Even if innovative marketing methods are created every year, there are still some old and efficient ways to promote an application. Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing is the strategy of getting people to talk about your product. And in mobile domain it is even more effective. Think about yourself for a moment. How many apps did you recommend lately to your friends, family or colleagues? How many apps did you start using because somebody told you about them? Let’s face it, word of mouth makes a great difference in every area, but in mobiles even more with all the devices and features presented every day. And it is no wonder, with millions of apps available on the market, we can’t try all of them, so we rely on others’ experience to make our live or our work easier. But this is not only our opinion; there are studies to prove it.
Even Google expresses the same idea, but keep in mind to create an amazing app first, to be sure that all the effort is driven in the right direction.
Ways To Increase Word Of Mouth For Mobile Apps
Since we agree that word of mouth worth much, comparing to other ways of promotion, let’s see how we can use this in making our app visible on app store. The effects are even more rewarding when you will measure user acquisition and user retention.
Give Incentives For Friend Reference
Maybe it is not that easy to convince people to spread the word about your app from the start, but if you are creative and find solutions to make people share their positive thoughts about it, then everything turns into your favor. Look at great brands like Uber, who not only offers amazing services but they promised free rides for all users that persuade their friends to download the app.
If you need some help to put a program like this together, you can use a tool created by Tapstream called, what else than Word of Mouth which will help you reward every user that drives other installs for your app. It can provide this package without changing your code.
Use Boost Campaigns To Go Viral
Because word of mouth has an impressive impact in trying an app, if you need a fast solution in a short period of time, maybe a good decision is to use boost campaign. This kind of marketing is an engine that launches your app in top of its category resulting in organic growth. It is more efficient than other campaigns that last a long period of time and you are not so sure about their results. Choose carefully the platform that provides services for boost campaigns and stay away from fraudulent activities and scammers that will promise you the smallest price because those will be just money thrown away. As we mentioned before, the main condition for any marketing campaign to have success is for you to own a high quality app. Without this aspect, all your intents to attract organic users will be doomed. In order to drive efficient campaigns you have to know your buyer personas and to track your target audience as well. If you keep an eye on all your metrics, then you will know what kind of people to attract that soon will become lifetime value users which will share your app with their friends and family.
Create Buzz Through User Generated Content
User Generated Content (UGC), as its name shows, is content received from users. Among other stats, an important one from Kissmetrics shows that 25% of search results for the world’s 20 greatest brands are links to user generated content. The secret in this scenario is to expanse the attention from your app to the user and back to your app. If you make customers feel important through your app, they will be eager to brag to all the people they know and this leads to a great number of new users ready to download your app. Convince people to share a success story related to your app, in form of video, pictures or comments through a contest or something similar and make it simple for everybody to join the competition or discussion. For example, Mint, an app for personal budgeting, chose Instagram for their user generated content campaign, named My Mint Moment. This is a contest with photos of users that spent an important amount of money for transforming their dream in reality.
Add Social Sharing To Your App And Encourage People To Use It
For word of mouth to happen, users must share the app, so be sure that you follow the most important steps in this situation. Engage your users through the main characteristics of your app and assure them an easy way to tell their friends about your app. If you wait for them to close the app and open their social account you might lose those recommendations. In order to avoid this mistake implement social sharing feature and encourage users to spread the word about the app. Look, for example at Pipes, a news app that allows users to create channels of news (pipes) focused on specific topics. It helps its users to share their favorite news with the persons they know through their social accounts and, in the same time it follows best practices of Word Of Mouth Marketing.
Image Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/03/27/pipes-simple-mobile-news-reader-tracking-individual-topics/
Allocate Budget For Traditional Marketing
As important as word of mouth is traditional marketing, so you shouldn’t ignore it. You may consider investing in other ways to present your app in front of people. If you create something different but pleasant from the usual stuff that customers are used with, you will make people talk about your app. This marketing strategy is called Guerilla Marketing. You can think about making your app visible to the world through TV, Radio Ads, and Billboards, which are popular channels that count on the entertainment factor. The idea is to get out of the ordinary in interesting and attractive ways and you will win a great number of users. In the same time you can take advantage of a global event or a holiday to convert your app and to drive word of mouth as much as you can. For example, Tinder focused on college parties and instantly grew from 5000 to 15000 users.
Image Source: https://parantap.com/tinders-first-year-growth-strategy/
Even if the main concept requires more imagination and energy than money to transform your app, you have to consider monetizing your app and redirecting that revenue to promote your app through traditional media channels. You don’t know how to do it? Well, we have that covered for you with our 5 Effective Strategies To Monetize Your Mobile App. You can make your app a source of income even if you don’t create it as a paid one. Some ideas are to implement in – app ads or in – app purchases. Other app monetization techniques are sponsorships and subscriptions. But you can adopt another method called Freemium, where you can offer the basic features of your app for free and for more advanced facilities you need to convince your user to pay.
Final Thoughts
User to user conversation happens everywhere; offline: at home, during the commute, on the street, at the office, at parties. And over the years more online: on social networks, on forums, blogs and emails. You can’t stop it and you don’t have to, mainly if you have an app to show to the world. Don’t ignore any of these channels to spread the word about your app. Use our tips above to make your users talk and their friends listen.
