How to operate and promote a new app? What should be done before and after going online?

Before talking about the operation of an App , it is necessary to sort out how a new App is born :

1. Once upon a time, I had an idea;

2. Sort out, communicate and analyze requirements, and sketch out product design sketches ( product managers create product function mind maps based on communication, exchange and analysis results);

3. Draw product prototype diagram (① global flow diagram, to facilitate later connection with programmers; ② swimlane diagram of product business process, according to specific project requirements; ③ simple interactive prototype, tools : Axure, Moknife, etc.);

4. UI design and acceptance;

5. Project planning (① refine requirements; ② technical solutions; ③ project management: project scheduling, task decomposition);

6. Product development;

7. Delivery test, acceptance and launch;

8. Operation and promotion .

(App promotion framework diagram)

APP environment:

According to incomplete statistics, thousands of apps are born every day, which means that a new app is born every minute or so, and the life cycle of most apps does not last more than three months. I believe many CPs feel the same way. It is becoming more and more difficult to promote apps. The reason is that when you open any app store , you will find that application apps are too homogeneous, and there are countless apps that provide the same functions and services. For example, there are hundreds of cameras: Kuaishou, Beauty Camera, Camera 360, Tiantian Ptu, Wantu, Beauty Camera, Beauty Camera, etc., and many of the names are similar. The overall environment is so severe, so what should product operators do?

1. Before product launch

What should we do before launching a new app?

1. Clarify every little detail of your own product. If you yourself don’t know it clearly, how are you going to explain it to others in the future?

2. Understand product positioning, what is our product and what functions does it have? Who are the product’s audiences and where are they? What problems can our product solve for users in what situations? What services are provided to users? In fact, if you figure out these four questions, you will find out where the promotion points of your product are, and you will have a clear direction for future promotion.

3. Competitive research and analysis: you need to understand what similar apps are there in the market? Understand the download situation and traffic of competitors' iOS and Android versions. Understand what hot words your competitors are using? You can use APPying to search for the popularity of your competitors’ own brand words, and whether these words have been on the hot search list. See what your competitors are doing in terms of promotion.

4. Make a detailed description of the product, including product description copy , product screenshots, keywords, one-sentence description, etc. It is also best to prepare some data analysis templates, including app retention, activity, new users, promotion effects of various channels , etc.

5. Open the app’s official Weibo and WeChat public accounts . This is very important. Weibo and WeChat are popular products and are basically installed on smartphones.

There are several benefits to opening these two official media:

First, after the product is launched, users will know that app entries can easily follow you and interact with you through Weibo or official accounts, and provide feedback. Moreover, good Weibo or public account content can easily attract users to forward it and expand publicity.

Second, these two official media will become important channels for event marketing and promotion in the future, because they can cultivate a group of loyal users, and they are often the source of seed users .

6. Create encyclopedia entries and knowledge questions and answers on Baidu, Sogou, etc. Of course, this is also very important, because in the early days of the app, there is basically no description of your app on the Internet. Establishing an app encyclopedia will become an important channel for users to understand your product. At the same time, if you do brand marketing in the future, it can also attract more potential users for you.

When creating an encyclopedia, you must make sure it is well organized and the language is easy to understand, because your app may be facing the public from different cultural classes. It should also be accompanied by a clear screenshot of the app. Don't underestimate encyclopedias. They contain very high technical content. Some domestic app encyclopedias are really poorly written. Some are too professional and do not consider the user's perspective; some are full of embellished words and seem very long-winded, making people confused after reading them.

The core of the encyclopedia is to tell users with pictures and texts what functions my product uses to meet the needs of which users in which scenarios.

7. Apply for developer accounts in major app markets and organize the documents required for the first release in each market. Since many app stores have new product recommendation columns for newly launched apps, it’s important to understand their recommended rules.

8. Make a promotion plan based on the above preparations. It is best to plan several activities first, because you may not have enough time for publicity and promotion in the later stage.

The preliminary preparations are complicated and of course what I have listed is only a part of it. Different apps will have different preparations. CPs can make corresponding adjustments based on their product positioning.

2. After the product is launched

For the promotion of the app after it is launched, I divide the promotion channels into four categories: online, offline, self-media and comprehensive channels.

