You’re a modern town, with a mobile app. It can be the most valuable tool in your town’s belt – if you make it that way.
This is not an “if we build it, they will come” sort of situation. Once you get “them” to come to the app through your marketing efforts, you need to give them a good reason to keep coming back. So here are 7 things you can do to ensure they do.
- Start with a good foundation – First impressions are very important in all situations, and your mobile app is no different. To set yourself up for success, make sure you launch with a well-populated app with all of the most valuable and interesting information about what’s going on in town right out of the gate.
- Fill it up with exclusive content – Post app-exclusive deals and promotions in the app. Who doesn’t love to feel part of an exclusive club with special perks being offered just for them? Exclusivity is desirable, and you can fuel that by getting businesses to promote special deals and promotions just for app members.
- If you promote it, they’ll keep coming – Your app launch campaign is crucial to getting people to learn about your app for the first time. But it can’t stop there. Continue to post about the value of your app through social media channels, posters in businesses’ windows, postcards, flyers, ads in the local paper…. I can go on and on. None of these promotions are high-cost endeavors, but they bring great rewards.
- Remind them what’s in it – In your promotions, tell everyone about the exclusive deals only available in the app. Tell them how easy it is to find everything you’d ever want to know about town in one, easy-to-use app that’s always with them on their phones.
Is your app not performing the way you had hoped? Click here for a FREE 30-minute consultation. We’ll be happy to help you figure out what’s not working. - It takes a village – or a downtown organization, or whomever else, that can help create and provide you with content to update in the app. The information in your app must stay current, but that can be a big time investment if app maintenance is not your only or main focus. To help with this, you can set up a monthly newsletter to businesses, reminding them to send you deals and updates to their business information.
- Partner up – Your town is fun and vibrant, which likely means you have a lot of movers and shakers in town creating their own content. Many of these people would be glad to partner up with you to help get their content in your app – give them a call and see what you can work out!
- Check those less-updated sections – It’s easy to remember to add events and deals into your app regularly. Those are likely two of your most popular sections. But let’s not forget the slightly less popular, yet equally valuable sections of your app. Make a calendar entry to check on your links, news, photos, parking information, etc. If anything needs updating, go ahead and do it. There’s nothing worse than going to a link to find out about changes in garbage pickup to find that the link is broken! That’s easy to avoid with a simple maintenance schedule. About once a month or quarterly should be plenty, depending on your content.
And there you have it. 7 Great Ways to keep them coming and ensure your valuable mobile app stays that way. Don’t have your own app yet? Download our FREE Mobile App Planning Pack to find out if you’re ready to get started on your own mobile app.
