How do people buy a product online? Do they simply discover something for the first time and whip out their credit card?
Generally, this does not happen. A person goes through a process of awareness, consideration, and finally conversion.
Marketers generally illustrate this process with the help of marketing funnels.
Table of Contents
What are marketing funnels?
Marketing funnels are not a new trend. They are an old and powerful tool used by both marketers and sales professionals. By definition, they are a visual representation that closely resemble the typical journey of a buyer.
The graphic above represents a typical marketing funnel. The use of funnel to depict a typical buyer’s journey is obvious.
People interested in the product enter the awareness stage at the top layer of the funnel. Eventually, a fraction of these people finally end up making a decision and buying the product.
There are many variations in the marketing funnels. Some marketers choose three-stage funnels while others have more than three layers.
The beauty of marketing funnels lies in their flexibility. Professionals can divide them into as many layers as they see fit. The overall principle is still the same.
How do Marketing Funnels help increase app downloads?
Making people download an app is nothing short of selling a product. Thus, it makes perfect sense to use a marketing funnel to approach this task. Every company out there wants to optimize its approach to driving app downloads.
Whether you’re developing an app from scratch or trying to convert your WooCommerce store to a mobile app using an app creator, growing downloads is a must.
The following sections explain every layer of a marketing funnel designed to increase app downloads.
Awareness
Awareness is the top layer of a marketing funnel. It is the point where people first hear about an app and take an interest in it.
What is the importance of awareness? Let’s take the film industry as an example. Generally, filmmakers announce the production of a movie even before filming begins. They do this to come into the radar of their audience. When the film eventually comes out in theatres, the audience has already been anticipating its release for months.
Making people aware about a mobile app helps them enter the marketing funnel. Marketers reach out to interested audiences through the right channels and push them down the funnel towards conversion. They find the right audiences with the help of the right app analytics tools.
What are the channels marketers must use during the awareness stage?
Generally, marketers rely on app marketing practices like app store optimization, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, and others. Paid search ads, paid media, and social media ads also come into the picture.
It is vital for marketers to identify the right mediums of communication at the awareness stage.
This is only possible with insightful audience research. Marketers have to identify the digital channels that their target audience most frequently.
For instance, a fashion apparel app is better off promoting its app on Instagram and Facebook rather than LinkedIn. A news media app can find more people on platforms like Twitter. A B2B technology app is better off reaching people through search engines along with LinkedIn.
After choosing the right channels, it’s time to push back the number of people exiting the funnel. There are many factors that determine the number of people who actually move further down the funnel.
The quality of outreach is very important in stopping people from leaving the funnel. The messaging of marketers when promoting an app should be on point. Engaging and incisive messages have a way of attracting people and making them stay inside the funnel.
With the right channels and an optimal content strategy, the awareness stage can prove extremely useful in enhancing app downloads.
Consideration Stage of Marketing Funnels
If someone is at the consideration stage, it means they are interested in downloading the app. The job of marketers at this stage is to build the trust of their audience.
Let’s say you used a turn WordPress to app builder. You have attracted a sizable number of people aware about your app. Now they’re interested in downloading your app.
What’s stopping them?
Bad app reviews for one. In a recent Apptentive survey, researchers found that 50% of people do not download an app with a 3-star rating. The number rises to an alarming 85% for a 2-star app.
It is not exactly surprising to see people not downloading three and two-star apps. Why would someone choose to have a mobile app on their device that many previous users consider mediocre?
The consideration stage is all about building the trust of the audience. Getting an optimal app rating is the easiest way to achieve this.
Another way of building trust is providing the audience an app preview. Many app stores offer the option of app previews these days. If an app preview is not possible, developing a PWA version of a native app is also a good option.
How can companies optimize the rating of their app? A simple way of doing this is encouraging existing users to leave a positive review. This process can be further optimized by offering users an incentive for doing so.
Giving away promo codes to satisfied users in exchange for app reviews can work like a charm. The key lies in execution.
Conversion
This is the last stage. Once an app manages to establish trust, the audience moves further down to the conversion stage.
Conversion means different things in different situations. The goal at the beginning was to make people download an app. Thus, conversion in this situation means making users install the app and sign-up.
This part requires a little less effort on the marketing side and a little more on app design. Marketers have to make sure that the app listing is good enough to make someone at the conversion stage select the install button. This means using optimal app screenshots, writing a good description, and a catchy app name.
Generally, most apps require users to sign-up. The conversion process is only considered complete when users sign up.
The only thing to ensure here is that people do not leave at the user-onboarding (sign-up) screen. Adding social sign-up options is a good idea as it bypasses the hassle of typing an email and password. A simple and easy to grasp design helps expedite the process and quickly take the users into the app.
Once this is done, the conversion is finally complete.
In Conclusion
Marketing funnels are very powerful tools in helping drive the sale of different kinds of products or services. They help marketing professionals approach their job in a more strategic manner. Every possible customer or user is at a different stage of a funnel. It is the job of marketers to take the right actions to push them further towards conversion.
This piece offers a deep dive into how marketing funnels can help increase app downloads. These ideas can help marketers approach their target audience in a much more effective manner.
Also read: The Ultimate Video Marketing Guide To Promote Your Mobile App