How to promote and operate APP? You need to understand the fundamentals!

With the continuous development of the APP industry, developing an APP is only the first step. After that, the APP needs to be operated and promoted. This process requires four links: attracting new users, retaining users, promoting activation, and generating revenue.

An APP is like a "star" that is constantly packaged and invested in. It needs to constantly create "topics" to attract users and be supported by repeated optimization and upgrades and a series of promotional activities. Otherwise, an APP will soon be eliminated by the market.

Therefore, after the APP is developed, how to operate and promote it becomes particularly important.

1. The first requirement is to understand the needs of APP operation and promotion?

Quoting from Baidu Encyclopedia: APP operation and promotion mainly involves monitoring and analysis of APP traffic, research on target user behavior, daily updates and content editing of APP, online marketing planning and promotion, etc.

APP operation and promotion can be understood as: expanding the number of APP users - retaining users - calculating and analyzing APP traffic - improving user activity - achieving revenue; in simple terms, it is: attracting new users - retaining users - promoting activity - generating revenue.

2. Attract new customers

Attracting new users means attracting new users, and the most direct goal is to increase the number of new users.

Users are the source of APP’s life and co-creators of APP’s value. Only new users can bring new value to APP.

Common methods of attracting new users: promotion in major app stores: listing an app in an app store is the first step in promotion, and it is also the primary source of acquiring users in the early stages of an app. All major app stores have free first-launch resource slots.

Build an encyclopedia: The encyclopedia has a high weight. When the APP is first released, there is no introduction about the APP on the Internet. Building an encyclopedia can allow users to quickly understand the APP. New media operation: Attract users and guide them to download the APP through operation and promotion on new media. Commonly used new media platforms include: WeChat, Weibo, Toutiao, etc. Ground promotion: Ground promotion in places with high traffic, such as distributing flyers, posting advertisements, etc.

Look for platform recommendations: When a new APP is released, you can compete for the first launch resources in various application stores, including exposure opportunities such as new product recommendations and Wandoujia design awards. SEO/ASO: Through optimization, the APP can be ranked higher when users search for keywords. Exchange and mutual promotion: You can find the built-in recommendation positions used by other APPs to exchange and mutual promotion.

Event marketing: Attract users by planning and operating promotional activities. This is a relatively simple and direct method. Through interesting event content and participation methods, users can learn about the APP and are encouraged to download and register the APP.

3. Retention

Retention actually reflects a conversion rate.

That is, the process of transforming the initial unstable users into stable users, active users, and loyal users. As the number of users continues to grow, the primary task of this stage is to retain users, reduce user losses, and improve user retention rate.

1. Retention rate User retention rate refers to the situation in which new users open the APP in different periods within a certain period of time.

The user retention rate can show the attractiveness of the APP to users.

Calculating the retention rate requires long-term persistence. When promoting the APP , you need to pay special attention to data such as next-day retention, three-day retention, seven-day retention, 14-day retention, and 30-day retention. These data can reflect the situation of user loss in different periods. By analyzing these data, we can quickly find the reasons for user loss.

Next-day retention: Since they are all new users, the user loss situation will be more serious. This requires combining the APP’s novice guidance design and the source channels of new users to analyze the reasons for user loss. Weekly retention: After a week, users generally have understood a complete APP operation process. If users can stay after a week, they are very likely to become loyal users of the APP. If user loss is serious, you can look for problems in the functions of the APP itself. Monthly retention: This stage is the best reflection of the retention of APP users. After a month, the users who stay at this time are generally loyal users and have a certain degree of dependence on the APP.

1. How to improve APP user retention

(1) Channel selection and improving channel conversion quality User quality is an important part of improving user retention. The period when new users first start using the APP is a period of time when user loss is more serious; therefore, in terms of operation and promotion, user quality should be controlled and channels should be selected well.

(2) Improve the brand awareness of the APP. Improve the brand, protect the brand image, and increase brand awareness. Why do others use the APP?

In addition to various promotion methods, it is nothing more than recommendations from friends, high reviews in the application mall, etc.; and the two are because the recognition of APP is relatively high, so it is very important to lay a good brand foundation.

(3) Provide good guidance for new APP users. Provide good guidance for new users, especially for games, shopping, finance, and financial management. When new users first start using an APP, they have no knowledge of specific operations within the APP. This requires the APP's new user guidance function to help new users better understand the APP.

(4) Optimize the functions of the APP. Although the functions of mobile phones are constantly improving, the APP still needs to be optimized to avoid problems such as APP crashes, memory usage, and slow operation. The homogeneity of APP products in the market is quite serious, and users have relatively high alternative choices. Optimizing the APP experience and product functions can better retain users to a certain extent.

4. Promote activity

Activation promotion refers to promoting the activity of APP users. The direct goal is the number of active users, which are generally divided into daily active users, weekly active users, and monthly active users.

After establishing a stable relationship with users, it is necessary to improve user activity. Only active users can create value for the APP. There must be a reason for the low activity of APP users. It may be that the APP is poorly understood, or there may be problems with the APP, etc. In short, we must find the reasons through scientific data analysis, deal with risks in a timely manner, and improve user activity. How to improve user activity? Activities are a good way to improve user activity, whether online or offline; the content and form of activities should be as diverse as possible, and activities can be planned based on some important festivals or related hot topics.

Usually, users' activity can be improved through daily activities, such as signing in, getting points after logging in, etc.

5. Revenue

After the APP has accumulated a group of loyal users and entered the normal operation track, the user traffic and commercial value can be converted, and the APP can naturally start to generate revenue and realize cash.

(1) When the number of APP users is large and the user activity is high, fees can be collected by introducing various advertisements;

(2) Provide value-added functions and benefits. As long as the APP can make users sticky, users will naturally develop consumption needs and purchase corresponding value-added products. For example, by setting membership or monthly card rules in the APP, as long as users become dependent on the APP and want to obtain or enjoy more services, they will automatically become paying users;

(3) Conduct e-commerce conversion and realize monetization through point stores;

(4) User data is also valuable.

VI. Conclusion

Four stages of APP operation and promotion

There needs to be data support as a reference. In some processes and decision-making, data can even play a decisive role. The whole process of APP promotion requires at least a stable calculation tool to participate:

For example, in the new user acquisition stage, you need to pay attention to promotion indicators such as user clicks, downloads, registrations, and number of users; in the retention stage, you need to pay attention to the user's next-day retention, three-day retention, seven-day retention, thirty-day retention, retention rate and other conversion cycles; in the activation stage, you need to monitor user activity, the number of times the APP is used, the online time and other active data;

In the revenue stage, it is necessary to calculate user behavior data such as the payment rate of value-added functions. Now, in terms of channel accounting, third parties such as openinstall can already complete data monitoring of the entire process of APP promotion. By analyzing the promotion data, we can adjust the APP operation and promotion plan to achieve targeted and refined operation and promotion, and ultimately achieve the goal of "attracting new users - retaining existing users - promoting activation - generating revenue".