​The Insider’s Guide to Winning at Video App Marketing: 6 Strategies for Success

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re getting ready to launch your own mobile app and want to ensure it has the best chance of success. Or perhaps you already have one and you’re looking for ways to increase your app downloads and maintain a vibrant community of engaged members.

Either way, you can use app marketing to your advantage. It’s slightly different from marketing your overall membership; your app is an extension of your overall brand, but it’s also an important part of how members use and engage with it, forming a crucial part of attracting and retaining your target audience. 

Apps enable your subscribers to participate in memberships beyond just streaming videos; they create a meaningful experience that lives up to their digital expectations. Recent Uscreen data shows that: 

• Creators who offer apps sell 1.6x more annual subscriptions 
• Our successful customers in the fitness, wellness, and education industries experience an average of 60% member growth in the first month of launching an app
• Uscreen customers that have Android and iOS Apps see up to 78% of community activity come from mobile apps.

The world of apps is also a competitive landscape. 25.6 billion apps were downloaded from Google Play in the first quarter of 2024. And that’s just Android. For the Apple app store, that download number was 8.4 billion. 

We’ve created this insider’s guide to help you create and market an app that both meets the expectations of your users and stands out among all the other choices vying for their attention.

Let’s get started by assessing your goals 👇

1. Set the right goals: aim for conversion over popularity

Loyal members who are happy with their experience are the ones who are going to leave positive ratings, recommend your app and membership to others, and keep the conversation in your community thriving. 

This is why it’s so important to get your target audience right before you launch your mobile app so you can use this to inform your marketing strategy.

Researching your competitors to find out what’s out there is the first step in finding them, so let’s get into it…

Do competitor research

Start with any brands you’ve already identified as your direct competitors. Do they offer their own branded apps? If so, search for them and gather as much information as you can: 

• Look at the app store ratings. What are users saying about their experience? How many users have reviewed and rated it? 
• How have they described the app and what kind of user persona might they be targeting? 
• What other apps show up in the search results, or recommendations when you search for each particular brand? These suggestions might reveal other competitors that you hadn’t been aware of before.
• If you can, look at the user journey and what you can do in the app. Do they offer a video-on-demand library? A dedicated community space? In-app messaging? 

Another way to research your app store competitors is to identify the keywords that best match your brand and search for them to see what comes up. Let’s take ‘yoga app’ as an example: 

Or you could narrow down your keywords to be more specific, like this:

While we’ll touch on app store optimization later, this is a good time to start thinking about all the different journeys users might take to find and download your app. While a lot of your members will search for your brand directly, potential users might not, and the results that show up around you are your competitors in the app store. 

Once you’ve gathered this information, use these insights to define the key trends in your niche, what the user expectations are and, crucially, to identify any gaps that you could fill with your brand. 

Or, you can use all this to brainstorm what you can do differently, and how you can stand out in your own app marketing efforts.

Set clear objectives and KPIs

Think about what you want to achieve with your app marketing, and what success looks like for you, and use this as a starting point to define your objectives.

During your app launch, your KPIs are likely to center around the number of app downloads and member sign-ups. Then as time goes on, you might want to focus more on user engagement, retaining users and recurring revenue. 

The type of subscription or membership you offer will also play a part in shaping your goals.

Take Means TV as an example. 

Their goal with launching both TV and mobile apps was to offer a unique experience for their members to give them an easy way to stream their content, but also to feel like a real part of the community and overall brand. 

The success of this goal shows in both their user engagement and recurring monthly revenue: over 65% of their members use the apps to access content and interact with each other, generating $40k+ in monthly revenue. 

Apps gave us an air of legitimacy and got rid of any barriers to accessing the content. We’re available on all the same platforms as the big streaming services, and pose a real alternative option.

Means TV

If your membership centers more around niche content and using your expertise to help members to achieve their goals, then your KPIs might be more tailored toward building and measuring community engagement. 

