Here’s what you should know to develop successful app growth strategies in 2023.
Key Takeaways:
- Most mobile apps fail to take off because they lack a solid growth strategy
- Some ways to grow your app include app development, market development and penetration, and diversification.
- Understanding your target market can help you develop better products
- You also need to create a unique value proposition, promote your app through the proper channels, and retain customers over time
- Having a specialized team for your app growth strategy can help you become more efficient
Your mobile app journey can be one of the most challenging aspects of growing your business. Not only do you have to build an amazing and unique app, but you also need to develop strategies to popularize it, bring more users on board, and boost profitability. That’s not an easy feat to achieve. Studies show that less than 10 percent of mobile apps survive beyond one month of their launch, and less than 20 percent make it past the one-year mark. While some fail because they simply aren’t a good fit for the target market, others fail due to a lack of a solid app growth strategy.
How can you succeed where many fail? For starters, you need to use a proven strategy to grow your app. You also need to regularly evaluate the performance of your app growth strategies to determine if they are still relevant to your target market and aligned with your goals. Here’s a closer look at how you can create an effective app growth strategy in 2023.
What are app growth strategies?
The easiest way to think of an app growth strategy is as a plan to increase your current market share. For some businesses, this means focusing on growing the influence of a single app. For others, it means diversifying by offering more products and tapping into new markets.
Generally, businesses rely on the following strategies to grow their apps:
App development
This strategy focuses on developing existing apps by creating new services, removing unnecessary features, and adding new ones to create more value for users. It also involves building apps to solve new challenges or add value to existing solutions. Businesses can enhance their app development strategy by investing in research, collaborating with partners to build new apps, acquiring new apps, or rebranding current apps, as a few examples.
App market development
App market development involves growing your market share by increasing your user base and developing new market segments in existing and new markets. Businesses that use this strategy focus on identifying potential users and the best way to approach them and finding ways to monetize their existing user base.
App market penetration
This strategy focuses on growing your current influence and user base in an existing market to increase profitability. This may include reducing prices, conducting more aggressive promotions, acquiring your competitors’ apps and their customers, or generating more revenue from existing customers.
App diversification
App diversification involves venturing into new markets and developing new apps that are different from existing ones. It’s a risky strategy, but when implemented correctly, it yields high ROI.
With that in mind, here are some practical tips to help you scale your app growth.
Take time to understand your market
Getting to know your market could mean the difference between success and failure in your app growth strategy. That said, you’ll gain more success once you completely understand the customers you’re serving and your target market.
Learning everything you can about your users is a good place to start. This includes how they think, their decision-making process, how they interact with your app, what they think of it (and its alternatives), what kind of apps they download, who they follow on social media, where they work, their income, their gender, and any other relevant information. This knowledge will help you determine which app improvements are necessary to serve your users better.
It’s also necessary to conduct a thorough analysis of your competitors. Doing so will give you an idea of the type of users they are targeting and attracting and which ones you should focus on. It can also help you identify market gaps that need to be filled, such as underserved customers or under-delivered services.
Create a unique value proposition
According to Statista, there are over 2.6 million apps on Google Play Store and an additional 3.8 million on the Apple App store. This means that users are spoiled for choice when it comes to which app to use. Thus, your app needs to be special and provide a unique value proposition to attract new users and retain existing ones in the long run. To successfully grow your app, you should determine what makes it different from alternatives and build on those strengths. Additionally, you should strive to provide more value to your users than your competitors currently offer.
Promote your app the right way
Promoting your app through the proper channels can ensure it shows up in relevant search results. It ensures you attract the right audience and increases your user retention. Submitting your apps to app review sites and relevant blogs, and optimizing them for search engines and app stores, are good ways to enhance your app’s visibility.
Focus on increasing customer lifetime value
Retaining existing users is crucial to your app growth strategy as it leads to a high customer lifetime value. Customer lifetime value refers to the amount of profit you generate from a customer over time. Some ways to increase your app’s customer lifetime value include improving your onboarding process, offering better user support, providing engaging content, cultivating relationships that transcend economic incentives, and collecting actionable feedback to improve your app.
Form a specialized team for your app growth strategy
One of the quickest ways to scale your business is by working with a dedicated team with the expertise to manage your app growth strategy. The team should consist of a software engineer, a marketer, a product strategist, and any other professional that adds value to your app growth strategy. Having a specialized team not only helps you scale your business faster but also ensures that every aspect of your strategy is addressed.
Let Shockoe help with your app growth strategy
While you can manage your app growth independently, an experienced growth marketing agency like Shockoe can help you develop innovative ways to achieve your objectives. Whether you’re building a new app from scratch or looking for ways to improve existing products, Shockoe can lead the way. Our specialized team of experts helps you get better, faster results with less hassle. Get in touch with us today to learn more.