How to get to your first 1000 app downloads? Reaching your initial app users

App success never falls into the lap of an entrepreneur or company. It is always a long journey towards a lofty goal.

The first significant challenge is getting to the first 1000 app downloads. Breaking the initial ceiling is always difficult as companies have to start from scratch.

From someone with a gaming app to another using a WooCommerce to Android app builder, getting to 1000 app downloads is always crucial. It represents an app getting to its first users and breaking the initial barriers of anonymity.

How does one get to 1000 app downloads?

Many companies end up trusting their app’s ability to sell itself. This is why they do not bring their app to market with a clear strategy.

While it’s great if an app is good enough to sell itself, this alone does not drive app downloads. The mobile app market is too crowded and competitive for people to see the value every single app provides.

A recent study showed that over 50% smartphone users don’t even download a new app over a period of a month. People generally do not browse the app store and window-shop for mobile apps. They have to be attracted and persuaded.  

In other words, marketing has a big role to play in driving app downloads. In many cases, good app marketing tactics are more important in driving downloads than the app itself.

This piece covers four tactics companies and entrepreneurs must deploy to get to their first 1000 app downloads.

#1 Promote apps on niche forums

Do you promote your app solely through its primary social media handles?

It is good if your app has its own social media profiles across different platforms. It is also good if you regularly post content through these profiles.

However, let’s take a few things into consideration.

1. Your app’s new social media handles probably don’t have a a great following

2. The content you post does not get a lot of engagement

The social media tactic of blindly posting content from various handles is misguided. You need a better strategy to get real downloads from social media.

The solution lies in using niche forums.

What are niche forums? They represent a forum where people interested in a specific topic regularly discuss and engage.

Subreddits are a prime example of niche forums. Generally, they are dedicated to a given topic or niche. Anyone posting content on a subreddit cannot post anything random. It has to match the niche to which the forum is dedicated.

People in a forum are known to engage more actively with the content posted. Facebook Groups are also an example of niche forums. They allow people interested in a specific topic to engage and share content.

How does this work for app marketing?

Marketers have to identify the relevant niche forums for their app. They have to balance the number of times they genuinely contribute to the niche forum versus the number of times they promote the app. This is because most forums have guidelines for posting promotional content.

A strategy like this helps marketers reach the audience most likely to download the app. People highly invested in a given niche are generally the first adopters when something new comes along.

Targeting niche forums is a great way to push an app towards the 1000-downloads mark.

#2 Contact bloggers in the field

The second tactic you should deploy is working with bloggers who are popular in your app’s niche.

Generally, marketers launch high budget paid campaigns on Google and other social media channels. The aim is to drive downloads through these popular social channels. The only problem is that finding people open to trying out a new app is difficult on social media.  There is way too much clutter for a marketing campaign to get through.

Thus, this can devolve into becoming an app marketing mistake.

What is the solution?

Every niche has an array of popular bloggers who get a lot of traffic to their content every day. These are generally people interested in the topic a blogger writes about.

Companies can work with these bloggers and ask them to post content about their apps. This is a great way to get an app in front of real interested users.

Bloggers are also likely to charge a certain fee to write a promotional post. Companies are actually better placed paying the blogger than running a generic social media campaign.

This is because the former guarantees that the app would reach a set of interested and motivated people. Furthermore, companies get to bypass the cluttered world of social media entirely.

For anyone trying to convert WordPress website to Android app, such a tactic is very useful.

#3 Continually working on app listing

Let’s say you manage to get a person to arrive at your app listing on Google Play Store. You have done all the hard work of convincing this person to come here. The only thing left now is for the person to install the app.

And for some reason, this does not happen.

Losing people on the app listing page hurts app marketers the most. This is because they have already done all the hard work of bringing prospects here.

What is the solution?

The best app marketers can do in such a case is optimize the app listing itself. From using attractive screenshots and app icons to optimizing meta fields with relevant keywords, a lot can be done to make an app listing more appealing and relevant.

This helps improve the ASO optimality of an app listing while also adding weight to its aesthetic appeal.

In Conclusion

This piece covers three crucial tips to help an app reach its first 1000 downloads. Reaching the 1000-mark is a considerable milestone especially when we speak of app downloads.

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Created on Sep 14th 2020 03:09. Viewed 392 times.

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