For example, Fittest Core shared that 58% of their subscribers engaged in the community in three months, with their membership hosting 826 active members. 

Since migrating to Uscreen, day-to-day operations have become much easier. As the business owner and the face of the company, it’s now simpler for me to engage with members directly. Whether they have questions about their form, need modifications, or are pregnant and unsure if an exercise is safe, it’s easy for them to contact me.

Macy Pruett, Founder of Fittest Core 

The key here is to nail down what the most relevant objectives are to your membership app and define a set time period for measuring your success. It takes time to see growth, so sticking to a quarterly schedule to evaluate the success of your KPIs gives you enough data to measure if you’ve reached your goals or not.

Remember, these aren’t set in stone and you can always adjust them as you go. 

Let’s move on to prepping for your app launch🎉…

2. Warm up your audience: start 30 days before launch

Planning a launch strategy

Before you’re ready to launch your app to the world, make sure you tell people that it’s coming so you can create a buzz for it among your audience. Sharing the details of the specific features that will appeal to them is a great way to pique their interest because it demonstrates how it’s going to benefit them directly. 

Combine your app launch with new features

If there are additional features and tools you could add to your membership that aren’t already live, like a calendar or community, then combining these with the launch of your app is a great way to maximize value. 

It gives your members something new to do in the app and provides extra benefits to potential users that you can focus on during user acquisition. 

For example, Prodigies creator Rob Young started offering live streaming as a new feature to expand his audience and this became central to his overall marketing strategy, citing it as his most effective marketing funnel. 

The free live streams are like community events – even our paying members show up to say hi. Everyone else who’s considering enrolling gets a feel for the community, and they can see people praising it in real time.

Rob Young, founder of Prodigies

Soft launch to test the app 

One essential part of your launch strategy should be a quiet launch a week in advance. Limit this to friends, family and anyone dedicated solely to testing the functionality of the app before you announce it to the public. 

This way you can spot any potential issues and iron them out before you officially launch. 

Another important reason for doing this is to gather ratings for your app from these early users. If users come to your app listing and see that it has generated 5 star ratings and positive reviews, It shows that your app is worth downloading and investing into.

Nurture in-app leads 

Spend time planning how you can maximize leads that come in through your app. How can you make it as easy as possible for them to sign up as members, and access the right information in the mobile app so they can understand what they’re getting?

One way to do this is to create onboarding slides which pop up to showcase your joining offer to new users. These should include succinct, well-crafted messages to sum up what’s included in your membership and where/how they can access it. 

Here’s an example of what onboarding slides look like: 

This makes it simple for new users to understand what your app is about and how to sign up as a paying member, making it a valuable addition to your overall app marketing funnel to help convert leads.

Have clear welcome resources

Adding a virtual app tour to your video catalog is a useful way to onboard new users, and existing members who have just downloaded the app, to help them use it effectively right from the start. 

Showcase where they can find all the different features, and make it clear which features are built in and how they can use them (like your calendar and community.) 

Check out how Macey from Fittest Core showcases the key functionalities of her app to new users through the welcome video, a snapshot of the calendar and the layout of her core content program:

If you have a community, point your members towards it in your app tour video and invite them to start posting and commenting. Pairing this with a welcome post for app users gives them a place to start getting involved. 

Encouraging members to comment by asking them questions and posting tips or valuable resources is a way to get the conversation started and get the momentum going. 

Promotion on social media and email marketing

Use the channels you have at your disposal to tell people about your app launch and start building excitement for it.

One strategy you can use at the pre-launch stage of your app marketing is to create a landing page for interested people to sign up. Promoting the app landing page on social media means you can capture email addresses from your followers, and get them into your app marketing funnel to nurture them to convert through your app. 

This is where you can use email marketing to carefully target the people on your email list. Not all of them will be at the same stage in their journey with your brand. 

