Dave Bell, co-founder and CEO of gum cubeexamines the unique challenges of bringing a productivity app to app stores.
Tags, reminders, schedules, documents – if any of these ring a bell, you can use productivity apps to stay on track with some of life’s busiest times. The productivity apps category is one of the top 3 most popular on app stores, just behind mobile games and business.
Productivity apps are also often referred to as organizational apps, based on the feature sets they present. Whatever you call them, they have undoubtedly had an impact on the way users interact and prioritize their daily tasks.
Marketing an app organically to app stores in a highly competitive market can be more complicated than you think. After all, many apps can share similar or even identical functionality. Through App Store Optimization (ASO), reducing app store clutter can not only be achievable, but also sustainable.
Let’s explore some of the ways you can adopt an effective mobile marketing strategy for your productivity app.
The unique challenge of bringing a productivity app to market
1. Feature differentiation – For a user, many features may seem like a dime when looking at the category of productivity apps. Although all apps usually have specialized features to focus on, differentiating can be difficult in this case.
2. Define a target audience – Most productivity apps target business, college, or education demographics. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine which audience would be most interesting to target with specific features. Conversely, it can be difficult to segment your audience and opt for an all-in-one approach.
3. Creative differentiation – When looking at apps in the category, you can find design elements that are relatively similar in look and feel. It can be difficult to distinguish between best practices and differentiation.
While there are challenges to differentiation in app metadata strategy and creative sets, there are small but impactful ways to stand out from the crowded App Store space.
App Store Optimization (ASO) Best Practices for Productivity Apps
Best practice #1: Study feature demand
Whether you’re pre-launching or have already launched your app, researching demand for your features is an essential step to maximizing visibility. You may find that certain features are aimed at a specific audience, whether on a demographic or psychographic classification. Some features may be particularly appreciated by students or professionals. So it’s important to convey these features in a way that resonates with your audience through keyword phrases and creatives that resonate.
Best Practice #2: Assess the Competitor Landscape
While this is an ongoing process through ASO, competitor research is especially important in the development, pre-launch, and initial growth stages of your app. Researching competitors in the space gives you more insight into what works for the category. Developers must indeed strike a balance between differentiating and following metadata and design best practices. Studying design elements, calls to action, and tone is essential, but supplementing your competitor research with ASO technology helps you adapt your strategy to be entirely data-driven. Are competitors using a particular color scheme or design elements? Are they using CTAs that call for specific features? Write them all down.
Best practice #3: Adding value through relevant proposals
Ultimately, users want to know how you can make their life easier with a productivity app. So how can you provide them with this effectively? Leveraging brand features and framing in a way that the target audience is most receptive to it is a great way to attract and retain high-quality users. Often features need to be tailored to your target audience, as the features cannot necessarily speak for themselves and what kind of value they bring to their needs. Apply your functionalities in situation and address your solutions directly.
Best Practice #4: Adjust for Seasonality and Reiterate Regularly
App stores reward developers for keeping their apps up to date. Whether by iteration or seasonality, it is important to be able to apply different growth tactics to increase visibility and downloads. This not only allows you to convey relevance during seasonal events like back-to-school, but through iteration you are able to highlight deviations in search patterns and changes to creative sets that may be more effective on app stores.
Globally
Productivity apps help users around the world focus on what matters most. Providing value is important in marketing your app. Faced with the question of differentiation, it is necessary to use the best available resources to put in place a ASO Strategy that allows you to stand out. Provide value to your users at every stage, from reach to installs, to attract high-quality users to successfully market your app organically.
About the Author
Dave Bell is co-founder and CEO of gum cube. Gummicube is a global leader in app store optimization with over 12 years of experience in app optimization and marketing. We offer leading enterprise ASO technology and agency services, providing support to customers worldwide. Our company is trusted by thousands of leading enterprise brands and startups, including Microsoft, LinkedIn, Bethesda, SWEAT, GrubHub, McAfee and many more.