Promoting Fin-Tech applications effectively: a detailed guide
The article content
- What do we classify as fin-tech?
- The best solutions for promoting fin-tech applications: app store and google play stores
- Promoting a fin-tech application without advertising
- What is aso?
- Elements of pages in the app store and google play that affect the visibility of the application
- Aso for fin-tech application promotion: step-by-step recommendations
- Summing up
Marketing, promotion of goods, services, advertising, sales - these are the areas that have been developing extremely actively for quite a long period of time. To achieve the set goal, a huge number of different technologies, services, tools are used here. But still, despite this diversity, it was not possible to come up with something new and unique in terms of interaction with the target audience. Any strategy that is launched by modern marketers, business representatives assumes a clear understanding of who and what you want to sell. And the Fin-Tech direction is clearly no exception. Here you also need to understand how to correctly interact with the target audience, know its interests, preferences, pains, needs. It is also important to show how exactly your product can solve all this.
But with all this, it is important not to forget that the modern audience is systematically moving away from TVs, at least from advertising that is shown on screens. Also, the so-called "banner blindness" is observed everywhere, when people simply stopped noticing all the ads that surround them. But with all this, people literally plunged headlong into the Internet, and not so much desktop as mobile. It is this trend that should be taken into account by all those who are thinking about promoting their products. Fin-Tech applications will be no exception here.
This is exactly the issue that today's review will be devoted to. Initially, we will get acquainted with what exactly belongs to the Fintech category, so that it is clear what market niches it covers. We will also consider the main approaches to promoting Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play stores. Here we will definitely have to get acquainted with the specifics of ASO, as one of the best solutions to the tasks set today. We will also describe the main steps that will need to be implemented at this stage. The information provided will allow you to understand the issue of promoting Fin-Tech applications and understand how to most effectively implement the upcoming work even without outside help.
What do we classify as Fin-Tech?
Fin-Tech, Fintech is an abbreviation for financial technology. That is, it is everything that helps the relevant services and various companies manage the financial aspects of doing business. This can include all kinds of applications, software, business models and various internal processes. Recently, this niche has also begun to include areas related to the use of advanced technologies and solutions by modern companies that allow them to compete with classic organizations and institutions for attracting customers. These can be various technical startups and organizations that improve the quality of services and take customer service to a new level with the help of advanced Fin-Tech tools.
A striking example here is the Chinese development WeChat. This is a fairly impressive set of applications developed by Tencent Corporation. Among other things, it contains a special option "WeChat Payments", to which approximately every 5th user of the 900 million audience has linked their card, thereby gaining access to the platform's wallet and all those trading accounts, commercial functions that are provided here. Thanks to this, they were able to pay not only for online, but also offline goods and services using a smartphone. That is, "WeChat Payments" - this is a bright representative of Fintech applications, which we will talk about in today's review.
In parallel with the market developing and systematically moving to the online environment, the category of areas that can be attributed to this niche has significantly expanded. If until relatively recently Fin-Tech was perceived exclusively as internal developments of the company, directly related to financial institutions, structures, today it has covered almost everything that is related to the end consumer of financial services. This is the technology that has become the basis of all online transactions, from regular money transfers to payment for goods, services, including utilities.
To make it clearer what exactly we are talking about, we will highlight the main modern areas of Fintech:
- Personal finances. These can be desktop and mobile applications that allow users to flexibly and conveniently manage their own funds, analyze income and expenses, and predict future expenses. Most of these are developments that provide information in the form of visual reports.
- B2B business. In this niche, Fintech applications are designed to ensure the most efficient and convenient mutual settlements, as well as data exchange between businesses. Recently, smart contracts operating on the basis of blockchain technologies have begun to occupy leading positions here.
- Lending. An area in which users can attract borrowed funds without directly contacting banks. Distributed registries are used here, ensuring mutually beneficial cooperation between borrowers and lenders. Both business representatives and consumers can be parties to the interaction.
- Payments. Today, the market offers a huge variety of tools that allow you to effectively carry out money transfers. To implement this, smartphones, mobile Internet and many other advanced approaches to financial transactions are actively used. Thanks to such a wide variety, access to payments is provided even where there are no banking institutions.
- Money transfers. Most of these are products based on mobile platforms and imply the simplest authentication. They are not related to banks. Examples here include the Klarna online payment system, the TransferWise international currency transfer platform, the Revolut neobank, etc.
- Security. Those organizations and applications that are related to this area provide the most reliable and simple data processing by financial institutions, ranging from customer authentication to solutions aimed at ensuring high levels of protection against intruders and fraudulent schemes.
- Investment platforms. Surely you have already heard such a name as Wealthtech. These are specialized platforms that will feature digital brokers, special robot advisors, personal finance management programs, and microinvestment services. Here, active work is underway to automate processes and increase market accessibility for retail investors. Thanks to good analytics and a high level of robotics, investment platforms have become widely used among people who want to invest money in promising projects.