Segmenting your subscribers into dedicated lists means you can communicate more effectively with each group to speak directly to their needs and pain points, giving you the best chance at user acquisition. 

Let’s take a look at three different potential groups within your target audience: 

1. Waiting list subscribers 

These are the people who have registered their interest on your dedicated landing page. This is a chance to communicate the wider benefits of your membership or subscription service to them, through the lens of your app.

• Tell them what’s available as a member and how it can help them, emphasizing how the app makes all this easily accessible
• Share success stories from your current members to inspire them and provide that all important social proof
• Offer a limited time promotion for new member sign ups through the mobile app and early access for downloading it

2. Existing email subscribers 

The people already on your email list are already familiar with you and your brand but they haven’t converted yet. This is an opportunity to use app marketing to offer them something new and capture their interest. 

In your email marketing campaign you can focus more on their pain points and objections, and how your membership can help to solve them (and why it’s worth the investment). Use storytelling to show this, rather than just telling them. 

It’s a powerful way to get under their skin and connect with them emotionally, waking up their imagination so that they can envision themselves achieving their goals too. 

For example, check out this email from Marie Forleo that just landed in my inbox. She wastes no time in connecting to those niggling pain points: 

Then once your app is live and ready to go, encourage them to download the mobile app to start enjoying the benefits of your membership. You could also offer them a promotional rate for joining as a paying member. 

3. Current members 

If you’re launching a mobile app as part of your current membership or subscription service, make sure your existing users are the first to know. 

List out the features they’ll be able to access from the app and how it’s going to enhance their overall experience of your membership. 

Focus on how it’s going to benefit them, for example being able to download videos to watch offline, easy on-the-go access to the community and in app messages and push notifications to keep them updated with new content, posts and their own progress. 

3. Be strategic about launch day: consider time zones and day-of logistics

Choose the right time for your schedule 

The first thing to consider when choosing your launch day is your own schedule and availability. 

Pick a time period where you know you’re going to be able to dedicate time to be present in the community to kick start engagement in the app and stay on top of messages. 

This is particularly important if you’re choosing to launch a community at the same time as the app. It’s up to you as the creator to create opportunities for your members to comment and post in the community by starting different threads and responding to posts and comments to keep the conversation going.

Click here to watch the video -> youtube.com/watch?v=CVm5FbO_afg

Another aspect to consider is whether you might need technical support during the launch of your new app. 

If support agents are only available live throughout the week, you might want to consider whether a weekday would be best for your launch in case you experience any technical issues or feel you’d benefit from having that support on hand.

Launch day logistics 

When choosing your launch day, it’s important to be aware that apps don’t always drop at a specific time. They can take several hours to go live across the globe, so you should avoid promoting a specific time of day, or countdown, for your app to go live. 

Instead, start with a quiet or ‘soft’ launch ahead of your public launch date. This gives you plenty of time to make sure that the app is live, and to test it out and start gathering ratings in the app store from friends and family. 

This eliminates any ‘what if’ anxieties as your public launch day approaches because you know that your app is ready and working as it should be, letting you focus on your app marketing activities instead. 

You can also extend your soft launch to your current customers (if you have existing members already). Make it clear that you’re giving them first access to make them feel special and appreciated and invite loyal users to leave positive ratings and reviews in the app store. 

Launch during the right season

Another strategy you can adopt to make the most of your app launch is to take a seasonal approach. Think about which times of year you typically attract new customers. Or, if you’re just starting out, do some research into the best seasons for your particular type of membership or streaming subscription. 

This will depend on who your target audience is, which you can also narrow down into specific user personas. For example, fitness brands tend to be busier towards the end of the year as New Year approaches and people feel motivated to kick start a healthy routine and lifestyle. 

Niche memberships which are centered around learning and building new skills pick up momentum as fall begins, and after the winter holidays, as customers have taken a break over the summer and holiday seasons.

