When we think of an inbound marketing strategy, usually the first thing that comes to mind is a website, right? And it is that the prototypical inbound process is based on attracting traffic to a landing page to generate leads and then move to email marketing.
But the inbound methodology by
app builders can go much further and cover different channels and strategies. For example, did you know that you can use inbound marketing for your mobile app and use it to generate traffic and leads? Yes, we are talking about doing inbound marketing with apps. Let's see how!
How to do inbound marketing with Apps?
An inbound marketing strategy with Apps will help your business even more than your generic inbound marketing strategy. Surely you have already realized that the highest percentage of users who visit your website do so from their mobile devices, right? So let's see the fundamental keys.
ASO - the key to attract traffic to your app
If we use SEO to generate traffic to a website in "traditional" inbound marketing, this is achieved through ASO positioning in inbound marketing with Apps.
As you may have guessed, the ASO consists of a series of techniques to attract traffic to your application through the App stores and get users to download it. Since 63% of users find their applications through store searches,
ASO optimization is an essential traffic source for your website.
On-page ASO for inbound marketing with Apps
We have the elements that we can optimize for the listings of our app in stores. These are the most prominent:
- The application title. This element is very important both for the branding of the application and for controlling the keywords by which it will appear. To know what terms to use, think about possible searches of potential users of your app. Keep in mind that naturalness must always prevail: cluttering the title of keywords can be harmful.
- The description. This is your opportunity to explain to users what your application is and get it downloaded. Be clear and concise and focus on explaining what your app can bring to users.
- The icon. The icon of an App has a function similar to the meta description of web pages, that is, it is an element that is not directly visible to search engines but is essential to get the user to click. The more visits your app page has in the app store, the better it will position in the rankings, so you should be interested in having an icon that communicates well what your brand is about and stands out from the competition.
A related strategy is to apply the new indexing functionality of
Google Apps. The search engine indexes a part of your application, so if a user has the app installed on their mobile device and does a related search on Google, this search may redirect him to the app.
Off-page ASO for inbound marketing with Apps
The off-page ASO implies those factors that positively influence the positioning of our app in stores, but that we cannot control directly. Fundamentally, they are user ratings and external links.
The more comments and positive scores an App has, the higher it will appear in the listings, and the more visible it will be. Therefore, we must look for strategies to make it easier for users to leave feedback and quickly and efficiently manage negative reviews.
As for external links, the first step is to create a specific microsite to encourage users to download your application and include download buttons on the main website. To get links from other sites, you can apply link building techniques.
Other inbound marketing resources to drive traffic to Apps
The ASO has a central role in inbound marketing with apps, but it is not the only thing we can do to publicize our app and integrate it into the brand's inbound strategy. Let's see some extra resources:
- Include options to share on social networks. Integrating social networks and mobile applications offers many opportunities for going viral. Users can not only share the app itself, but also its activity and achievements. An example is the physical activity applications that allow you to share your training data on Facebook or Twitter once finished. If you take advantage of this option, you can take advantage of the effect of going viral while your users get social validation.
- Use push and in-app notifications intelligently. In a way, push notifications are to the inbound marketing App what email marketing is to conventional inbound. To make the most of them, you have to get users to subscribe to them by clearly explaining their benefits and then use them as part of a meditated lead nurturing strategy. The idea is that push notifications reactivate the user at critical time.
- Customize and contextualize the content. Generally, apps are not taken into account in content marketing, but the truth is that they are also a way to transmit information to the user and reflect the values and essence of our brand. To be more effective, this content must be fully adapted to the preferences of the user and the context, for example, the time of day or the location in which it is at a given time.
In short, applications can be your great strategic allies to develop the entire inbound marketing process: attract users to your brand with ASO techniques, make them become users of your application (the equivalent of leads) and accompany them in the way to be loyal customers of your brand.
