Both Play store and App Store marketing have the same purpose –it is to hunt, download and install any application. Though elements found on these platforms are the same –an icon, description, or logo, image gallery, reviews and video.
To get multiple downloads and assure better marketing ROI, it is important to focus on the natural positioning of the app and develop a strong and sustainable ASO (App Store Optimisation) plan. Sticking to the best ASO practices can help you develop your sales and user base, expand in new markets, and build up your brand. Your ASO plan lays down the core basis of marketing your applications both in Play Store and App Store.
Here are some ASO essentials for both Google and Apple Play Store Marketing.
What’s App Store Optimisation?
App store optimisation or ASO is a process to optimise a mobile application and store listing to improve its visibility over the Apple Store and Google Store. It helps an app developer/programmer to increase free traffic and conversion rate and generate maximum downloads and net profit. We think an effective focus of ASO is creative optimisation.
The primary goal of App Store Optimisation is app downloads, however supplemental goals will include items like:
- Positive ratings and reviews of an app.
- Better brand exposure.
- Improved marketing channel diversification.
- Engagement of your audience.
- Frequent and higher volumes of reviews.
Why Is App Store Optimisation Important for App and Play Store Marketing?
Over 5 million applications are there to install either from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. It is possible that your application might face plenty of competition. The main goal of ASO is increasing downloads and the number of users. So, your first step to maximise the download is making your app available easily to your loyal users. But how is it possible? To know how to increase your growth naturally, you need to know how people are looking for & finding applications.
Practices to Grow Your App Successfully
No matter whether you’re just learning to promote the app, or looking to improve the marketing strategy, these practices will give you fundamental knowledge to grow your app successfully.
Know Your Customers & Your Competition
Just like other ways of marketing, understanding your customers & competition is very important to App Store Optimisation. Unless you know how your users are responding, it is just impossible to curate the well-formed and researched ASO practices. The good practice comes with standard offsets to know – your customers & competitive landscape. Hence, before landing a perfect ASO campaign some questions have to be answered:
- What keywords your competitors are targeting?
- Why your customers must download an app?
- What languages do your customers use naturally?
Your ASO must start with studying your users. Besides, you must focus on applying different methods to improve discovery in the app store searches. Next essential thing is to know which keywords your competitors are targeting.
Finding Right Keywords
Research is a key to success, especially in the app industry. For this reason, the first practice is doing the right research. There’re millions of applications found in an app store and competition is quite fierce. Even if your app is very good, without a strong promotion strategy it gets difficult to climb the ladder.
App Store or Google Play Store
After learning which keywords to target, it is important to know where you must use them. App developers must be totally aware of the differences between the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. In both these app stores, the app title is considered in a search algorithm.
Pick the Right App Name
Your app name is what your customers see first. For this reason, it is very important to select the app name wisely. Ensure your App Title will be relevant to your application, simple to read and quite unique.
Suppose you find the app title quite appealing, your customers will remember it that in turn offers your app better recognition value. While choosing the perfect name, do not forget to look at its character count. At present, in Google Play Store you have 30 characters and Apple App Store also has 30 characters.
Conversion Optimisation
Suppose you have properly followed the given steps in your ASO best practices, your app may likely improve its visibility and get higher impressions. But, just being seen over the search results won’t be sufficient to grow the app. You need to convince your users to download the app. It is where app conversion optimisation comes into the picture. This objective can be achieved by following the best practices of Digital Marketing and align it with the cause of getting improved downloads for your apps.
Give More Importance to Benefits Than Features
An application with amazing features is great. However, it is necessary to ensure that the benefits of these features add value to your customers’ lives. For instance, you can attach images and illustrations to depict how a particular app can solve certain issues your users have. This will help in ensuring that you observe improved click-through rates. Make sure to think hard and long about the primary selling points of the app while creating the screenshots & writing your copy.
Build Backlinks
For building the best backlinks, it is important for your app to be linked actively on the sites relevant to your application or have authority as per Google’s recent algorithm standards. Backlinks are either in a text form or image form by using an ALT tag. Backlinks must be an important part of your App Store Marketing and App Store Optimisation practices. They help you build authority of your applications and are important from the perspective of SEO.
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Encourage Positive Ratings
Ratings and reviews are a primary sign of your mobile app’s quality and popularity. Suppose you have very low ratings, you will not be shown at a top of your app store results. Thus, a key part of your app store optimisation will be encouraging customers to leave positive ratings and reviews, particularly when both the stores consider top-rated apps to be relevant.
Set Your KPIs
For a better app marketing strategy, make sure it is tied to your KPIs. This will help in measuring and monitoring your performance, KPIs check in-app and campaign activity that matters to your performance goals. Hence, measuring performance with KPIs can provide a better and clear view about where your application is performing nicely and if any areas need improvement.
Some important KPIs to be aware of are the number of loyal and active users, cost per acquisition, cost per mille and Cost per Install. You must look at click-through rate, Retention Rate, Conversion Rate, and Churn.
Invest in Quality Visuals
When your users land on your app page, you need to make them download it. Being a valid type of visual communication, images, videos, and screenshots will help to demonstrate the proper functionality of an app. These give customers a preview of your app and communicate the story visually.
Because 50% of the people make their decisions on the first impressions, the visuals should impress. Thus, you must pay attention to each minute’s finer details, like size requirements and layout. Graphics and visuals are quite influential factors that will convince users to download the application and give app ratings.
Every text on the listing page has to be thought upon very carefully. App title, description, and text on the screenshots are very important to capture your user’s attention. You must clarify features of the app with properties that are different and unique from the competitors.
Mastery of Your ASO Practices Won’t Happen Suddenly
If you give some time daily to your ASO marketing, you can make huge progress. When you’re comfortable with the response your application is getting, you can venture into promoting an app with paid advertising to take benefit of ASO and improve the market share of your app.
ASO Checklist
- ASO is an important and crucial element of your app marketing strategy.
- To win at ASO is not just about finding the best keywords.
- ASO is a continuous process.
- Higher downloads lead to higher visibility – and higher visibility leads to higher download.
- ASO tools will help you in your mobile app marketing journey
- Optimise all localisations.
- Find new and attractive keywords.
- Track on your competitors and track your ASO changes.
App Store Optimisation Marketing FAQs
What Can I Do To Optimise My App Listing?
The first thing you must consider doing for optimising the app store listing will be doing proper research & use the best keywords for reaching your app target audience.
Why Should You Keep Track Of Your App Performance?
Keeping a watch on the app’s analytics will help you to get higher downloads and revenue. This data will help you to identify your app strengths & weaknesses and will be a good base to improve your ASO strategy.
How Can I Improve My App Downloads Organically?
You can optimise your app listing by keyword research, engaging title or apps names, ensuring fast download speeds & better UX, running over various social media platforms that make people know about your application and more.
Final Words
App store optimisation outperforms growth trends. For the past, some years, the value and necessity of applications within this marketing mix are cemented as an important marketing practice.
An initial challenge is how one can get their apps discovered organically by the users within these major app stores. But, now you have a few practical steps to refine, refresh, and better position the apps and generate better outcomes.