Streaming platforms could center a launch around a highly anticipated new release, or an exciting event that’s relevant to your brand.

4. Understand the App Store algorithm: play by the rules

App Store Optimization forms a crucial part of any mobile app marketing strategy. Think of it like SEO (search engine optimization) but for apps. Instead of optimizing web content to appear in Google search results, it’s focusing on app store visibility. 

This is important to allow your app to be discovered by new users in the app stores, and there are several key elements that impact an app’s ability to rank. The more attention you give to these following areas, the better chance your app has at being visible in the search results. 

Craft an attention-grabbing app title and description 

Imagine someone searching for your app, without any prior knowledge of your brand. What words or phrases best describe what you do? 

Your app title should be relevant and accurately depict what your app is all about. This is your title in the app store page, so while you want your brand name to be front and center, expanding on this to include carefully selected keywords provide the right context and attract user’s attention when scrolling through the results.

You might see a lot of your favorite apps just have their brand name in the description. Like Instagram for example: 

But brands of this size are well-known enough that users will automatically search for them by name. 

For creators looking to make the most of the app marketing strategies available to them, adding a short description after your brand name helps your mobile app to show up organically when the right people search.  

It looks something like this: 

NextUp Comedy have used their app title to explain exactly what users can do with their app, which is to ‘stream great stand-up.’ 

Another example is something like Headspace: 

Here they’ve used the app’s title to capture what their users might typically search for when looking for an app like this, which simply states what they use the app for.

There’s a lot more room to play with in the app description. You can expand on your chosen title to go into more detail about your offering. Keep this clear and accurate so that users can easily digest exactly what they can expect from downloading your app. 

Like M/Body for example: 

Marnie’s app description summarizes her fitness offering but also gives key information about logging in, signing up as a new member and the terms and conditions of the monthly subscription. 

Select relevant keywords for improved discoverability 

Doing keyword research will help you to find the more relevant search terms that you can target in your app title and description. 

Start by brainstorming potential keywords that best describe your app. Once you have a couple of ideas, use this as your basis for keyword research using SEO tools. 

Google Ads Keyword Planner is a good tool to start with. It’s free to use, and it’s fairly simple. You can use it to generate keyword ideas, or search for specific keywords to find out their average search volume. This will give you an idea of how many people search for a particular keyword, helping you to find the one that’s most viable for your app. 

It’s not all about volume however. The key is making sure it’s relevant to your brand, and accurately reflects what app users expect. 

There are other paid tools you can use which provide a lot more insights and help you to undertake competitor analysis to find out who your competitors are and what terms they’re ranking for. SEMRush, Ahrefs and Moz are good examples, and some of them offer a free trial or limited free version. 

While these insights are based on websites rather than app listings, it’s still a valuable source of information that you can base your App Store Optimization (ASO) on. Your website is also a factor in ASO rankings, so spending time on getting it right is also going to benefit your app marketing efforts.

Design an appealing app icon and screenshots

Your app icon is what shows up at the side of your app title in the search results. It’s likely to be one of the first, if not the first, thing users will see. 

While you want to make it eye-catching, it’s important to take into account that the icon will show up super small in the search results and app listing so you’d ideally want to create something that’s simple and easily recognizable. Like Sarah Beth Yoga:

The mandala design is intricate, yet simple and easily recognizable across her website and social media channels. 

Engaging screenshots are another crucial element for optimizing your app. These should be high quality, and show what your content is about, visually telling users a story and giving a preview of what they can expect. 

Before you start, review the screenshot requirements for each app store. Each one has different guidelines that include which devices they can be taken from. 

Uscreen can help you to create eye-catching custom screenshots to wow users in app stores and boost your ASO app marketing efforts.

Encourage and manage user reviews and ratings

Getting positive reviews and 5 star ratings is a crucial factor in app store optimization. It’s a ranking factor in how app stores decide which apps to highlight in the search results, and which ones to deprioritize. 

