Best Marketing Strategies to Easily Drive App Downloads and Grow Your VIP Community | Tapcart

The Ultimate App Marketing Guide: How to Easily Drive App Downloads and Grow Your VIP Community

Want to know how to get your customers to download your app? Check out these mobile app marketing tips, with examples from some of our top ecommerce brands.

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How do you get your customers to download your app? And what are the best marketing strategies for mobile apps?

These questions come up a lot at Tapcart. Our e-commerce customers are experts at driving customers to their websites, asking for emails, and capturing phone numbers for SMS text campaigns.

But an app? That’s a different story entirely.

Or is it?

Here’s our guide to mobile app marketing.

How to generate buzz, exclusivity, and FOMO around your app to drive downloads - YouTube

How to generate buzz, exclusivity, and FOMO around your app to drive downloads
We'll dive into Tapcart’s tried-and-true strategies, all of which are leveraged by the top ecommerce brands to fuel growth and retention.

Why should you spend time on app adoption?

You’ve added a new marketing and sales channel. Now what? With an app, the sky’s the limit.

A mobile app has so much potential that you can invest as much (or as little) time into it and still see results. It’s like social media before timelines changed, or like Google before the algorithm updates. With an app, you can set it and forget and see results…

But nurture it just a little bit more, and you’ll see the app's value grow exponentially.

Why? App users will visit the app more often and spend more than customers who just visit your website.

“Once you get users to adopt the app, they're going to visit the brand 3 to 5 times more frequently than they were your website,” said Neal Goyal, Director of Sales at Tapcart. “Those sessions are going to convert at higher conversion rates, at higher apps, and as a result unlock a higher lifetime value from your most loyal and coveted base.”

Each mobile app download turns a customer into a brand advocate, and each push notification subscriber means more eyes on your messages. Through community and brand building, app users spend more, with higher average order values (AOV) and lifetime values (LTV).

True Classic is a great example. The team needed to combat skyrocketing acquisition costs, so they built an app to help curate experiences for their best customers. Now, they see a 200x higher conversion rate on the app compared to the mobile web.

How should you market your mobile app?

How easy is it to drive app downloads for your ecommerce brand? Driving app downloads comes down to two push-and-pull tactics: marketing (the push) and incentives (the pull).

Mobile app marketing can range from small-time investments to full-blown campaigns.

Try these light-lift marketing tactics to drive app awareness and elevate your brand:

Create a buzz around your app with social media

Between sales and product launches, include app messaging in your social media post rotation. Everyone is scrolling on their phones on social media anyway, so it’s a smart tactic to meet your customers where they are. Those who already love and know your brand are likely following your social accounts, so no matter the size of your following, organic social media is the perfect place to start building hype for your app launch. And remember, only around 3% of your audience actually sees your posts, so don’t be afraid to share them often.

Here are best practices to craft your social media strategy with your app in mind:

Use influencer marketing to give your brand a voice & promote your app

Tap into the power of influencer marketing to amplify your brand's voice and promote your app effectively. Influencers often have highly engaged communities; some may share a similar target audience with your brand. Collaborating with an influencer allows you to access this shared audience by harnessing the power of their endorsement.

Gamify your creative campaigns to increase engagement

Many businesses use gamification in their marketing efforts, so your audience (customers, leads, fans, followers, readers, etc.) can engage in a game that offers the chance to win something. In return, you get a marketing boost.

Regarding your app, you can embrace gamification to make the mobile CX more interactive — whether it's puzzles, coding challenges, or trivia. By incorporating this element into your marketing campaigns, you can seriously increase the likelihood of customers redeeming it.

Configure paid ads to push for an App Download with the Meta SDK

Revamp your paid advertising strategy by promoting app downloads rather than simple website visits or purchases. Proper segmentation is essential to ensure you're reaching the right audience.

Here's our key strategy for crafting your ads:

Link your Google Ads App Extensions

Elevate your Google Ads by incorporating an App Store listing extension. This integration empowers you to boost the effectiveness of your mobile app promotions with analytics.

Here’s how you can get started:

Add a mobile app download banner to your mobile website

Website banners are the easiest, lowest-hanging fruit that you can use to ensure your customers know you have an app. Adding a simple reminder will drive app downloads—especially with your mobile website prompt. For best results, add a quick sentence to the banner about the app’s can’t-miss value to incentivize organic traffic to tap download.

Carve out essential real estate on your website to advertise your app

Beyond a simple banner, we recommend reserving valuable real estate in your website's header and footer to showcase the app, complete with official App Store badges.

How do you build a VIP app experience that your customers want to download?

You can do all the marketing, but customers won’t stick around if your app experience is unremarkable.

Your app is a great place to curate your die-hard fans and convert casual shoppers into brand advocates.

The app's goal is to strengthen your relationship with your customers. It inherently does this with impactful benefits like reduced friction and speed to purchase. As Neal Goyal says, “Curate a community and build an experience that brings them together as a customer base, builds community, and creates conversations and drives a deeper connection with your brand.”

Here are several effective ways to enhance your app experience with exclusives:

How to pick the incentives to encourage the most mobile app downloads

Picking the right tactics comes down to understanding who your audience is. An app is designed for your best customers.

Make your app a content hub that keeps customers coming back

Transform your app into a content hub, offering valuable resources such as blogs, videos, playlists, and more. Incorporating content into your app fosters engagement and strengthens the customer relationship with your brand. Over time, this increases app usage, driving long-term conversions.

Add in-app loyalty to secure lifelong retention

A loyalty program within your mobile app can significantly enhance your brand's relationship with shoppers. Offering a loyalty program on your website and within your app is crucial in nurturing a stronger relationship with your customers.

Here’s how you can promote your loyalty program in the app:

Send push notifications to stay top of mind

Push notifications are a powerful communication tool that lets you connect directly with your customers.

Utilizing a mix of email, SMS, and push notifications helps form a customer retention flywheel that drives high customer lifetime value. When properly deployed, these communications lower churn rates and induce higher engagement.

We recommend sending push notifications 2-3 times a week to maintain a strong presence in your community.

Push notifications cost nothing extra to send and can be tailored for promotions, events, and updates efficiently.

Ready to learn more about creating and promoting your mobile app? Visit Tapcart Academy for lessons and inspiration.

About the author

Nicolette Affre

Customer + Community Marketing Manager at Tapcart

Specializing in community development and customer experience, Nicolette oversees Tapcart's Untapped Community and Tapcart Academy.