1.
10 Day Marketing
Plan to Launch an
App
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
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3.
Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
One of the most exciting as well as the scariest time in the
life of an App Entrepreneurs is when they are about to
launch a new app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
While working at a startup in Silicon Valley, when we
were about to launch our first app we stayed awake the
whole night trying to make sure …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… that we were ready for the thousands of customer
emails which we were going to get the next day and
trying to be prepared for all the press our app was going
to receive.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
We assumed that having a great launch was all about
building an app and releasing it to the app store.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
We released our app on a Tuesday, because everybody
told us that people are more active on social media on
Tuesday and a launch gets increased visibility on Tuesdays
due to this.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Now when I look back at our launch day, nothing went as
per the plan. As soon we released the app into the app
store, we got a few downloads …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… but soon there was nothing much happening with our
app. Instead of the tens of thousands of downloads which
we were expecting, we got less than 100 downloads.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
No blogger or reporter reached out to us to write about
our exciting new app. In fact when I think about it, the
few downloads which we did get were probably …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… from our friends who were just curious about our app.
This was a great learning experience for me. Over the
next few years I have done extensive research on …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
…the right way to launch an app and here is what I think
really works.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
What not to do

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The biggest mistake most app entrepreneurs make is that
they try to do everything and anything during a launch.
This just ends up wasting your most valuable resource –
TIME.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
So the kind of things, which I will strongly advise you
against spending your time and money on, are:

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Building all social media accounts:
You just cannot focus on all social media accounts at
once so just pick the one social channel which works for
your kind of account. Look for competitors in these social
channels.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
If you don’t see any competitors in a certain social
channel then just stay away from that channel.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Submitting your app to review sites and worse, paying
to get reviewed:
How many people in your target audience do you know
who read review sites everyday and download the
reviewed apps.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This used to work a long time ago when there were very
few review sites, but now nobody cares.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Sharing your app in developer forums or groups:
This is a waste of time unless your app is actually meant
for other developers to use.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Buying burst campaigns:
I have seen developers literally throw away thousands of
dollars by buying burst campaigns (5,000 low quality
downloads in one day) …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… and regret it deeply when all these users leave within a
month and then get dinged in the rankings due to low
retention.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Buying incentivized downloads:
Just don’t do this.
If you pay somebody to download and use your app then
obviously he is not the right user for your app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Exchange reviews:
I was originally a fan of sites like smooth reviews.com
which helped you get reviews for your app, but I have
been hearing a lot about the problems with this.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
If you want to know more about what the problems are
just drop a comment and I will explain in comments.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Your 10 Day App Marketing Template

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Before we get started, download the free app marketing
template and use this to track your progress. Each
marketing task is listed out in the template …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… and it can ensure that you succeed with your app
launch while using the template. I have also filled out
some sample data to help you understand …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… how to use the App Marketing Template.
Download the Free 10 Day App Marketing Template

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Your App Launch Marketing Plan

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Your app marketing plan basically has two phases. The
first is the pre-launch phase and the second is the post
launch phase.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Both the phases are equally important and actually the
post launch phase cannot be implemented without
completing most of the steps in the pre-launch phase.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The kinds of tasks, which are present in both phases, are
guaranteed to get you results. None of these are hit or
miss kind of strategies.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
So let us jump into the pre-launch phase and figure out
how to implement the marketing plan.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Pre-Launch App Marketing Plan

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Before you launch your app, you need to lay the
groundwork which will help you get a ton of downloads
once you launch your app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
In fact some of the pre-launch activities which you are
going to participate in will let you validate your idea even
before you launch your app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
6 Days Before Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The first thing which you need to do as part of your pre-
launch activities is to create a landing page for your app.
The reason for this is to figure out the right messaging for
your app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Unless you know how to position your app and the right
kind of message to use to attract users, you are always
going to see sub-par results.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
To create a landing page, you can use
http://unbounce.com. Unbounce has a free theme for
mobile apps and you can use that to create your app …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… landing page very quickly. Unbounce also lets you track
your landing page conversions, which is very useful for
validating your idea and messaging.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
While creating a landing page make sure that the landing
page says that your app is going to launch soon and if the
users want an invite, they can provide their email
address.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
5 Days Before Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Once your landing page is ready, it is important for you to
send relevant traffic to your landing page so that you can
achieve two goals:

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The first is to actually get a few emails of people who
are ready to download your app once it launches
The second is to validate your idea

