When launching a new app, you’ll want to invest your time, money and effort into marketing it. Otherwise, you won’t reach your intended audience or boost your sales. If people don’t know about your app, they likely won’t be able to find it or won’t feel inclined to try it out.
To that end, 13 members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared marketing tactics a company can use to get people excited about their new application before and after launch. Here’s what they recommend and why these methods work so well.
1. Work With an Influencer
Whether you're launching a new product or a new app, influencer marketing is a powerful way to show off to your target audience. Influencers will share their positive experience with a curated audience and convince them to try the app. They'll highlight the app’s features, generate the content and draw positive attention to the app itself. — Kyle Goguen, Pawstruck
2. Create an Incentive
Give something to get something. If your customers get a discount code, a truly useful e-book or some other valuable incentive, you're sure to get a few more downloads than if you skip these steps. — Tyler Bray, TK Trailer Parts
3. Offer a Free or Lite Version
With so many apps and services available today, many end users can be slow adopters. The best way to generate interest is to offer a free (or lite) version of the app to introduce its basic features. Paired with a traditional marketing campaign of emails and news blasts, a free version of your app can get your audience hooked and more willing to pay for the product’s full features. — Brian Greenberg, True Blue Life Insurance
4. Curate a Story Pitch
Publicity is the engine behind launching a new app. The key is to curate content or a story pitch before reaching out to journalists. For instance, BuzzFeed loves images, so we curated Super Hero images from our app that we knew would make for a worthy post. They loved it and published it, which lead to thousands of downloads. We took the same approach with other journalists and it worked! — Kristopher Brian Jones, LSEO.com
5. Develop a Trending Challenge
Come up with trending challenges that will make you popular. Use influencers to participate in this challenge to hype people up. This method works because people love to see something new and trending. If your intended audience sees their own network hype your product, they tend to get on board. — Daisy Jing, Banish
6. Limit Your Membership (at First)
To make your app launch more exciting, consider limiting membership while you build a buzz. People tend to value something that's exclusive. Encourage key people like influencers to be a part of the app and focus on your social media marketing. You can promote the upcoming date when your app is open to everyone to get more attention. — Blair Williams, MemberPress
7. Create Teaser Video Content
To create buzz around your mobile app launch, you can make exciting teaser videos showing what it's all about. Giving your audience enough information about your app is crucial to piquing their interest and encouraging them to engage with it. If you create interesting video content that catches their attention, you're sure to drive more downloads and sales. — Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
8. Publish Guest Posts
You can get consumers excited about your new application by looking for guest post opportunities. Odds are, you're already partnered up with other businesses in your industry. Reach out to these brands and ask if you can publish a relevant guest post on their site. This marketing strategy is extremely effective for spreading your reach and converting new visitors into customers. — John Turner, SeedProd LLC
9. Host a Giveaway
Giveaways are an excellent way to get people excited about your new app. You can incentivize existing subscribers and customers to download and use your app by offering them a chance to win your hottest product. All you have to do is create a contest and make downloading and using your application one way to enter. — Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
10. Reward Early Adopters
Being in at the start of something big is exciting to everyone. People love having that “Twitter member since 2009” status on their profile, for example. If you can paint that big vision, and perhaps reward people for being an early user, it can be an effective way to get those on the fence to try it. If it takes off, they can brag about it later. — Cody Candee, Bounce
11. Run Search and Social Ads
Use Google and social media ads to build excitement leading up to the launch. The ads should direct people to content that excites them rather than just promoting the app itself. For example, create a Facebook ad to promote a free webinar about a topic the target audience wants to learn and that’s relevant to the app. Now, you have their email addresses and can continue marketing the app to them. — Jonathan Prichard, MattressInsider.com
12. Promote Special App-Only Offers
When promoting your app, add special offers, features and benefits that are only available on the app. This is especially great for e-commerce stores that have desktop as well as mobile platforms. App-only benefits will appeal to users and make them interested in downloading your mobile app. — Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
13. Create a Dedicated Pre-Launch Landing Page
To get people excited about the launch of your mobile app, you can create a landing page beforehand. Your landing page informs people about your app and shows them why they need to download it. You can list its benefits, cool features and answers to common questions. You can also collect visitors' email addresses to continue marketing to them in the future. — Jared Atchison, WPForms
