Effective content marketing for your app

The time has come: your app is (almost) ready. Soon everyone with a smartphone will be able to take advantage of your mobile application. But wait a minute, releasing an app doesn't guarantee downloads. How do you score it? In this blog post we explain how content marketing can help you with that. 

In the third quarter of 2019, there were more than 2,4 million apps available in the Google Play store and about 1,8 million in the iTunes App Store. That number is slightly lower for the Dutch market, but it should be clear that competition is fierce. So how do you grab users' attention to make sure they download your app? We wrote earlier a blog about app marketing campaigns, and how they can help increase the success of your app. Offering valuable information can help with this, so content marketing.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is basically offering a helping hand. You answer questions from people who belong to your target group and build up a relationship with them bit by bit. You guide these readers through a funnel almost imperceptibly, with your app as the final destination. Compared to outbound marketing, where you advertise and try to attract visitors, in content marketing you focus on the value of the information and you make sure that internet users can find that information.

Research shows that this approach is effective Content Marketing Institute: for example, content marketing costs no less than 62% less than outbound marketing and you get three times as many leads in return. No wonder that more and more companies are opting for this marketing strategy. 

There are a number of ways to effectively deploy content for app marketing that require little investment and are easy to implement even for small app publishers. In this blog we provide all the tools to use content marketing as a strategy for more app downloads or more active app users. 

As an App Store Optimizer, so ASO'er, you try to create maximum visibility for your app in an app store. Although there are more app marketplaces than the App Store, it has become the namesake of an activity and profession when we talk about content: App Store Optimization.

What is ASO?

App Store Optimization actually covers all the content of your app. The description, the images or videos and the use of search terms can all help to arouse the interest of visitors. In addition, it is important to strengthen confidence in your app. This not only concerns the functioning and ease of use, but also transparency in aspects such as privacy and app notifications (push notifications). Reviews play a central role here, as these are disinterested testimonials from real users (wisdom of the crowd). With good reviews, visitors will proceed to download the app more quickly.

More traffic = higher ranking

And, just like websites in Google, it helps if more people come to your App Store page. After all, that is a signal that your app is popular, which in turn leads to a higher ranking in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. So you want to get as many visits to that page as possible and then convert it into downloads. 

Be transparent and clear

If visitors have to pay for (part of) your app, let them know how they can do this. This is not self-evident for everyone. There are still plenty of people who think that buy apps complicated or whether you need a credit card for it. Content marketing is all about answering questions and building goodwill with your target audience. 

The download page in the App Store and/or the Play Store is the foundation on which you build. But to get people up there, content marketing is an essential strategy. This allows you to seduce people from one channel to the app in the store. Quality is the guiding principle here.

As mentioned above, you offer answers to frequently asked questions from your target group in a non-pushy way. You can choose to answer one question in detail in a blog post, but you could also create an e-book in which you answer several questions or explain a step-by-step plan. You can offer such an e-book in exchange for an e-mail address – a textbook example of lead generation. Anyway, we can best illustrate this form of content marketing with a few examples. 

Example 1

An online pet supply store gets a lot of questions from customers that it can answer well in blog posts. For example, the question of how long you can leave cats at home alone if you want to go away for a few days and what ways there are to give them food and water automatically.

An e-book could answer all questions about cat care and the app could remind cat owners when it's time for an inoculation, a health check at a certain age, and so on. By first providing visitors with answers to relevant questions, they are then smartly referred to your app.

Example 2

A group of accountants offers clients an app that allows them to scan their invoices. To recruit new clients, these accountants answer questions they often receive from clients, for example about the entrepreneur's allowance or the VAT exemption. At the bottom of each blog post, the accountants then promote their app. 

It depends on your goals, but in general, content works if it attracts the right audience and eventually converts them into downloads. Visibility plays an important role here. How do you realize this?

Tip 1: promote unique and valuable content

You really don't have to spend tons of money on online advertising to make sure your content is found when a potential user needs it. You are already well on your way with correct, attractive information that answers specific and relevant questions. By promoting your blog post on your Facebook page, in your Linkedin feed and on Twitter, you can get a lot of 'free' traffic, which you can measure if you use Google Analytics. 

In addition, the content and your website must be optimized for search engines so that you immediately visible in the search results (SEO). * Want to know more about SEO first? Then read this blog with SEO tips. You can increase visibility by posting high-quality articles as a guest writer on relevant blogs with a link to your content (link building). Link building not only gives you more authority in the eyes of the search engines for certain terms and niches, but it can also get you more visitors if they click on your links (referral traffic).

Tip 2: be critical and test the results

Content marketers and SEO experts differ widely on what the best SEO strategies are, and Google's rules for doing so change frequently. It can also differ per market and even per subject what works.

For example, there is little or weak competition for some subjects, or more or less is asked about them. For some topics it is enough to create a 300 word article with a few relevant keywords, while another topic needs a monster piece of 10.000 words with 50 strong backlinks.

The most sustainable way is to keep thinking from the needs of the potential user of your app and conduct your own SEO tests. You can look at what has worked for other app developers (reverse engineering) and use that as the basis for your own SEO strategy.

Tip 3: but use infographics and videos  

Text isn't the only content that can help promote your app, consider other forms as well:

With a infographic add even more value to your readers. Well-designed infographics are so irresistible that readers love to share them with their friends (Facebook), business associates (Linkedin), or followers (Twitter).

A video lesson embedding helps you visualize certain concepts; at the same time, videos make visitors stay longer on your page, which signals to Google that your page offers internet users what they are looking for. 

To get the most out of your efforts, it pays to measure the results. What kind of content scores the most likes, is shared the most, or ranks best in Google? Based on this, you can avoid certain topics or use certain formats more often.

How do you measure the results of content marketing?

Unlike much offline marketing, online content allows you to measure a large part of your results. It is important to determine in advance what your goals are, how you will quantify results and how you will measure them. Once this is clear, there are various tools at your disposal to track and measure everything. Here are some examples:

• Google Analytics (GA) & Google Search Console (GSC)
• Google Optimize (A/B Testing page)
• Firebase (app A/B testing)
• Hotjar (heat maps)

Google Analytics & Google Search Console
GA displays detailed statistics about your site's visitors. This way you can see which channels and which pages work best. You can also determine conversion goals and measure which content best supports them.

GSC is a tool that provides insight into the optimization of your site and identifies problems that can reduce your visibility.

Google Optimize (A/B testing)
This is another tool that Google offers that allows you to run A/B tests for your site. For example, you can test two variants of a page to see which content works better, in terms of content, style and structure.

Test app content

This goes a bit further than regular content marketing: you look at the effectiveness of the content that is sent from the app itself. These can be push messages that direct the user back to your app or in-app messages for help, offers and other information. Thus gives A/B test tool Firebase the possibility to test and analyze variants of buttons, UI features or push messages based on visitors, actions performed by them and engagement. In this blog we give practical tips about A/B testing apps.

Heatmaps

There are also tools (eg Hotjar) that allows you to create heatmaps of your pages to see where visitors linger and where they drop off. In this way you optimize your content and ultimately score more and more downloads of your app.

You can produce the best app in the world, but if no one knows what it does and where to find it, you're making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Content marketing for your app ensures that visitors find your app. 

You can also invest heavily in a flashy marketing team and set up mega campaigns (vanity marketing). But without structured testing and measuring what really works, you run unnecessary risks and get few results. By strategically using good content with a focus on a concrete target group and goals, and a good dose of ASO and SEO - the world can no longer ignore your app.