3 Ways for Mobile App Marketers to Earn Positive Reviews
When’s the last time you used an app and found yourself questioning why the developer created certain features or thought certain features were missing or broken? Did you leave a review? And if so, did anyone on the app’s side actually respond?
Imperative to the success of a mobile app is marketers’ ability to ensure their applications are built properly, create strong user experiences, and, in turn, encourage strong user reviews.
User feedback is a puzzle, and one piece that always seems to be missing from the brand side is engagement. User reviews and consistent customer experiences are the keys to a loyal user base. What’s more, reviews left without replies can be more devastating than no review at all or a negative one.
Brand engagement is critical for modern businesses. Every touchpoint with your app or service is an opportunity for you to nurture positive interactions and experiences. As Apple said, “You can ask for ratings and respond to reviews to improve your app’s discoverability, encourage downloads, and build rapport with people who use your app.”
Here are three ways mobile marketers can create a customer experience that sets their company up for especially strong user reviews.
Recognize the voice of the consumer
Listening to what your customers say to develop more personalized, customizable experiences will effectively meet their needs and expectations. In turn, mobile app marketers and developers will enable their company to unlock valuable feedback and app engagement metrics and increasingly receive positive feedback on a consistent basis.
With everything we’ve seen over the last few years in the mobile space, including the deprecation of cookies and third-party data, all eyes are on first-party data. This situation has created a major opportunity for mobile app marketers: finding insights from reviews.
User reviews need to be viewed as a rich form of first-party data that’s simple to collect and highly actionable. By creating efficient management workflows and processes for your feedback and ratings, you can more easily plan marketing campaigns and optimize the product roadmap.
It’s not what your mobile app does but what people say about it that matters
Building a functional, robust mobile app can only bring you so far when it comes to growth and overcoming competition. The next important step is recognizing that user feedback can be an organic business driver and can be pivotal to the success of mobile app-dependent businesses. Gathering sources of rich customer data like reviews, support requests, and survey data provides businesses with a path forward to build a winning customer experience and a stronger brand reputation. These two things are the paths to long term growth.
Think of user reviews as a public forum, where consumers (and prospective customers) come to address what they like or dislike about your brand and product. If the forum begins to swell with feedback that is going unaddressed, your brand can quickly dawn the scarlet letter of a poor CX, turning away potential prospects. And why does this matter? Poor brand reputation will quickly affect retention, and when brand loyalty falls, your business will find itself fighting an uphill battle.
Don’t forget the role of user sentiment on the state of your reputation. Negative feedback is potent and can be damaging to your brand. Poor reviews can drop your app’s rating, leading to lower search position and thus fewer downloads and revenue. Capturing emotional information helps you understand your customers’ feelings about why they particularly like or dislike your app’s offering or service.
Put yourself in the shoes of the customer
Your product can only evolve if your customers buy into what you’re selling, so why not open your eyes to what’s on their wishlist?
First and foremost, revisit the idea of customer sentiment. Mobile app reviews provide two main streams of feedback: reviews and app ratings. Collating customer reviews on your app store can help break down any specific data you need.
And through your app service offering, you can receive immediate feedback via app store ratings. Curate this data, use it as part of customer sentiment analysis, observe possible reasons for customer churn, and update your product accordingly.
Secondly, do your research. Customer behavior and habits are changing at vast speed, and what was once a pleasant experience can now be seen as antiquated or unfulfilling. Are your in-app purchases adding nothing to the customer experience? Is your technology lacking a 5G connection? Your customers will tell you, and you need to be able to receive the feedback and pivot when needed.
In addition to your own feedback, check out your competitors too. Looking at what consumers are giving feedback on for the competition can help proactively inform what features you may need to work on, or could be missing. It’s an easy way to collect feedback and build a better product with public knowledge.
Finally, be human and take responsibility for your product. If you are at fault, particularly if there is an issue or bug that needs to be fixed, take responsibility. When you solve the issue at hand, make sure you send a follow-up message to all your users, informing them the problem has been fixed. This will help those who reported the bug feel valued and let your customers know that you’re reliable and that their feedback is appreciated.
Mobile marketing has been around for quite some time, and yet every day consumers and marketers are navigating uncharted waters. The value of user reviews can help a brand amplify its presence, credibility, and reach by fostering positive interactions.
At the end of the day, brands are run by humans, and consumers just want to feel heard.
Anatoly Sharifulin is CEO & Founder at AppFollow.
