App discovery is publishers' major concern

With nearly 3 million mobile apps and the number increasing by the second, it's inevitable that the majority of new apps will go unnoticed. With precious time and resources invested in the success of an app, publishers need to address the following concerns to ensure their apps do not get lost in the crowd:

• Get your apps noticed in the right places. Apps which aren't featured in the top lists have a very small chance of attracting new downloads, revenue and customers. App marketers should focus on how to expand in specific regions where smartphone usage is high.
• Improve your knowledge of keyword optimisation: Misspelling or using the wrong keywords can lead to potential loss of income and downloads. A recent report on UK travel brands, conducted by The Drum, demonstrates how spelling errors and missing keywords make it hard for customers to find the apps they're looking for.
• Sustain market interest beyond launch day: Thinking long-term is key for app publishers who want to turn their apps into an addiction. A solid, long-term marketing and in-app advertising strategy is a good way for app publishers to sustain momentum and revenue. Having immediate feedback on marketing and advertising campaigns helps app publishers to improve and minimise the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) of new users.

Keywords – improving visibility and mobile app rankings

App marketers need to have a keyword strategy to drive downloads and boost brand awareness in an increasingly noisy market. It is important to keep track of two sets of keywords: brand keywords and other keyword terms related to your app.

An example may clarify here. Having clear information and clean meta data is crucial if app publisher want to increase the chances of getting discovered. App Store Optimization (ASO) tools can be invaluable in tracking how well keyword strategies are performing. ASO helps marketers to select the top 10-20 keywords specifically relating to an app's category and which keywords are currently driving downloads from the store for each country. It enables marketers to monitor how its own and rival apps are ranking for each keyword.

Knowing ROI is better than guessing

According to IDC and App Annie, in-app advertising spending will overtake other formats of online advertising by 2017. To take advantage of this opportunity, app marketers must invest in tools to help them understand the impact of any advertising spend quickly.

Advertising analytics enable publishers to assess the return on investment (ROI) of all advertising platforms in one easy-to-read dashboard. They illustrate in near real-time whether paid-for marketing strategies are impacting downloads, rankings and revenue, and can work out exact advertising costs for each conversion. This allows publishers to make instant changes according to performance.

These tools allow app publishers of all sizes to determine if they are getting value from their advertising investments by seeing how their keywords and campaigns are performing across every app store.

App marketers' way forward

App store data, advertising analytics, and keyword optimisation tools can all help an app marketer understand how her app is doing in terms of revenue and download, advertising spend and allocation, and where an app is appearing in search results.

Once they have these metrics in-hand, and understand how their app compares to that of competitors, they can then determine where to invest in order to build a truly great app for end-users.

• Before joining App Annie, Marcos served as the Director of Marketing at Egnyte, a leading enterprise file sharing company. Marcos, who was on the founding team of iBand—which was later acquired by Macromedia— has more than 16 years of experience working with startups