SEO for mobile app marketing, does it make sense for you?

This post is suited for all business types but based on the experience of a fast growth startup I'm helping.

What’s this blog post about?

1. First, we're going to begin with figuring out whether SEO is right for you, broadly speaking.
2. We're going to discuss the tactical steps to figuring that out, specifically around keyword volume.
3. A recent conversation with a very experienced head of growth and some common traps growth hackers fall into and why that’s an issue with SEO.
4. Then we're going to talk about marketing budgets, and we have to talk about growth hacking for apps versus SEO.

The questions covered are:

1. How do I figure out my marketing channel for my marketing app?
2. How do I know if SEO is right for my app?
3. Should I bother with SEO if I have an app and not a responsive website?

Is SEO right for you?

In terms of is SEO right for you, the first bit of business is taking into account is whether or not the product you are selling, are people actively aware of this product or niche, or is it something they are unfamiliar with?

If you have an innovative product or service that no one's really heard of because you're catering to some sort of untapped market which most mobile apps, most certainly most startups fall probably into that category excluding mobile games and social especially. B2B apps definitely fall into that category for the most part. Then either people aren't going to be aware, so they are not going to be actively looking for you on search engines. That means that both SEO and PPC isn't particularly pertinent for your business. Oh gosh what do I do? Well, there’s a ton of other marketing channels for you focus on but that’s not for this blog post.

Now in terms of tactical steps, it is very important to ascertain the answer to that question. It's easy to do that. What you need to do is just conduct some keyword research. Through conducting keyword research, you'll be able to figure out pretty easily whether there is sufficient volume to warrant even investing the energy into figuring out whether SEO is right for your business, and whether or not there is actual keywords out there that are pertinent.

Keyword research

Now I'm going to link to the process for you to go and figure out how to conduct keyword research because it's a topic that's been covered extensively, so I'm not going to into much detail. The ultimate guide to keyword research (this doesn’t include massive long tail, some clients are trying to rank for +50k keywords, it is best you get in touch directly to discuss as it isn’t so straightforward).

Once you've actually got this keyword list, you can look at some of the volumes. Now I'm just going to broadly give you a feeling for, some basic formula for you to take away once you've done some basic keyword research to figure out whether or not it's a viable option for you and it's worth your while exploring and doing this. Have you ascertained at least 100 keywords with search volumes exceeding 10,000 searches a month per keyword? If so, then probably worth going for. Keep in mind keyword difficulty is another element, so if for instance you gathered that insurance is pertinent to you, then that’s a shame as you aren’t likely to get ranking for that. You can find out how difficult a keyword to rank for is by using moz’s keyword difficulty tool.

Marketing budget

One of the conversations I just had recently with a head of growth while we were fleshing out SEO. It got quite intricate, two or three hours into the conversation; this was because their products were not clearly defined, there was confusion about customer type, their product market is not clearly defined, the monetization was not really defined. This is a very well-backed startup. It already got a team of 15 people and they're still in this discovery phase and not having clear ideas - this is totally normal when validating entirely new territory. There's a gap between the head of growth's perception and the MDs perception. They have different levels of experience, different aspects of knowledge. The head of growth is trying to get his head around it and the MD is previously experienced with SEO so it is more straightforward for him to understand how SEO fits in.

Case in point

The head of growth suddenly, during the conversation says: "Well, maybe SEO is not right." And we explored that, actually, I was there to oversee the process as they took me on as a consultant to help them with SEO strategies. The question was, "Why are you suddenly midway changing it?"

He felt a bit overwhelmed by the existing competition and the complexity of going about setting it up as they were very ambitious with their goals. At one point he suddenly turns around and says, "Actually, we've engaged you to figure out and assess the size of the opportunity and how competitive it is considering our marketing budget and we haven't even done that yet. I've already jumped to conclusion based on what I'm familiar with which is mobile marketing.”

I replied "Obviously you're going to do that because you're a growth hacker. You're looking for these quick win opportunities, but now you've got to really ask yourself, are you thinking about 500 app installs? Are you interested in a 5-million unique visitor market? Where are you in this? Are you looking for scale or are you looking to get traction and test the model?"

So my advice is figure out where you are in your marketing activity cycle, are you ready for volume yet?

SEO VS other for mobile app

How much does SEO cost compared to ad-networks programmatic and social marketing?

The conversation really revolved around marketing budget.

"What's your marketing budget gonna be like, because you can either spread some of it into SEO and some into in app marketing and other channels.”

“What's your cost per install gonna be relative to acquiring a “free” customer on Google?"

Interruptive VS inbound

When you're doing interruptive marketing in terms of display advertising or RTB or Facebook or incentivized, and you're disrupting people with banners and images away from what their current activities are, maybe you're hitting people in a different head space.

Buying cycle

What about the buying cycle, when you think about the awareness consideration and then conversion path (this is pertinent to B2B and longer buying cycle mind you), when you think about people in the awareness phase, that's great that you're tapping people who are unaware but it is quite a costly path to take if there’s tangible search volume out there. Really, from a marketing point of view you want to think holistically - the question here is prioritisation, timing and budget allocation more than any. The truth is you can’t figure out that question without getting the validation of real-world data to make that decision process.

For startups

For you as a startup, for you as a new service or product, you need to figure out the answers to those questions as soon as possible because you can't engage in a half-baked effective strategy if you want to be competing on SEO. It's a saturated market. It's been around for donkey years, it's mature 10, 15 years in tech years is like light years for ants (imagine how long it takes them to get from A to B). There's very large agencies of 1,000 employees that specialize at an enterprise level. I personally use about 7 or 8 different pieces of software, but I know of at least 50. This is a mature market. If you have a half-assed strategy for trying to achieve ranking, you're probably going to fail.

Yes, SEO is relevant, but how do I get it working with my app?

Traditionally and quite typically a lot of Google results are dominated (from a mobile point of view) by responsive sites although that is going to change soon. Once we've taken into account this question around marketing budget and how much are you paying to establish your SEO strategy for free traffic, how much is it costing you in mobile app marketing, we need to talk about growth hacking in terms of your different strategy with product integration.

One of the topics that come up was, "Well, you know, people go into Google, they type in a search keyword, they end up on my website, but actually, I'm selling a mobile app. How am I going to get them to convert into a mobile app? Let's say we're operating in a jobs market. You click and you want to select a particular freelancer. You're typing in "PHP developer" and you get a listing of different PHP developers you click "hire" or "find more info," and then it takes you to the mobile app.

That cost per visit from an organic search for tapping that market even though you have a mobile app is still very valid. It's trying to explain to someone who comes from mobile marketing background that search can be still be very powerful if the keyword volume is there, if you have enough budget (translate what a lot of SEOs like to call creativity) to crack into the top listings for the pertinent keywords. Assuming you can achieve those then cracking the medium which is mobile versus desktop isn't gonna be a real challenge.

Conclusion

SEO is not a growth hacking strategy, it isn’t a quick win methodology for getting validation for your mobile app.

Hopefully, that's given you some thoughts as to whether or not SEO is right for your mobile app. I hope you enjoyed the blog post. Feedback and comments welcome.