10 Day Marketing Plan to Launch an App

10 Day Marketing
Plan to Launch an
App
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association

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One of the most exciting as well as the scariest time in the
life of an App Entrepreneurs is when they are about to
launch a new app.

While working at a startup in Silicon Valley, when we
were about to launch our first app we stayed awake the
whole night trying to make sure …

… that we were ready for the thousands of customer
emails which we were going to get the next day and
trying to be prepared for all the press our app was going
to receive.

We assumed that having a great launch was all about
building an app and releasing it to the app store.

We released our app on a Tuesday, because everybody
told us that people are more active on social media on
Tuesday and a launch gets increased visibility on Tuesdays
due to this.

Now when I look back at our launch day, nothing went as
per the plan. As soon we released the app into the app
store, we got a few downloads …

… but soon there was nothing much happening with our
app. Instead of the tens of thousands of downloads which
we were expecting, we got less than 100 downloads.

No blogger or reporter reached out to us to write about
our exciting new app. In fact when I think about it, the
few downloads which we did get were probably …

… from our friends who were just curious about our app.
This was a great learning experience for me. Over the
next few years I have done extensive research on …

…the right way to launch an app and here is what I think
really works.

What not to do

The biggest mistake most app entrepreneurs make is that
they try to do everything and anything during a launch.
This just ends up wasting your most valuable resource –
TIME.

So the kind of things, which I will strongly advise you
against spending your time and money on, are:

Building all social media accounts:
You just cannot focus on all social media accounts at
once so just pick the one social channel which works for
your kind of account. Look for competitors in these social
channels.

If you don’t see any competitors in a certain social
channel then just stay away from that channel.

Submitting your app to review sites and worse, paying
to get reviewed:
How many people in your target audience do you know
who read review sites everyday and download the
reviewed apps.

This used to work a long time ago when there were very
few review sites, but now nobody cares.

Sharing your app in developer forums or groups:
This is a waste of time unless your app is actually meant
for other developers to use.

Buying burst campaigns:
I have seen developers literally throw away thousands of
dollars by buying burst campaigns (5,000 low quality
downloads in one day) …

… and regret it deeply when all these users leave within a
month and then get dinged in the rankings due to low
retention.

Buying incentivized downloads:
Just don’t do this.
If you pay somebody to download and use your app then
obviously he is not the right user for your app.

Exchange reviews:
I was originally a fan of sites like smooth reviews.com
which helped you get reviews for your app, but I have
been hearing a lot about the problems with this.

If you want to know more about what the problems are
just drop a comment and I will explain in comments.

Your 10 Day App Marketing Template

Before we get started, download the free app marketing
template and use this to track your progress. Each
marketing task is listed out in the template …

… and it can ensure that you succeed with your app
launch while using the template. I have also filled out
some sample data to help you understand …

… how to use the App Marketing Template.
Download the Free 10 Day App Marketing Template

Your App Launch Marketing Plan

Your app marketing plan basically has two phases. The
first is the pre-launch phase and the second is the post
launch phase.

Both the phases are equally important and actually the
post launch phase cannot be implemented without
completing most of the steps in the pre-launch phase.

The kinds of tasks, which are present in both phases, are
guaranteed to get you results. None of these are hit or
miss kind of strategies.

So let us jump into the pre-launch phase and figure out
how to implement the marketing plan.

Pre-Launch App Marketing Plan

Before you launch your app, you need to lay the
groundwork which will help you get a ton of downloads
once you launch your app.

In fact some of the pre-launch activities which you are
going to participate in will let you validate your idea even
before you launch your app.

6 Days Before Launch

The first thing which you need to do as part of your pre-
launch activities is to create a landing page for your app.
The reason for this is to figure out the right messaging for
your app.

Unless you know how to position your app and the right
kind of message to use to attract users, you are always
going to see sub-par results.

To create a landing page, you can use
http://unbounce.com. Unbounce has a free theme for
mobile apps and you can use that to create your app …

… landing page very quickly. Unbounce also lets you track
your landing page conversions, which is very useful for
validating your idea and messaging.

While creating a landing page make sure that the landing
page says that your app is going to launch soon and if the
users want an invite, they can provide their email
address.

Once your landing page is ready, it is important for you to
send relevant traffic to your landing page so that you can
achieve two goals:

The first is to actually get a few emails of people who
are ready to download your app once it launches
The second is to validate your idea

To send relevant traffic to your landing page, the most
reliable channel is a Facebook paid campaign. Just
create Facebook ads and drive traffic to your landing page.

