APP promotion: Only by mastering those data and channels can you get 1 million users!

Whether it is a large company or a small business, promoting an App from scratch requires going through an entrepreneurial process - always facing the dilemma of having few people, lack of resources, and "no promotion budget". This article shares the journey of a person who grew from 0 to 1 million users in 1 year.

1. This database must include both breadth and depth data

1. Breadth

It refers to industry data. You need to have a rough understanding of the threshold data of the entire mobile industry. For example, for toC products, you need to have tens of millions of users before you can confidently negotiate resource exchanges with others (two years ago, it was millions of users); toB products are relatively simple, and it is enough to have tens of thousands of users;

2. Depth

This means that you should have some understanding of the relevant data in the field where your application is located, including the data of competitors and your own data. How to obtain competitor data? There are several ways:

For rankings and trends, you can follow some websites such as App Annie and App Radar.
The download volume of competing products can be entered into your own table regularly based on the download volume displayed by major markets.
Subscribe to competitor's operational news (Weibo, official account, email, etc.)
2. Indicators that need attention

You should pay attention to the following indicators. The bigger the better, but when they are lower than the industry level, you should improve them by improving products and holding activities:

New users: users (devices) who launch the app for the first time after installation within a certain period of time;

Active users: users (devices) who have launched an app once within a certain period of time;

Retained users: new users (excluding repeated installations) within a certain period of time, and users who continue to use the app after a period of time;

Retention rate: retained users/new users (deduplicated).

The results of operations are presented through data. Before you start an operation, you must make an estimate of the results of this activity. Generally speaking, the success of an operation is usually judged by whether it significantly attracts new users during the activity and subsequent periods.
3. How to add statistical code to the application and some preliminary statistical data

At this time, we need to add a statistical analysis SDK to the application. We recommend that you use products from large companies. First, they are more stable and will not suddenly fail. Second, their technical capabilities and resources provided to developers are much stronger than those of small companies. The data management capabilities (servers and operations) of a large company can show how detailed data reporting their SDK can support.

Start by registering a developer account, obtaining an AppKey, then finding the latest SDK in “SDK Download” on the official website homepage, downloading and reading the documentation, and putting the SDK into your App.

If you need to count the distribution channels of your application, for example, how many users downloaded your application from App Store, and how many users downloaded your application through Google Play. You need to use the cloud analysis channel analysis function. The operation staff only needs to name the channels for the markets they plan to upload, and then tell the developers the channel names and let them package them separately. After it takes effect, the channel name and corresponding data will be displayed in the report. You must remember what market the channel name corresponds to. It is best to make a memo for yourself.

4. Application Testing

Every application must undergo a comprehensive testing process before it is officially launched. This reflects the level of responsibility of the product team.

Testing is generally divided into two parts: manual testing and automatic testing. For Android apps, the wide variety of Android device specifications makes the testing process lengthy and complicated. Generally speaking, before testing, product personnel must first prepare a list of required tests and hand it over to testers. This list is even more necessary for people like me who are responsible for product, operation, and testing. It can help me work in an orderly and efficient manner in the midst of chaos.

When doing manual testing, you need to sort the popular models, system versions, resolutions, etc. on the market according to market reports, and then find models that meet these requirements for manual testing. Make sure there are no problems before preparing for release.

The data can be obtained from Tencent Big Data and other sources.
5. Preparing for listing: Everything is ready except the market

Compared with the promotion of iOS App, Android App operation requires more platforms to maintain, more complex cooperation methods, and also tests people's patience and information tracking ability.

A new application needs to find several reliable application markets for long-term operation. There are many channel choices. In the process of resource allocation, how should operators distinguish the priorities of various channels? The effects of different applications may be different in different application markets.

Generally speaking, there are two ways of market cooperation: free and paid

There are generally four payment methods:

CPA: activation cost. A user installing and opening the app counts as one activation (normal).

CPT: Cost per time, billed by day, week, or month;

CPC: Cost per click, charged based on the number of times the ad is clicked;

CPM: cost per 1,000 impressions.
6. Market Experience: Meizu is popular, App Store has a lot of money, Xiaomi cannot be ignored
1. Google Play: ★★★☆☆

There is no need to introduce the official name. It is Google's official application market, whose Chinese name is "E-Market". There are many applications in it. Since it is the official market, its coverage is naturally the largest. However, there is a serious problem of acclimatization in China at present. Driven by profit, most of the parallel imported products in China have refreshed their own ROMs, and there is basically no official Google e-marketplace in them.

