How to get your app noticed is a popular theme and for the most part the advice seems center around “being different” – creating an app to fit a niche or having a fun viral-idea that might start trending. This works if your creative-digital house hoping for a big initial splash but not if you have a already-released serves-a-purpose app that you want to market and increase downloads.
The obvious and default choice is to buy ads which in turn usually lead users to a landing page so the referral can be tracked. This approach almost always overlooks video as a medium across all screens – iOS, Android and Windows Mobile provide a refined and highly tuned native YouTube client upon their respective platforms. In the case of iOS, it even enjoys very significant “home screen” status.
YouTube provide some basic stats towards the public and one observation is how most clips receive a disproportionally large number of mobile views – typically even higher than “everything else” (aka desktop web) for a mobile-related video.
Simpons clip – 2,223,956 initial mobile views
The stats from most in-app videos suggest mobile users are, at least initially, the primary consumers and are even ahead of the desktop.
The mobile use-case fits well – reading lots of text or browsing screenshots isnt ideal on a small screen whereas “touch friendly” passive video consumption is an easy choice with a top-of-the-stack app. The use of video also introduces emotional engagement which is not easily carried through print or still images.
The data to show how a YouTube video can influence an app download isnt generally available But given the public viewing figures, low-cost, ease and speed in creating an app-video, YouTube seems like a natural all-screen channel which is not used nearly enough in mobile marketing.