By Kenneth Horsfall
Creating an app is not something you just wake up one morning and begin to do, it takes you and your team at least months to go from just having a beautiful idea to creating the new app.
Along the way, you probably invested a lot of time, expert software development, graphic design, and expensive focus groups to finally bring your beautiful idea to life.
But there’s a problem: people won’t just download it! Why?
To effectively promote your app on digital platforms, you need to put as much work into your marketing strategy as you did when creating the app. The fact is that people have a lot of options to choose from, so why should they choose you? That’s why you need to think of a plan to get them hyped about your app.
Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel! By making videos part of your marketing tool, you can ease your way into promoting your app. But as the best video companies know, there are important details to be clear about creating a video marketing plan.
When should you use a video? What production decisions come with that? How should your video look? These are some of the questions we’ll go through to help you raise awareness about your app.
But first, why video content? They are a lot of other ways to promote an app why should I think of video first.
Videos can boost your app marketing campaign like no other type of content marketing can do. But before going over the critical decisions involved in producing great videos, let’s first compare the two leading app stores.
How do Videos work on Google Play and the App Store?
If you’ve created a multiplatform app, you should have videos ready for both Google Play and the App Store. But the issue is more complex than reusing the same content, as each store has its own unique rules regarding videos.
Previews for the App Store need to be pre-approved by Apple’s team, which has very defined requirements on the types of videos they accept. Some of the most important include:
Videos must be between 15 and 30 seconds.
The footage should be taken primarily from the app and cannot show people, hands, or any other type of real-life footage.
Each video is device-specific: it must be produced for a specific iPhone or iPad screen size.
Why in the case of the Google play store, Google Play doesn’t require prior approval, and its guidelines are more versatile, with almost no limitations. But for many apps, this freedom results in low-quality homemade videos, which you certainly don’t want for your brand.
For that matter, we have these recommendations for you on what to post on Google Play:
When proper, show real people using the app—seeing how a human hand uses the smartphone is easier to follow than random images.
Optimize your video with subtitles or even a professional voiceover if your video demands it, so you can make your message crystal clear to your audience.
Different Types of Videos You Can Use to Promote Your App
By doing quick research on the platform you want to promote your app, you will notice different types of videos that developers use for promotion. There’s simply not a one-size-fits-all style, but there’s a wide catalogue of videos you can choose from to entice your audience, present your app’s features, or even showcase a positive review.
So, let’s go over some of the most popular types of videos to see which one will best fit your purposes.
Explainer Videos
We’ve stressed that you need to distinguish your product from the competition. Many times, it could be hard to convey with a promo video how your solution stands out: in the viewers’ eyes, yours is just another option with nothing particularly special.
With animated explainer videos, on the other hand, you can approach your audiences from a quite different angle. This class of videos focuses not on your app’s looks as such, but on a story. By using colourful animation and engaging characters, you can pose a problem for your viewers, and then explain how your solution can help them improve their lives.
Explainer videos are perfect for productivity and business apps, for which there are generally plenty of indistinguishable options in the Store. By focusing on what your app does best, you’ll get an emotional response from users that could lead them to choose your solution above the rest.
Customer Testimonial Videos
You wouldn’t think that many people (including myself) are hesitant about downloading apps. It’s understandable since apps take up space on our smartphones and, well, we might end up not using them at all!
To feel comfortable about the app they will download, users sometimes need social proof. Luckily, video testimonials can provide just this. These videos feature satisfied customers or experts giving their first-hand take on your product and its features, and how it’s helped simplify their lives.
By showcasing other people who review your app, testimonial videos are the best way to improve your brand image. They give users the validation they need to know that your app is the one they’re looking for and that makes you stand out from your competition.
Preview Videos
When most of us think about mobile app videos, the first images that come to mind are the brief teasers we usually find in social media ads. Previews are the gold standard of app videos because they give viewers the chance to see how the program exactly looks and works.
Of course, in theory, screenshots can work just as well. But there is something to be said about being able to appreciate in advance how we can use the product and whether it really aligns with our expectations and tastes.
Preview videos pair well with any type of app. However, they are particularly valuable for entertainment and gaming apps, as users want to concretely see the basic functionalities and/or stories.
Pro Tips and Tricks
Once you choose the right type of video that best suits your app, you need to know that there are certain production principles that apply to all videos in general.
Producing videos is complex, as the process involves important technical and creative aspects. But there’s no mystery about it!
To simplify the issue, we’ll go into three of the most relevant aspects to keep in mind.
Make Your Video Short, It’s Very Important
With so much information and distractions available online, you have limited time to connect with your viewers. It’s no surprise that after just a few seconds, viewing rates start to drop significantly.
That’s the reason why most mobile app videos tend to be really, really short—about 10 to 30 seconds, 2 minutes maximum. With so little time, you want to keep your video simple and fast-paced, bringing attention to what’s truly interesting about your product.
Easier said than done, right? It’s challenging to keep your video that short, so you want to focus on your app’s main highlights. Figure out which features make your product a distinctive and attractive choice and convey that idea to your viewers.
Take Your Video Through Social Channels
Although we’ve been focusing on the app’s profile page, we can’t downplay the crucial importance of social media. App ads are a constant presence on platforms like YouTube and Instagram because marketers know that that’s where the most important conversations are taking place.
In terms of visibility, launching a thorough social media campaign is a must. But there are other advantages that come with having videos on your social accounts.
Facebook, for example, is particularly useful to run your ads, as the platform offers analytical tools to gather key data about your ads’ performance and how users behave with them. Take advantage of these tools to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your videos and make informed decisions on the
Include Relevant CTAs
Whether you’re uploading your video on social media or your app’s profile, you want to give viewers one last little push to motivate them to download the app. Now, you don’t necessarily have to be too promotional to do this.
By simply adding CTAs (Call to Action) in your video, you can inform users about the next best step to take. To get started, use clear, short phrases like “Sign Up” and “Learn More” to lead audiences to your app’s page. But if you want them to “Upgrade” or “Go Premium,” you can also use these CTAs.
Lastly, in social media videos, remember to always add the platforms where the app is available and can be downloaded by the audience, this is very important.
Takeaways
As videos have the unique quality of being entertaining, informative, and easy to consume at the same time, they are a powerful tool to add to your marketing campaign efforts.
Embed them on your app’s listing page to show users what to expect from your product. Focus mainly on the features that make your app solution distinctive, so that users take notice of your app’s virtues. Finally, take your videos to where your audience is to spread the word and continue the buzz. Thanks for your time.
My name is Kenneth Horsfall and I’m the creative director and founder of K.S. Kennysoft Studios Production Ltd fondly called Kennysoft STUDIOs. Kennysoft STUDIOs is a Nigerian Video and Animation Production Studio. And also, the founder and lead instructor at Kennysoft Film Academy. I can be reached via [email protected]