Essential strategies to win valuable, engaged users for your app

Once you have your business app in your hands, it’s time to think about how you’re going to rack up downloads and win users. The user acquisition element is as important as getting your design and usability right which can make it daunting for first time app owners. To help you through, we’ve outlined a sensible step-by-step plan with easy strategies to get you started.

1. Write down your plan

As with any marketing activity, the very first thing you need to do is document your user acquisition strategy. This doesn’t have to be an incredibly complex piece of work but, it should be a useful, thorough and clear roadmap. Sit down and think about what kind of users you want to attract, where you’ll find them, which promotional tactics you’ll use and how you’ll measure progress. Listing just a few KPIs can make your acquisition campaign more accountable and much easier for you to see where you’re excelling and where changes are needed.

2. Set a budget

Once you know what your plan is, it’s time to start crunching some numbers. It can be difficult to know what a realistic budget looks like as a first time business app owner but, having some rough figures to hand means you’re less likely to overspend and more likely to keep expenditure within an acceptable margin. Focus on assigning a rough budget to each stage of your plan, with approximate figures for things like any social media advertising or display ads you may have included.

3. Bullet point short and long term goals

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of focusing all of your app user acquisition efforts within the first month or so of launch but, this means that you’ll quickly run out of steam. Create a bullet point list of both short and long term goals, print it off and keep it readily available.

4. Launch your burst campaign

A burst campaign is intended to deliver lots of users to your App Store page and trigger downloads immediately after your app launches. This is used to begin the optimisation process and to create a buzz right out of the gate. You can be creative here – looking at what competitors have done recently is a good way to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t, before you spend a single penny of your own marketing budget.

5. Deploy your longer term plans

With your burst campaign up and running, start thinking about your next step and how you’ll capitalise on your early momentum. Now is the time to get your next marketing activity underway.

6. Be analytical

As your campaigns deploy, keep coming back to the data. Crunching data points and diving into your analytics can help to keep you on track and means you’ll always be fully appraised of user numbers and downloads.