It’s recommended that you’ll need a 4.0 rating or above to give your app the best chance of being discovered and drive organic search traffic to it. Essentially, the more reviews and user ratings you can gather, the more likely it is to perform well and be featured more prominently in app stores. 

This is also a key factor in user acquisition because it builds trust and provides that all-important social proof that other people have used your app and had a positive, valuable experience with it. Statistics show just how influential reviews are in the buying journey:

• Recent research by Dixa found that 93% of customers take reviews into consideration before deciding to make a purchase. 

• According to research by BrightLocal, 60% of customers are influenced by the number of reviews a brand has, not just the quality of them.
• 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation from a friend.

Encouraging user reviews should be a priority in your app marketing activities. Consider how you can incentivize the process, like offering discounts, bonus resources and rewards or upgrades for anyone who leaves a 5 star review.

One thing to keep in mind though, is that while you want to gather as many reviews as possible, users still want to see authentic reviews from customers. When every review is glowing without any complaints, this can feel less genuine and put people off. 

5. Invest in the right assets: spend time on these four elements

These are all the details that contribute to the user journey, from start to finish. Your tagline, visual identity, and unique video content can all be used strategically to capture your ideal user’s attention. Then it’s up to the strength of your user experience to keep them coming back to the app. 

Tagline

Your tagline is often the first thing potential users see. It’s your app’s elevator pitch, summing up what it’s all about into one memorable phrase. A great tagline should:

• Be concise (ideally under 10 words, the shorter the better)
• Highlight your app’s unique value proposition
• Use action-oriented language 
• Be easily understood and remembered

This is tricky to get right, so spend some time brainstorming and playing around with ideas. Shopify has a free app slogan maker tool to help you come up with ideas. 

Start by focusing on a key benefit that your members will get from using your app, combining this with the right kind of tone and language that resonates with your target audience. 

For example, the Calm app states simply what you can use it for: 

The words ‘Sleep, meditation, relaxation’ make it easy to understand how it can help users, which is beneficial for its intended purpose in helping to reduce stress and anxiety. 

The dating app Hinge uses ‘designed to be deleted’ as a tagline, which hints at the likelihood of users finding their perfect match, offering a more playful tone of voice: 

Your tagline goes beyond your app marketing efforts, it should be consistent across all your channels and be a key part of your overall branding, so it’s important to get this right.

High-quality images

In a world where users scroll quickly through app stores, eye-catching visuals are essential. They should showcase the key functions of your app in a way that’s distinctive to your brand.

The three key elements to focus on include:

App icon: This is your app’s visual identity. Make it simple, distinctive, and reflective of your app’s function.

Screenshots: Showcase your app’s best features and user interface. Use captions to highlight key functionalities and add personality to capture the attention of potential users.

Promotional graphics: Create visually appealing banners and ads for various marketing channels.

Remember, these images are often a user’s first interaction with your app, so make them count.

Video

Using video content in your app marketing is the best way to show off your skills as a video creator. A well-crafted video can demonstrate your app’s functionality more effectively than static images, showcasing your app’s user interface in action. 

A short (30-60 second) app preview video would be ideal for promotion in app stores. You can go into more detail with longer explainer videos for your website or YouTube channel where your audience is in the mindset to interact with you and learn more about what you’re offering.

Overall, keep your videos high-quality, concise, and focused on your app’s key benefits.

User experience

App marketing  doesn’t end when a user downloads your app and signs up as a member. The user experience within your app is crucial for retention and word-of-mouth marketing. 

Satisfied users become your best marketers. They’ll leave positive reviews, recommend your app to friends, and provide valuable feedback for improvement.

Some key areas to focus on here include: 

Intuitive navigation

You want your app to be easy to use right from the start. The navigation has a big impact on this. Think of it as the structure that holds everything together, pointing users in the right direction for where to go. 

