PRO-Bono Project - Kalpha - Mobile App Marketing Strategy
Kalha is a mobile platform that allows people to share and learn new skills 1-to-1 basis. The App is available in both Apple app store and Google play stores. The scope of this project was to get app download through paid ads and increase app engagement among users.
This is a startup mobile platform and niche market. So I started to understand the app by first installing on Apple and Android mobile devices. I took screenshots of all pages and understood the anatomy of the app workflow.
Brief:
To increase user acquisition and engagement using various organic and paid channels.
Objectives: To increase app downloads from 17,000 to 20,000 in a month and to have a high engagement rate.
1) Organically through APP store Optimisation(ASO)
2) Paid channels such as Apple App Store, Google Play Store and Google Ad Network.
3) Through Viral marketing.
Overview:
1. Introduction to Kalpha
2. App Store Optimization
3. Paid Advertising
4. Viral Marketing Strategy
5. Search Engine Optimization
6. Going Forward
7. Conclusion
Then we decided to look for keywords for the app and based on the 10 categories with Google keyword planner. Also, we looked up for competitors and analyzed the competitor's keywords to find the search volume.
Survey Results:
I created a google survey form and wanted to get the insight of people at General Assembly if they were aware of Kalpha and to find out another competitor app that our friends were using on the mobile phone. We had 60 people participated in the survey and we got a handful of very important insight on users' behavior.
49% of respondents have education app installed on their phone
33.3% of respondents use language apps
55.2% of respondents use education app in the past month
55.2% of respondents spend 15-30 min on the app per session
62.1% use education app between 9 pm - 12 am
62.7% do not share courses they find online with others
78.0% were not aware of Kalpha
67.8% aged between 25-34
69.5% are females
App Store Optimization
User Feedback:
Prompt the user To take action .
Rate the App (in-app for IOS, This is done totally three times in 356 days use it wisely and lets app company gather ratings. More ratings higher organic reach)
Send Feedback (Helpshift tool helps to acquire users feedback, Try to do it in-app, so you have control over the negative feedback which will bring down the App score and bring down the ranking for the app in the app store optimization result)
Paid ads were useful if the company has a budget to spend, We had a limited budget which is about $5000 approximate, Since we didn't have access to the analytics for the apple and google play store, we were unable to track with the UTM tags. In this case, we had to cut down many channels that would have been a waste of resources.
Our focus was shifted to the google universal Ad campaign to have a display ad for kalpha in the google play store, on youtube, and in Google properties. Our client also wanted to try google store apps. We had created universal ad campaign with google ads. using a keyword from keyword optimization and carefully selected the ad copies that will be automatically switched between different google properties.
We didn't have proper benchmarks for the App CTR and other important metrics, The media plan may not be accurate.
Suggestion: For a niche app without valid data resources. It is hard to allocate resources. Therefore, it is advisable for the google ads system to allocate resources through medium to high automatic bidding for a two weeks period, for the system to collect data. Then we can manually use those data as the benchmark to calculate the media plan. with Proper Campaign Tracking UTM tags and analytics tools, we can check for the conversion rate and the engagement rate for the ad campaign and also stop low performing ad campaign and channel.
VIRAL MARKETING :
The viral app is a fast way to increase app download. It is an ongoing experience and the app will have to keep the user engaged to avoid churn rate.
A referral is a way of Viral Marketing. Since the client was using the Firebase product for app analytics. I would suggest them to use Firebase invite which is a dynamic link that will hold the information of the sender for the receiver to download the app and will track the conversion. We can then put them in the viral marketing strategy to reward the users based on their engagement rate either by the gamification process in the app or by email remarketing. This works just like Grab shares the app and if the receiver downloads the app through your link, both the user and the sender will be rewarded.
Advantages
Share button in the app allows to select friends and share the link
The receiver gets a personalized invite.
This is done through Firebase Dynamic Links
More successful app downloads
Increased app engagement
Integrates with firebase analytics and helps to monitor user download app through firebase invite.Email Campaign - Onboarding Email Drip
Summary :
Viral Marketing
Go with the trend. Be different in content delivery
Deliver Right message Right time Right audience
Use Referral marketing, increase the user engagement rate with the app
Email Drip Campaign
Catchy headlines
Audience segmentation based on demographics and based on intent.
Supplement email drip with in app push notification and in app mailbox.
Search Engine optimization for the www.kalpha.io
Technical Seo and Link Building is a very important process in SEO audit. Websites are one of the touchpoints in the customer journey. It is important to update valuable information about the app on the website by writing user engagement features like blog posts, app notification of new features, email newsletter signups, etc. When a website has strong backlinks and the content is optimized using the keyword research, Technical audit SEO will only fill the gaps to make it a secured, Google search engine friendly website and helps to rank the website in the top places in SERP. This is very crucial in the google environment for the app store to be validated by the google search engine to organically rank them in higher ranks in SERP.
Closing Thoughts:
It was a learning journey through the mobile app store optimization. I got to learn more about the AOS, the viral marketing, app gamification, in-app push notifications, in-app mail services, email remarketing and other aspects of mobile paid ads.
In a week of our strategy presentation. Kalpha has successfully partnered with Starbucks and they are building their backlinks on their website and they have sent their first in-app push notification with 30 dollars offer on Starbucks for the leaderboard users. I wish all success to their business and They are integrating payment gateway in their mobile app. Also, Going to update their website.
It was my pleasure working with Jaden Teo, Co-founder Kalpha, for patiently understanding few pain points we have pointed out to him in his app and how he can use any of our strategies into his business. I wish Kalpha team a big shout out Thank You! Best team to work with.