Two Strategies to Grow Your App to 1 Million Users

Savvy user acquisition (UA) marketers growing their apps from 1,000  to 1 million users know it’s essential to think beyond traditional UA methods. Have you perfected ASO and optimized data-driven campaigns and still not hit the 1 million user mark?

We have two winning strategies to help you grow your app to a million users.

Launch your app internationally

Have you tapped out your local user base? It may be time to think globally. Launching internationally requires a careful assessment of internal resources as well as market research. Start by assessing the resources available to your team to determine which languages you can support in the near future. Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, and Hindi are all good choices to help you reach large new mobile-savvy audiences.

Snag a quick, early win under your belt by getting your app store descriptions translated for each market you wish to pursue. Speaking of app stores — consider which devices are most popular in the markets you aim to target.  For instance, the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, and France tend to be iOS-heavy, while Android devices are more popular in India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Conserve your resources by promoting the iOS version of your application in the countries where Apple devices are more common and vice versa in the countries where Android is more prominent.

Before you launch your app internationally

Localizing an app goes far beyond simple translation. From analyzing relevant keywords in each target market to identifying the essential characteristics of each region, learning and getting to know the country or region’s typical user behavior, preferences, and choices will bring infinitely better results.

Follow these three steps to ensure success:

1. Research the competition — It’s imperative to research your competitors in each new market you enter. Armed with competitive research, you can better leverage your app’s unique selling propositions (USPs).
2. Localize ASO — Gaining more organic users and boosting your visibility early on is vital for succeeding in a new market.
3. Soft launch — This step is particularly important. Poor app performance will lead to user churn and bad reviews, ruining your ability to scale before you even get started. As a limited release of your app, a soft launch will allow you to get early customer feedback, positive reviews, and allow you to take care of any lingering issues before launch.

Enlist the help of influencers

Whether you’re launching in a new market or simply looking to grow your reach at home, influencers can help you find new audiences.

In a recent survey, 60% of marketers say influencer-generated content performs better and drives more engagement compared to branded posts. Therefore, it’s no surprise that 75% of marketers intend to put a significant budget into influencer marketing in 2022, with influencer spending forecasted to pass 4 billion in the U.S. alone.

Tip: Influencers are especially popular with Gen Z — in fact, it’s their most trusted form of advertising.

Most popular platforms for influencer marketing

• TikTok —TikTok has quickly risen in popularity to become one of the top places right now for influencer marketing. The platform boasts over 1 billion monthly active users, 50% of which say they use the platform to help them make purchasing decisions. Even more convicing of TikTok’s hot status is the platform’s high engagement rates with influencers.
• Instagram — Generally the best performing platform for brands wanting to reach new audiences quickly, Instagram is also the best channel for social action with an average 3.2% engagement rate compared to 1.5% across all social networks. Instagram users are more likely to comment, like, and share the content they consume.
• Twitch — Twitch is another popular option, where distinct communities are built around particular streamers and personalities who interact and chat regularly. This heightened interaction creates a sense of belonging on the platform. In addition, Twitch offers a bounty program that gives smaller channels the chance to boost their profiles by being sponsored by potential partners. For example, brands can post a bounty for streamers to play a certain game for a duration with a required average concurrent viewer count and set a payout amount.
• YouTube — The video-sharing platform has long been associated with influencer marketing campaigns and remains a highly effective channel today. In fact, 26% of U.S. social media users say that YouTube is the most successful channel in getting them to try new products. Lion Studio’s Love Balls gathered momentum when a popular YouTuber who focused primarily on mobile games showcased it on their channel. As a result, Love Balls achieved 250 million downloads and shot to the number one spot on the App Store.

Smaller influencers can create big impact

While it may seem intuitive that influencers with huge audiences are more beneficial to your brand, the opposite seems to be true. We’ve found that engagement rates tend to drop with larger influencers and that smaller influencers see higher CTRs — around 100k subscribers is a healthy balance of both.

However, the biggest key to success when it comes to influencer marketing is knowing your audience. How old is your typical user? What platforms do they hang out on? Which influencers are they already engaging with? What messaging will they respond to? How do you keep paid content authentic and relevant to your audience?

Create campaigns that draw on the strengths of influencer marketing, such as brand awareness, effectively reaching new target markets, and building credibility and trust. In doing so, you can convert influencer content into new users. Headspace, the mindfulness and mediation app, cleverly subverted influencer marketing fatigue by having influencers post reflective, long-form endorsements of the app. By encouraging influencers to express vulnerability in this way, Headspace’s marketing campaign came across as natural and authentic. This type of content is a powerful way to gain traction on social media platforms.

Of course, to continue investing in influencer marketing, you need to be able to show results.

3 ways to measure influencer marketing ROI

1. Examine referral traffic by providing influencers with unique referral codes and discounts. In this way, you can see exactly which of your avenues are performing.
2. Include custom deep links or deferred deep links to gather conversion metrics to see the impact of your influencer marketing on brand awareness.
3. Pay attention to brand name mentions. You can use Google Trends to see where your mentions are coming from and whether they’re increasing or decreasing. Tools like Brand24 allow you to get data on your mentions and engage with them accordingly.

Armed with these new strategies and guidance on how to measure their effectiveness, it’s time to pursue one million users for your app.

(The author is Ms. April Tayson, Regional VP – INSEAU of Adjust and the views expressed in this article are her own)