Online Promotion

1. Go online on major Android platforms and app stores. There are activities in all major Android markets now, and they are all free. You can apply. Lenovo, Xiaomi, Huawei, Jifeng, and Sogou have special topics every week. If your product is polished very well, you can also get new product recommendations for free: such as App Store , Xiaomi, 360, Huawei new product recommendations, Meizu's early adopter list, Lenovo Music Store 's fresh and hot ones, Baidu's Golden Bear Paw Award, Wandoujia Design Award, etc. These resources are all good and you can try them.

2. The price of brushing the rankings is relatively high. The price for the top 25 on the domestic rankings is about 10,000 per day. But even so, ranking manipulation is still very popular in China, especially on the App Store. After all, the vast majority of iPhone users will go to the App Store to download apps, and at this stage of the iOS charts, apart from spending money to get on the charts, or there is major news that makes users actively search and download on the App Store, otherwise it is basically impossible for an app to be on the hot search list.

Here is a brief introduction to the currently popular WeChat points wall . The biggest difference between the WeChat points wall and the traditional points wall is the different carrier. It uses the WeChat official account as the carrier, embeds the points wall code in the official account, and WeChat users get rewards by completing various advertising tasks on the points wall.

The basic process of "WeChat Points Wall" can be summarized as "Follow the official account" - "Complete the novice task (bind WeChat account, Apple account and mobile phone ID and other information)" - "Perform download tasks" - "Get rewards". This series of operations is not too complicated. Basically, you can complete the download of a game or application within three minutes and get the corresponding points or rewards, which undoubtedly reduces the user's time cost. Moreover, the cost for users to obtain content has been greatly reduced compared to before. Users no longer need to download a separate app. They can complete tasks and redeem rewards within WeChat.

From the advertiser's perspective, WeChat Points Wall can reduce the occurrence of false traffic and improve the authenticity of data. WeChat strictly limits the binding to mobile phone numbers when registering, which increases the cost of "brushing". In addition, a series of manual operations such as following public accounts afterwards can block malicious brushing to a greater extent, thereby ensuring the authenticity of the data.

3. News promotion is a very effective promotion method that can make the product gain a lot of exposure in a very short time. You need to spend a little budget to write a press release. Pay attention to the title of the article must be eye-catching enough. At the same time, publish it on multiple mainstream news portals to create momentum and give people a feeling that this product is very popular.

4. Exchange of traffic , mainly talking about the replacement between apps. Specific forms of exchange include content cooperation, splash screen ads, pop-ups, focus images, in-app recommendations, etc.

suggestion:

① When evaluating whether to exchange traffic, you need to consider whether the users of the two parties are the same, whether there is a competitive relationship, the other party’s brand image, etc.

② When exchanging volume, do not stick to equal or simultaneous exchange, but focus on whether the resource value of both parties is basically equal.

③ CPs with better resources should help partners with limited resources more. Believe that in the end, a mutually beneficial effect will be achieved.

Offline Promotion

1. Field promotion . The biggest advantage of field promotion is that it allows our potential customers to encounter it instead of just seeing it. When local sales staff personally deliver information about their products to the masses, people are more likely to remember them.

Many people think that door-to-door marketing is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly, and that it is unnecessary. In fact, it is not. Door-to-door marketing is very important for early word-of-mouth publicity. Field promotion is one of the most direct ways of communication with precise users, which can make potential users trust your products. Moreover, during the field promotion process, it is easy to find out which aspects of your products need to be improved to enhance the user experience.

Methodology:

① The small gifts delivered by the salespersons are printed with the product logo or a QR code of the product introduction, and the salespersons wear T-shirts with the product logo printed on them;

② Is it a good idea to put a sun umbrella with product logo printed on it at the bus stop?

③ Attract new users or reward old users;

④ Word of mouth marketing , etc.

Note: Pay attention to the scenario when promoting. What does it mean? That is, it is best for you to promote your product in the scenario where users need it most, and even make users feel that they have to use your product. For example, one day when you are going home after get off work, it is raining heavily outside and you can’t get a taxi. At this time, if someone drives to the door of your company and says, "I am a driver for Didi, Shenzhou... and I am willing to take you home, and it is cheaper than a taxi." So are you very willing to sit down? Are you likely to tell your friends about this?