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
To send relevant traffic to your landing page, the most
reliable channel is a Facebook paid campaign. Just
create Facebook ads and drive traffic to your landing page.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This traffic obviously needs to be of people who are the
right target audience for your app. Once you start sending
traffic to the landing page, take a look at unbounce …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… and see what kind of conversion rate you getting. If the
conversion rate is around 3%-5% or more than that, then
you have a good app idea on your hands …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… and you have also identified the right target audience
for your app. Continue running ads to the landing page
based on your marketing budget to collect as many
emails as possible.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
In case you are not seeing a good conversion rate then
you obviously need to modify one of the following –
landing page messaging, target audience or your
complete app idea itself.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
4 Days Before Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
If you want to get huge bang on your launch day, good
press coverage for your app can definitely help you. The
thing to remember with getting good press coverage is …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… that you need to understand how press coverage
during launch works. If you have a good app and want it
covered, you need to do three things:

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
 First find reporters who cover app launches and you
can do this by looking up coverage on other apps which
launched recently

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
 Second reach out to these reporters and pitch your
app. You need to make sure that you tell them not to
write about your app before it is released.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This is commonly referred to as an embargo.
 The third thing, which you need to do, is offer exclusive
access to a reporter.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
When you have an interesting app, reporters are
extremely interested in being the only people to write
about your on launch day.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Obviously you need to select the right media outlet when
agreeing to exclusive coverage agreement.
There are many ways to reach out to press …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… but the most effective way is usually the simplest.
Search for the email address of reporters from your
preferred media outlets and drop them a short pitch
about your app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
3 Days Before Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Now that you know what kind of messaging works for
your app, you need to create your app store description
and get started with App Store Optimization.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
The app store description can contain the same sections,
which your landing page contained. So basically you are
going to have things like – …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… headline, benefits, features and a few testimonials.
Coming to App Store Optimization, you can pick any tool
out there. My personal favorite is SensorTower.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
You can use the trial period to complete your basic app
store optimization.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
2 Days Before Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
As you are getting closer to the launch day, you need to
ensure that the analytics tool which you are using to track
your app is properly setup.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Verify that you have created events for the major
checkpoints in your app and also setup funnels to track
progress of users in your app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
1 Day Before Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
This might not be relevant to all apps but in recent times
Instagram has turned out to be an excellent source of
downloads for app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Especially if you notice that there are a few accounts with
a theme similar to your niche, you can contact them and
ask them to do a sponsored post.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Most instagram accounts, which allow such posts, have a
“business contact” or “business email”. Just make sure
that these accounts have good engagement from their
followers before you work with them.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Launch Day

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
On the launch day, the only thing which I would suggest
that you do is to make sure that all the reporters who
were supposed to write about your app have actually ...

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… done that and also to send out an email blast to all the
people who provided their email addresses, informing
them about the launch of the app.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
1 day after Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Once you start seeing the initial set of downloads, the
next stage is to keep the momentum going by launching
mobile install ads using Facebook.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
You can do basic mobile install ads or you can use some
advanced ninja tactics to get downloads at a really low
cost.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
2 Days After Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Your Facebook ads should have picked up some steam by
now and you should be seeing a good number of
downloads coming in for your app based on your budget.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Now you want to increase these downloads even further
and break into the top ranks of the app store by launching
the Instagram sponsored posts, …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… through the partnerships which you setup before the
launch. Instagram sponsored posts can be very effective
as long as you have done the following right:

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
 Partner with a relevant influencer
 The influencer has an engaged audience
 Your post does not look like an ad but blends in with
the content

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
If you get these three things right then you should see a
good number of downloads from instagram as well.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
3 Days After Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Next is my favorite tactic to get a huge number of
downloads. You can use giveaways to get thousands of
downloads. There is a right way to do giveaways and I
have covered that here.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
4 Days after Launch

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
Although this says 4 days after launch, you can actually
wait for a few more days before you start looking at your
analytics and figure out at which stage of the funnel …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… a user drops off. For example, if you notice that a user
drops off after opening the app for first time and
completing event 1 but does not get to event 2, …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… then just focus on improving the workflow to get a user
to event 2. This way you can gradually keep improving
your app while at the same time you get downloads …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… to keep up the momentum, which you gained through
your launch. I hope this is useful for you. If you feel that I
have missed out something …

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
… or if you have some other interesting tactics to improve
your app launch just comment below and let us know.

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Puneet Yamparala, App Entrepreneurs Association
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