What are the methods to preheat the market before the APP goes online?

In the film and television industry, we often hear the term "hot before airing". This term usually refers to a film or television work becoming popular among the audience through various marketing methods before it is aired. Can a brand new app also become popular before it is launched through market preheating? How to do it specifically?

Product market preheating can also be said to be increasing the popularity of the product, leaving an impression in the minds of users before the product goes online. The deeper the impression, the better the market preheating effect of the product. As for how to increase the popularity of an app, I would like to share some experience with you here.

1. Appropriate use of media to expose the app

Using media to expose products is one of the more common ways to preheat products. Since the media has a wide audience and a certain degree of authority, many app operators (especially those from large, financially strong companies) are more willing to adopt this approach. Some mobile game product operators even use this method as a core channel for preheating the market.

There are roughly two ways of media warm-up: one is paid and the other is free. The paid method is to publish product news, gift packages, guides, activities, videos, etc. on some large and authoritative media platforms to increase the market popularity of the product. The free one is to have internal staff write articles and submit them to relevant authoritative media, which is the so-called soft article submission. The former is more suitable for app products that have sufficient operating funds, are unwilling to spend too much energy or do not have the ability to conduct soft-text marketing; the latter is suitable for app products that do not have much product preheating funds but have an operation team with strong writing skills.

Whether it is a paid media channel or a free media channel, it is a test for app operation: app operation needs to conduct in-depth analysis of each channel, extract the essence and remove the dross.

2. Invite celebrities to endorse or conduct interactive internal testing

The power of the celebrity effect is obvious to all of us, especially in the Internet age, celebrity marketing has become the only choice for many products to preheat the market. There are many ways to use celebrities for marketing, such as asking celebrities to endorse products. This is a favorite of many game app products, and the effect is immediate. Another example is to invite celebrities in the circle to do internal testing of the product, and then give some constructive suggestions for the product after the internal testing.

3. WeChat public account preheating

In the era of self-media marketing, WeChat public accounts have become one of the essential marketing tools for many companies. The operating costs of WeChat public accounts are relatively low, and they can interact with users, making them more flexible than media platforms. A brand new app product can use WeChat official accounts to attract fans in advance, so that fans of the official account can know the app product details in advance.

4. Build product communities and groups

Frequently visiting various Internet communities is a characteristic of users in the Internet age. When App operators are warming up for new products, they can build their own product communities (post bars, forums, topic groups, etc.) or social groups ( WeChat groups , QQ groups, etc.) to gather some seed users and warm up for the product launch.

5. App warm-up activities

There is no doubt that events are a great way to promote your products. Whether it is an online activity or an offline activity , it can warm up the market for the app product. Take the app marketing activities that we often see on the street. Although the method has been overused, the effect is still good, as can be seen from the fact that you can encounter marketing activities every now and then. If you are doing a ground-based promotion, you can start with prizes. Find some more attractive prizes (value not limited), let users scan the code to follow the WeChat public account or join the community group, and attract a group of fans.

Online activities are also one of the most common ways to warm up an app. If you want to be convenient, you can use some third-party event operation tools to do some interesting, fun and interactive small activities. For example, many app operators will use some third-party event marketing tools to conduct online warm-up activities.

Of course, if you want to do a more precise event preheating, you may need to use the SDK event tracking and targeted push functions, which can help app operators push activities to the right users at the right time and improve the app preheating effect.

6. Data is not omnipotent, but it is essential for operations

As an app operator, data needs to be recorded and analyzed in real time. Although many operations advocate that data is not omnipotent, don't rely too much on it. But it’s the same principle as money is not everything, but it is something that cannot be lived without. There is no omnipotent data, but some problems can indeed be revealed from the data.

An operation without any data is not considered an operation. Without data, operations have no idea whether what they are doing has met expectations. Without data, operations have no idea where to start if they want to understand where the problem lies. After implementing the APP preheating plan, whether it is media channels, celebrity preheating, public platform preheating, or event preheating, you must pay attention to data changes in real time, and analyze each channel based on the data to have a clear understanding of the effect of each preheating method, so as to use it as a basis for channel selection for next product preheating.