But don’t underestimate it. Many domestic markets will look for novel applications on it and include them in their own markets to keep them updated on a daily basis.
2. App Store: ★★★★★

Tencent's products have a high-end interface, and their main highlight is that they are safe and fast. They also have QQ relationship chains, which makes it easier for developers to use their applications through word-of-mouth marketing. In addition, with the support of Tencent's open platform, applications that enter App Store will obtain corresponding promotional resources: there are many distribution scenarios, including App Store, Tencent QQ, WeChat, Tencent Mobile Manager, QQ Space, QQ Games, etc. This alone is attractive enough.

3. Huawei apps: ★★★★★

Huawei App Market is a market that cannot be ignored because of the large sales volume of Huawei mobile phones. There is a very important difference between Huawei and other app markets. Huawei App Market will capture keywords from the application description. You can pay more attention when filling out the application description in Huawei Market.

In addition, one more thing is that you must not inflate the volume in the Huawei App Store. Once you are found to have inflated the volume, it will be removed immediately. According to experience, it will take about 30 days. Sometimes competitors may maliciously inflate the volume of their apps, causing the app to be removed. Therefore, you need to check the relevant data of your own App every day. If you find any abnormal data, contact Huawei customer service in time.

3. Jifeng Market: ★★★★☆

It is also a market driven by highly popular forums. The popularity of Jifeng Forum ranks among the top in domestic Android mobile phone forums. I feel that the Jifeng Market opens very slowly and the client experience is not very good.
4. Xiaomi Apps: ★★★★★

The installed base of MIUI with built-in Xiaomi App Store has reached more than 30 million, which has obvious volume and is an application market that cannot be ignored.
5. App Store: ★★★★☆

Cooperating with Wandoujia, a leading mobile phone synchronization application in China, the number of installed devices has increased significantly. The editor's personal style is quite obvious, giving him the feeling of being the "NetEase guy in the Android market." The classification is quite good, and there are daily recommendations. It has close ties with developers and often holds developer salons and "App Star" events to help developers increase their influence in the industry.
6. Meizu Flyme: ★★★★★

Meizu's application market Flyme can be said to be the most "popular" of all the built-in application markets of domestic mobile phone manufacturers. The editors are ethical and only promote excellent applications, so good applications without promotion resources are not afraid of being buried here. In addition, Meizu users have the temperament of Apple users. They like to play apps and are willing to spend money. When they come across good free apps, they will even happily "donate money". If you want to make paid Android applications, you can try it on Meizu Flyme and make a Meizu special version.
7. Anzhi Market: ★★★★☆

Anzhi.com started out by flashing parallel-imported apps and quickly became the third largest unofficial Android app store. If you buy an Android phone, especially the HTC series, you will definitely know this. A large number of parallel-imported mobile phone sellers default to flashing the goapk ROM, and the default built-in one is the Anzhi Market, which is released by the goapk forum.

There is nothing much to say, just go straight from the source, the default installed capacity is definitely large. It feels like the way copycat phones used to use fee-charging software (of course this one doesn’t charge any money). But smartphone users are not fools. They are much smarter than those who play with copycat apps. The app itself is pretty good and you won’t uninstall it as soon as you buy it.
8. 91 Market: ★★★★☆

It seems that when you buy a mobile phone from a mobile phone store like "SmarTone", it usually comes with 91 Assistant installed. No matter it is iOS or Android, it can be said that novice users generally use this.

Once an app is included in 91 Assistant and appears on the client's homepage, there will be a download peak on that day, but once it is removed from the homepage, it will return to its previous growth level (unless your app is so good that people who download your app that day will be tempted to spread it by word of mouth). This is more suitable for impulse. Most of 91’s promotions require you to pay money, but they will generally let you go on for 1 to 2 days first, so you can experience the feeling of “soaring into the sky”.
9. Carpenter Ant: ★★★☆☆

The download volume is amazing! Have your own Carpenter ROM.

In addition to the above-mentioned larger markets, there are more than 400 Android markets. It is recommended to focus on registering developer accounts in the large markets first, upload the first version of the application, and then slowly cover these small markets. After the second and third editions are released, we will select several markets with obvious growth for maintenance based on the data.

Of course, this was my situation at that time. The situation may have changed a bit now. Please take it as a reference only.