engagement by reinforcing the reasons they downloaded the app in the first place!
No doubt you probably already appreciate that content marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) go hand in hand. When you think about content marketing, you might just think about text on a website or blog articles or social media. However, with digital
marketing you should also be thinking about visual as well as audio content – videos, podcasts, infographics, slides, ebooks and whitepapers can be produced especially to share via social media and indeed encourage your fans to share your content for you.
Don’t forget to feature user reviews in your content – there’s nothing as great as social proof!
How does it help with app discovery?
Remember, as an app marketer, your goal is to find new users for your app and to do this, you need to give people valuable content as well as ensuring there’s a link to your app in the stores or your app landing webpage. You’ll likely know who your ideal
app user is and you should have a persona in mind for that audience. If you plan your content well, you can get more use out of each piece of content and make it an evergreen piece so long as the blog post or content is always live.
Make your content marketing mobile
This sounds obvious when you have a mobile app but remember you’ll need to think about writing marketing content that’s easy for people to view on their mobile device. Think bite-size chunks of info to promote your app which will encourage potential downloaders
who are already on their mobile when they consume your content. Select your distribution channels carefully and your target audience for each of the following three marketing channels:
- Email
- AdWords
- Social media
1: Email Marketing Content
When it comes to email marketing, you need to ensure you have interesting content which is of benefit to the recipient e.g. how to videos, screenshots, blog articles, user reviews etc. Overall, really think about your text, image and video format and make
sure it’s relevant and will deliver value. Your audience will likely open the email on mobile, so ensure it’s a mobile-friendly template you’re using. Mary Meeker’s report told us that in 2015, almost 30% of videos are consumed through vertical orientation
and that video consumption is continuing to grow at an astonishing rate. If you’re using video as part of your email campaign, consider how to flip your content into vertical orientation. If you’re not creating video that can be consumed easily on mobile devices
then you need to do something fast.
2: AdWords Content
When it comes to AdWords, you need to think about the content of your display ads and the content of your landing pages. Landing pages should have a clear call to action to download the app with some supporting content such as user reviews, screenshots and
videos. By using Adwords, you can test various campaign content easily and can help you become really great at analysing data for mobile user acquisition and engagement. So make sure you take time to analyse your campaigns and use data-driven insights to decide
on future ad content. Do not fall into the trap of easily wasting money without seeing what’s actually working!
3: Social Media Content
Once you have your content marketing plan sorted, your social media marketing plan will come together easily as you use all channels to distribute your content and build a good level of social media engagement. Of course, the great thing about having a ready
made content plan is that you will be able to pre-schedule many of your social media updates using tools such as Hootsuite. Don’t forget, when you do distribute your content via social media, write your posts to encourage your users to share content themselves.
Remember to interact with these users and make sure it’s spontaneous and adds some character from your app brand.
Always be optimising
Whether you distribute your content via email, AdWords, social media, or indeed another marketing channel, the main thing is to implement your mobile app content marketing as soon as you are ready – and as mentioned, before your app even launches!
Simply getting your content out there in front of your potential users will give you a feel for what works and what doesn’t work. Learn from what you’re seeing, repeat successful strategies and always be optimising to create better content across targeted
distribution channels. It’s a bit like App Store Optimisation – in the way that you optimise your keywords, screenshots, reviews etc, you need to optimise your content to ensure month on month improvements in terms of downloads and engagement.
What’s been your most successful app marketing campaign? What type of content works best for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.