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Seasonal app marketing How to Prepare Your App for the Holiday Season

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Muhammad Qasim Iftikhar
Seasonal app marketing How to Prepare Your App for the Holiday Season

With the Christmas shopping season approaching, marketers may want to concentrate on app store optimization (ASO) and marketing tactics that might put them ahead of the competition with little effort.

App store rankings may rise during Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday promotions. In the world of app store optimization (ASO), seasonal marketing is often referred to as "seasonality," and it's a great way to stand out from the crowd. 

With seasonal symbols, videos, images, topical keywords, and app metadata, you can reach users who care about trends and take advantage of opportunities your competitors may miss. Your app store listing should look like the mall's holiday display windows, with black and orange patterns and tinsel.

A shift in typical holiday search behaviour is seen around this time. The term "black Friday discounts" might replace "clothes shopping" in some people's minds. The marketer is responsible for ensuring that their app is optimized for that specific search term, and the same holds for other holidays if applicable. This article will provide tips for preparing your app for the holiday season.


Tips to prepare your app for the holiday strategy

Your app's product page is often the last touchpoint before a user chooses to download it; therefore, every detail matters. Your app's product page may not reflect current marketing campaigns and seasonal deals. If so, you're losing an opportunity to provide a consistent brand message to consumers at a vital moment in the customer experience.

In November 2021, the top 10 shopping apps remained the same as in previous months. After Black Friday and Christmas keywords and promotions, half of those apps (Poshmark, eBay, Shein, Arrive, and OfferUp) were no longer in the top 10.

Amazon and Walmart conducted Christmas marketing campaigns and refreshed their app store visuals without ASO. Both remained category leaders.

Best Buy and Adidas have shown that adding seasonal content and improving an app's metadata can increase organic traffic and brand awareness over Christmas.

Here are some crucial guidelines for promoting your app over the year-end holidays:


Correlate with in-house marketing efforts and changes to the product.

Conducting research is the first step in making your app ready for the Christmas season. Coordinate the following projects with your staff:

  • What kind of sales, if any, do you have planned for the next season?
  • Is the app getting seasonal updates, like winter settings, new graphics, or holiday-themed puzzles?
  • Do you provide seasonal media like Christmas songs or movies?
  • How has your competitor previously differentiated themselves in the run-up to the holidays?
  • Is there a way to differentiate yourself from them, if at all?


Make some seasonal app metadata.

Once you've settled on a set of products or services to sell, you can start thinking about improving them. Copy adjustments are significant when adding new keywords and enhancing your holiday information. Updating icons and images has a powerful visual impact and may help applications stand out.


Icons

By differentiating your software from the pack, icons are an obvious asset that can be refreshed around the holiday season. On Google Play, where just the icon and copy display in the search results, icon modifications have a far more significant effect.


Screenshots

Optimizing these photos is essential for getting people to download your app and stand out from the competition. Ensure they show off your app's most critical features and what makes it valuable. Adding seasonal content to the screenshots of your app could be a great way to change how it looks when the weather changes.


Starbucks didn't change its look, but it tweaked its seasonal drinks and marketing ("This way to Christmas") to match the brand. "Works": The team changed the primary drinks' visuals and text to match Starbucks' seasonal offers without harming the brand.


Description and Keywords

Metadata with words like "Christmas," "Black Friday," "gifts," etc., could change how people download holiday apps. If your app isn't about Christmas or Black Friday, it's usually not a good idea to optimize for words like "holiday," "Christmas," and "Santa."

They put ads for Christmas music in their app listings, but they couldn't highlight one holiday in the metadata without risking their place in their primary market.


Discover Which App Store Search Terms

It may not be worth upgrading your app's title, keyword list, etc., with seasonal content. You may still emphasize holiday discounts in your advertising text, images, and creatives.


Advertisement Text

iOS apps need promotional text because it can be changed without resubmitting to the App Store. Use non-indexable text to promote related services in your app, but don't let it take away from its primary goal or keywords in its title, subheading, and description (an excellent way to promote special deals, features, etc.). Seasonal updates like "Countdown to Christmas" and "Flash Sales on Black Friday" are more attractive.


Establish key performance indicators (KPIs).

The next step should be actually to get ready. During the Christmas season, many people take time off, so consumers' calendars fill up quickly, and they hear a lot of advertising. Planning is essential to think about your questions, texts, projects, and time limit. Key performance indicators must be finalized ahead of time so you can see how any changes affect them.


Bring out upgrades and fine-tune your app's placement in the app stores.

Christmas is a great time to update your app, but keeping the content real and relevant to the user's experience and value is essential. Adding a few snowflakes to your images won't make a huge impact, so don't waste your time.

Christmas is a great time to update your app, but make sure the content is original and valuable to users. Don't bother adding snowflakes to your photos. If you use images or words related to holidays to attract users, add holiday-related features, content, or ads.

If your changes aren't relevant, changing your app's text and visuals before the holidays without changing its functionality may seem like a cheap way to sell it. You can use A/B testing on Google Play or the iOS App Store to decide if you should update your holiday creatives.


Takeaway

Considering these factors will help you reach more people on more levels with your holiday mobile app marketing campaign. Holiday ads may boost brand exposure, revenue, engagement, and customer loyalty.

In-app storytelling may boost your Christmas marketing activities this year and beyond. Your app will attract and retain users better than competing apps that employ less creative methods.

Your return on investment (ROI) will skyrocket, and you'll provide customers with an experience that no one else can match. Finally, stories are the key to long-term success during and around the holidays.


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