How To Run A PR Campaign For Your Mobile App
Today’s world runs on good first impressions.
It is extremely important for a product or service to be marketed in the right way to garner a favourable public opinion.
Top companies around the world like Starbucks and Nike have successfully used creative PR campaign strategies to project their brand image in an attractive manner.
In particular, startups have come up with innovative ways to market their apps to their target customer base.
If you consider the examples of successful start-ups like Airbnb, BookMyShow or InShorts, you will notice that all these companies have conducted genius campaigns for launching and maintaining their business apps.
Off late, businesses have come up with unique marketing ideas such as promoting apps downloads with Gamification, developing socially shareable content, enabling download buttons on social media et cetera.
PR or Public Relation campaigns is a highly used app launch strategy. First, let us understand why a well-crafted PR campaign is so important for your app.
Check out this video which discusses how PR can be a useful tool for app marketing.
What is a Public Relations campaign?
As the name suggests, a Public Relations or PR campaign is aimed at establishing and enhancing a company’s brand image and reputation.
It involves several intelligent techniques to raise public awareness about your products and services.
As a mobile app campaign strategy, PR has gathered a lot of steam among app marketers because of its long-term results and high outreach.
A good PR campaign should have a clear set of objectives and be designed according to the expected customer group.
Once designed and implemented properly, a PR campaign can effectively mould people’s opinions, be it your customers, peers, competitors, employees, investors or the media.
It doesn’t necessarily have to advertise your app blatantly to get a mass reaction.
In fact, a PR campaign is often more effective than traditional advertising and lets you have full control over what content you want to send out into the world regarding your app.
Why use a PR campaign for your app?
Building and launching an app in today’s technologically saturated market can prove to be very challenging.
Since there are hundreds of new apps being launched every day, it is very important to carve your own niche in the market.
By incorporating a sound PR strategy into your app launch campaign, you can derive the following advantages:
a) Generates mass awareness: If you want your app to create a buzz in the market before being launched, a PR campaign can be the best strategy for you.
It can act as the perfect supporting pillar for your direct marketing or advertising strategies.
Further, you have an improved Google rank via successful PR campaigns. This makes it easier for prospective customers to locate you.
Consequently, your company will have a better brand recall and get more traffic via direct search.
b) Attracts investors: For your app to have a long-term presence in the market and improved sustainability, it is important that you attract a substantial amount of investments.
PR campaign strategies are designed specifically to communicate your app’s viability to possible investors so that they can fund your venture.
c) Find the right employees: A PR campaign for your application sends out a clear image of your brand, your objectives and your general ethos as a company.
This can help attract the right kind of employees who can fit into your organization.
Thus, it saves you a considerable amount of recruitment hassle by attracting the right talent.
How to conduct and maintain a successful PR campaign?
Now, it is important to understand that simply designing a mobile app campaign strategy for your brand is not enough.
Implementing it properly and addressing the right crowd is crucial for its success.
Here is a detailed step-by-step approach of launching and running your very own PR campaign:
- Set out clear objectives:
A PR strategy can have a variety of goals.
It may be creating a good brand reputation, revamping the existing brand image, reaching out to new customers or raking in more sales.
So, before you start strategizing, it is important you can set clear cut goals to be achieved by your PR strategy along with a realistic time-bound to the plan.
2. Select the platform of communication:
Today, PR campaigns need not necessarily be conducted in press conferences held in large banquet halls.
You can choose the television, radio broadcast, social media or press releases to get the word out about your app.
So you have to identify your target customer base and zero in on the platform of communication they are most comfortable with.
For example, the famous mobile company Virgin launched a unique PR campaign in Australia via both the online website as well as the physical stores.
The campaign invited users to face off against each other via interactive games in exchange for lucrative cash prizes.
At the end of the campaign, it was noted that the brand had over 40,000 active users.
3. Design creatively:
Once you know your goals and your prospective audience, it is time to unleash your creative genes.
You can either design your app launch campaign yourself or hire a professional PR company to do it for you.
Being innovative in your PR approach helps viewers connect to your vision and remember your app for a long period of time.
4. Draft an impactful press release:
It is always necessary to let the world know what you are doing.
The best way to grab people’s attention is to draft a strong press release.
Use of catchy phrases, audio-visual aids and an appealing message in a press release can help you garner more buzz for your app.
5. Choose the right media agency for release:
You must decide on the circulation of your PR campaign in the market.
Choosing the right agencies to release your campaign, building a good rapport with journalists, ensuring that everyone relevant in your industry views the PR campaign and delivering the app launch campaign with panache can come in very handy.
For example, the Travel Time Report from the office commute app MoveInSync was picked up by the right publications.
This mobile app campaign strategy helped in proper marketing of the report, which in turn attracted a lot of buzz around the app.
6. Promote sharing:
Once your PR release is out for the world to see, you have to keep it in the public eye for as long as possible.
This will generate more interest and make sure that your app doesn’t just fizzle out.
Sharing via word-of-mouth as well as social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn can go a long way in building a brilliant brand image for your app.
Hiring a seasoned team of professionals from a reputed PR agency can be a blessing to your company.
They can help you strategize on your app launch campaign so that you can reap maximum benefits.
PR firms like Genesis Burson-Marsteller, Adfactors PR and MSLGROUP India are a few of the most popular PR agencies in India.
Innofied has a reputation for guiding innumerable customers towards making the right PR campaign choices.
In this fast-paced world, make sure that the app you’re building from the ground up gets the limelight it needs to make it big.
Make sure to use efficient PR campaign strategies for presenting your mobile app to the masses so that you can become the world’s latest and greatest success story.
P.S.
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Thanks,
Ritesh Osta
I help tech & online business scale fast.