2. Pre-installed by mobile phone manufacturers, major manufacturers: Huawei, Coolpad, Lenovo, OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, Meizu, ZTE, and Samsung. Small and medium-sized manufacturers are mainly small and medium-sized manufacturers in Shenzhen, such as Yitong, Banghua, and DOOV. You may rarely see these brands of mobile phones because their channel manufacturers have different characteristics from the above ones. They all establish channels in fourth-tier cities and below. And their sales methods are also different. They don’t sell through advertising, they mainly sell by giving high commissions to sales staff.

Methodology:

The larger the pre-installed volume of a big brand manufacturer, the more difficult it will be to negotiate, and the longer the user growth cycle will be. At the beginning, it is best to talk to them about projects that are not very flagship models, build relationships in the process, and then cover the entire product chain.

For mobile phone manufacturers to pre-install, as long as they have money, it is not a problem to pre-install hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars at a time.

3. Flash the phone, cooperate with mobile phone stores, etc.

New Media Promotion

1. Weibo promotion is a very important channel, because on average more than 80 million people are browsing Weibo every day. If you find an interesting app on Weibo, you may download it immediately. Therefore, if Weibo promotion is done well, it will have a good effect. The key point of Weibo promotion lies in the writing of copywriting content.

Methodology:

① Anthropomorphize the product, output it in the form of storytelling, build scenes, and show the app functions (look at Durex );

② The carrier can be in the form of a picture or a video, with a download link attached below the picture or video (some people will set it to automatically jump to the download store, which may increase the download volume, but the user accuracy and retention rate are also what you need to consider, so you can make a comparison on whether to set automatic jump or not).

How to promote Weibo copywriting:

① Follow relevant Weibo accounts in the industry, maintain interaction, and increase exposure;

② Leverage on hot events and hot figures to promote marketing ;

③ Plan activities: reward forwarding, pay big accounts to forward;

④ Weibo Nine-square Grid or Space Nine-square Grid , the product exposure is good and the price is not expensive;

⑤ Cooperate with other channels for publicity and promotion.

2. Post on Tieba forum. Find 20-30 high-weight forums to post on. Maintain the posts and answer user questions in a timely manner. Regularly collect information and suggestions from user feedback.

Methodology:

① The posts must be featured. It is not the quantity of posts that matters, but the quality. Featured posts can appear at the front of the community for a long time to achieve the best results.

② It is better to post the same message repeatedly than to hire a group of netizens to post randomly. The message should not be in the form of advertisement. No one will read the message or post comments.

③ If you have the resources and conditions, contact the forum or post bar administrator to promote related activities.

3. WeChat, QQ and public account promotion are similar to Weibo and forum promotion. They are particularly suitable for cold start, with early stage cultivation and later harvest. If you accumulate a considerable number of fans in the early stage and publish articles at the same time as the product goes online, the effect will be related to the number of fans and the quality of the articles.

4. PR promotion. In the Internet age, everyone is a disseminator and director of information content. Whether it is Weibo Kol, WeChat public account, column of media website or major social networking sites, study how to use these platforms to tell a good brand story. Of course, these platforms will also be the best channels for users to generate UGC for the brand.

Methodology:

① The unknown story behind the founder, the founder’s sad history, the product story, the brand story…

② Polish the story repeatedly, but do not over-package it. Grasp the user's pain points and resonate with them.

Comprehensive channels

Suitable for CPs who want to get venture capital . It can quickly expose products, occupy the market, and is conducive to brand building.

1. TV advertising and online advertising

Specific form:

① Celebrity endorsements and online advertising (search engines, advertising alliances , navigation advertising, super advertising platforms, etc.);

② Variety show sponsorship or TV placement in conjunction with online advertising (search engines, advertising alliances, navigation advertising, super advertising platforms, etc.).

2. Coordination of outdoor advertising and online advertising

Specific form:

① Coordination between building elevator advertising and online advertising

② Coordination between bus station advertising and online advertising

③ Coordination of bus body advertising and online advertising

3. Cooperation between social advertising and BD alliance advertising

Specific form:

WeChat, WeChat public accounts, Weibo and communities cooperate with BD alliances (association alliances, campus alliances, industry alliances, cross-industry alliances, media alliances, community alliances, etc.)

4. Multiple (>3) channels

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

The author of this article @徐攀辉 Compiled and published by (APP Top Promotion), please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!