This is where early beta testing can help. Have a dedicated group of people testing the app to ensure they fully understand how it works and detect any bugs or potential problems.

Download the app yourself too and try and see it through a new user’s eyes. Are there any frustrating or confusing journeys in your navigation? Take note and make these a priority to smooth out.

Fast loading times

There’s nothing worse than downloading a new app and it takes forever to load or register actions. There’s a lot of technical factors that contribute to the load speed which your app development team or platform will take care of but some key things you can keep in mind include: 

• Compressing your images and optimizing your video content to reduce the file sizes 
• Encourage users to update to the latest version of the app so they can always have the best experience 
• If you have ads running in your app, consider reducing these to improve the load speed of your app 
• Choose a high quality app builder for your app and ensure you have the right technical support in place

Regular updates

Continuously improve your app based on user feedback. After you launch it, give early users the opportunity to share their thoughts on what else they might want to see or do in the app. 

Having a regular schedule for adding new content, and sending notifications to announce new videos or feature updates shows that you’re actively keeping things fresh.

6. Going beyond signups: engagement and retention matter, for the long term

Effective app marketing is an ongoing process. After launching and successfully gaining members, you’ll need to continuously analyze your results, gather user feedback and use these insights to keep refining and improving your app for success in the long run.

Focus on user engagement 

We’ve talked mostly about mobile apps in this article but let’s not forget about the value of TV apps. If you offer them, or plan to, then make sure to dedicate time to promoting them in your app marketing efforts.

While your mobile app is likely to do more of the heavy lifting in your app marketing to showcase your brand, capture leads and provide lots of ways to engage with users, TV apps complement this to unlock the best viewing experience for your content. 

They offer more flexibility for comfortably streaming content and subscribers can use the mobile app to post and comment in the community at the same time. 

We’ve rounded up some of our other top tips for user engagement on your mobile app below: 

• Push notifications are your friend. You can link these to content you want to highlight, community posts or just send words of encouragement
• Shout about the fact that members can take your app on-the-go. Whether you’re offering fitness, e-learning or entertainment, being flexible about where they are when watching your content can be invaluable. Touch on examples so they can picture it – like waiting for a flight, on the train, or even at their kid’s soccer practice.
• Remind users that they can download videos to watch offline – which is a huge benefit for traveling. You could even create a category for ‘travel’ to include your top picks.
• Make use of your community feature and set up automatic notifications to announce when you share a new post. 
• If you have a calendar feature, encourage members to make the most of it so they can get notifications for live classes and published content, encouraging them to keep opening the app.

Analyze data to find opportunities to improve

If we look all the way back to step one when we covered setting your objectives and KPIs, this is the time to revisit those and check in with how they’re doing.

If you use a membership platform to host your app then you should be able to easily see a breakdown of how your users are engaging with your app using the built-in analytics. 

There’s lots of information you can gain directly from your app developer accounts too. You can log into App Store Connect and Google Play Console to find out how many times your apps have been downloaded and gain key insights directly from the app platforms.

You can use all these insights to determine if you’re meeting your app marketing and user engagement goals. This data is also useful for figuring out which areas you should focus on for making improvements, so you can prioritize what’s most important. 

Use reviews and feedback to your advantage here too. Narrow down any key themes and trends that your users are highlighting and take action to address them. 

The important thing to remember is that all this is an ongoing process. It takes time to build a solid user base and community in your mobile app and your goals will naturally evolve over time as you progress. 

Wrapping things up

That was a lot to digest, so well done if you’re still with me 🙌

Launching a mobile app is a worthwhile investment to give your users the best possible experience. Uscreen can help you every step of the way to build a beautiful, high quality app and ensure you have access to the right tools for your app marketing strategy. 

Check out our app builder which has successfully launched more than 3,500 apps for creators like you, reaching 9.2 million users with our wide range of unique creator-led brands. 

It’s simple with Uscreen.

Build, launch and manage your membership, all in one place.

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