How the Purple App Funnel can help you expand your user base (Part II)

Every app needs a marketing funnel. In other words, a complete strategy to help you grow your app's user base. In this series, we will show you in detail how the Purple App Funnel can play a crucial role in your marketing plan and ultimately help you increase your user base.

The Purple App Funnel

Part I covers the first step of the marketing funnel and looks at how you can increase awareness of your app with the help of the Purple Recommendations Engine.

Part II covers the second and third steps of the marketing funnel, i.e. how to get prospects to install your app and eventually discover your content.

Part III covers the fourth and fifth steps of the marketing funnel. On the one hand, it's about how to use individual campaigns within the app as key actions. And on the other hand, how to make your customers return to your app again and again(retention).

Part II:

In the first part of this three-part series, we have already covered the first step of the Purple App Funnel. You learned how to generate awareness with the Purple Recommendation Engine.

Now, in part two, we'll give you valuable information about the next two steps in the app funnel. First, we'll discuss how to get your prospects to download and install your app. Second, you'll find out how a great user experience leads to high engagement and ultimately an increase in your user base and revenue.

App Marketing Funnel Step 2: Install

An important part of the app marketing funnel is app store optimization. With over two million mobile apps in the major app stores today, one of the biggest problems is getting apps found or discovered and ultimately installed. So how do you get people to install your app in particular? Before we go any further, remember: your app's appearance is like a business card.

What are the mechanisms of App Store optimization?

Let's start by breaking down the components that have the biggest impact on your appearance in the major app stores.

Main components

App name: We definitely recommend checking if the name of your app is already in use by someone. Also, make sure you are satisfied with the search results that the App Store search engines spit out for your title. In addition, you can consider using keywords in the title to further improve your search results. Just make sure that the keyword used in the app name is the one with the highest search volume. For less popular apps, you should find the right balance between branding and relevant keywords.

Also consider getting a little creative with your app name. Individuality should come first, as apps created with Purple can contain any UTF-8 character in the name.

App Icon: Simple, but often overlooked and underrated. Of course, you want to be sure that your app icon stands out and is memorable and recognizable. This way, your user will find your app more easily among the many other apps installed on their phone.

Explanation: Technically, the App Store algorithm ignores the app explanation. However, the same is not true for users. So instead of optimizing for SEO, you should focus on explaining the features and benefits of your app. As a quick tip, check out the explanations of some of the top rated games. There you can learn from the best and get inspired, because the gaming industry is still leading the way in app store optimization.

Screenshots & Videos: An app preview video and screenshots will help you convert undecided users. In fact, we tend to say it's the most important of the four factors. The video and the first screenshots seen by potential users must show in an easily recognizable way what your app is about and why it is worth downloading.

App Marketing Funnel Step 3: Discover

Attractive content is the key to getting your customers to use your application. Users want to be incessantly entertained and hate it when something is designed in a careless and counterintuitive way. Therefore, make it as easy and straightforward as possible for your users to interact with all the content in your app so that they end up becoming paying customers.

A good strategy is to offer freemium content. This is because with free apps, the download barrier is very low. Once the app is installed, the next task is to win over the prospects. For this, it is very helpful if you manage to convince them to interact a lot with your app. The Economist Espresso app is a fantastic example of this. The app shows very nicely how you can make money with in-app purchases. It offers its customers a unique overview of the most important topics of the day, compiled by editors. Moreover, the user interface is designed to be intuitive. The user's finger is inclined to constantly interact with the animated content. From a monetization perspective, the freemium version of the app includes one free-access article per day. In addition, full premium access costs $3.99 per month.

The most common tools your customers can use to (re)discover your app are push notifications, deep links, and cross-linking between web and app. At this point, we would like to highlight the benefits of push notifications. You enable your app users to use your app easily. Moreover, push notifications won't be held up by spam filters or forgotten in an inbox. Last but not least, click-through rates can quickly double compared to emails. Learn more about push notifications in Part III.

Read the third part here: How the Purple App Funnel can help you expand your user base (Part III).

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