This traffic obviously needs to be of people who are the
right target audience for your app. Once you start sending
traffic to the landing page, take a look at unbounce …

… and see what kind of conversion rate you getting. If the
conversion rate is around 3%-5% or more than that, then
you have a good app idea on your hands …

… and you have also identified the right target audience
for your app. Continue running ads to the landing page
based on your marketing budget to collect as many
emails as possible.

In case you are not seeing a good conversion rate then
you obviously need to modify one of the following –
landing page messaging, target audience or your
complete app idea itself.

If you want to get huge bang on your launch day, good
press coverage for your app can definitely help you. The
thing to remember with getting good press coverage is …

… that you need to understand how press coverage
during launch works. If you have a good app and want it
covered, you need to do three things:

 First find reporters who cover app launches and you
can do this by looking up coverage on other apps which
launched recently

 Second reach out to these reporters and pitch your
app. You need to make sure that you tell them not to
write about your app before it is released.

This is commonly referred to as an embargo.
 The third thing, which you need to do, is offer exclusive
access to a reporter.

When you have an interesting app, reporters are
extremely interested in being the only people to write
about your on launch day.

Obviously you need to select the right media outlet when
agreeing to exclusive coverage agreement.
There are many ways to reach out to press …

… but the most effective way is usually the simplest.
Search for the email address of reporters from your
preferred media outlets and drop them a short pitch
about your app.

Now that you know what kind of messaging works for
your app, you need to create your app store description
and get started with App Store Optimization.

The app store description can contain the same sections,
which your landing page contained. So basically you are
going to have things like – …

… headline, benefits, features and a few testimonials.
Coming to App Store Optimization, you can pick any tool
out there. My personal favorite is SensorTower.

You can use the trial period to complete your basic app
store optimization.

As you are getting closer to the launch day, you need to
ensure that the analytics tool which you are using to track
your app is properly setup.

Verify that you have created events for the major
checkpoints in your app and also setup funnels to track
progress of users in your app.

1 Day Before Launch

This might not be relevant to all apps but in recent times
Instagram has turned out to be an excellent source of
downloads for app.

Especially if you notice that there are a few accounts with
a theme similar to your niche, you can contact them and
ask them to do a sponsored post.

Most instagram accounts, which allow such posts, have a
“business contact” or “business email”. Just make sure
that these accounts have good engagement from their
followers before you work with them.

Launch Day

On the launch day, the only thing which I would suggest
that you do is to make sure that all the reporters who
were supposed to write about your app have actually ...

… done that and also to send out an email blast to all the
people who provided their email addresses, informing
them about the launch of the app.

1 day after Launch

Once you start seeing the initial set of downloads, the
next stage is to keep the momentum going by launching
mobile install ads using Facebook.

You can do basic mobile install ads or you can use some
advanced ninja tactics to get downloads at a really low
cost.

2 Days After Launch

Your Facebook ads should have picked up some steam by
now and you should be seeing a good number of
downloads coming in for your app based on your budget.

Now you want to increase these downloads even further
and break into the top ranks of the app store by launching
the Instagram sponsored posts, …

… through the partnerships which you setup before the
launch. Instagram sponsored posts can be very effective
as long as you have done the following right:

 Partner with a relevant influencer
 The influencer has an engaged audience
 Your post does not look like an ad but blends in with
the content

If you get these three things right then you should see a
good number of downloads from instagram as well.

3 Days After Launch

Next is my favorite tactic to get a huge number of
downloads. You can use giveaways to get thousands of
downloads. There is a right way to do giveaways and I
have covered that here.

4 Days after Launch

Although this says 4 days after launch, you can actually
wait for a few more days before you start looking at your
analytics and figure out at which stage of the funnel …

… a user drops off. For example, if you notice that a user
drops off after opening the app for first time and
completing event 1 but does not get to event 2, …

… then just focus on improving the workflow to get a user
to event 2. This way you can gradually keep improving
your app while at the same time you get downloads …

… to keep up the momentum, which you gained through
your launch. I hope this is useful for you. If you feel that I
have missed out something …

… or if you have some other interesting tactics to improve
your app launch just comment below and let us know.

For More App Business Advice
App Entrepreneurs
Association
http://appentrepreneursasso
ciation.com

10 Day Marketing Plan to Launch an App

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10 Day Marketing Plan to Launch an App