- RegTech. A fairly new direction in this area, allowing you to automatically adapt your business to all these changes that will occur in the legislation of the country where you work or in market conditions.
- Big Data Analysis. Recently, they have been very actively used in the financial sector. PR, advertising, sales have long been used in developing a strategy for personal user data. And now the financial sector has already joined in. In particular, we are talking about applications that can provide the most systematic approach.
- InsureTech. This is an insurance niche that uses automated solutions. These can be mobile applications for working in the Internet of Things, automation of payments, and much more. For example, today in the United States, car insurance companies are actively using telematics technology when calculating the cost of contributions. This technology involves taking into account the customer's driving style. It will be monitored via a smartphone or a special device installed in the car. As a result, basic information is collected for subsequent calculation of the payment amount.
- Crowdfunding. Here we are talking about special platforms where collective financing will be organized. It brings together product creators and potential investors for more effective and faster joint interaction.
- Artificial intelligence. We have already said more than once that this technology covers more and more new niches. It has also been actively used in the financial industry. Internal neural networks are created to service clients, collect and systematize information about the institution's work, and automate many routine and similar jobs.
- Cryptocurrencies. Today, digital currencies are actively used in the world market, despite the fact that there is no central payment system. They are fully automated and mined using extremely powerful computing systems. This is a market that attracts millions, if not billions of dollars today.
- Neobanks. A fairly new solution in the field of banking services. Here we are talking about the creation of financial institutions in the form of mobile applications that can easily replace the services of classic banks. Due to favorable terms of cooperation, the absence of commissions during online payments, neobanks are becoming more and more popular among users.
- Blockchain. This is a technology that involves the distribution of data registers. Here, each participant in such a chain acts as a server, confirming the legality of transactions. carried out by other persons. This technology stands out against the background of analogues by its high reliability daughter names blockchain has become the basis of many leading cryptocurrencies of our time, including Bitcoin. Today, it is also used in concluding smart contracts, organizing biometric protection, proof of copyright, concluding various transactions in trade, voting, energy distribution, etc.
As you can see, Fintech technologies are extremely diverse and are becoming widespread in the modern world. And in each of these niches there are specialized applications, the promotion of which we will talk about further.
The best solutions for promoting Fin-Tech applications: App Store and Google Play stores
We have already mentioned that mobile applications are currently leading the market, having long since overtaken desktop traffic indicators. And here everything is quite reasonable and understandable: people have appreciated all the conveniences, advantages, and opportunities that modern smartphones offer them. At the same time, there is clear competition between devices running on the Android and iOS operating systems. Today, the distribution of the world market is approximately as follows:
- Android - about 65%.
- iOS - about 35%.
In parallel with this, there are a huge number of applications tailored to work on devices with each of the operating systems. And everyone who creates such products inevitably faces a logical question: where to publish it? Will it be enough to place it in only one store or will it be necessary to use both at once? Practice shows that the most appropriate solution in most cases will still be a simultaneous entry into both stores. This is what will allow you to cover the maximum user market, as well as not to lose the audience that remains committed to a certain operating system.
And one of the most dynamic areas in the mobile market today can rightfully be called fintech. The audience in this niche is extremely active in interacting with software products that simplify financial transactions, and the solution of many financial problems in general. If we analyze the Fin-Tech areas that we talked about above, we can highlight the most popular categories of such applications today. In particular, these will be payment services, transfers, cryptographic wallets, specialized banking software products, financial management tools, microcredit services, etc.
Currently, the demand for such solutions is constantly increasing, and the situation clearly does not plan to decline. If you have chosen this direction for developing your own software product, then it's time to get acquainted in more detail with the opportunities that will be available to you at the stage of promoting Fin-Tech applications.
Promoting a Fin-Tech application without advertising
Promoting Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play is your chance to effectively attract the attention of the user audience to your products without launching a large-scale advertising campaign. The fact is that most installations still occur through search. That is, people independently select the most suitable solution for themselves. Statistics show that over 60% of all installations in iOS come from search. On devices with the Android operating system, this figure is within 55%.
Should you rely too much on advertising to promote fintech apps? This is a rather ambiguous question. It is important to understand that absolutely any advertising will work as long as it remains active. As soon as it disappears from public view, the audience will instantly forget both it and the products that were advertised with its help. But if a person finds you on their own, then all their actions are truly conscious. That is, advertising works, but its effect is really short-term. It lasts as long as you invest money. As soon as the budget is spent, the traffic will disappear immediately. That is why those who really think about effective promotion rely on organic promotion. This is what guarantees the constant presence of your product in search results, and along with this, a stable influx of user audience.
Organic promotion of Fin-Tech applications on Google Play — this is what will provide your product with a number of more than significant advantages:
- guarantee of long-term results without additional investment of money;
- attracting an audience that is obviously interested in this product, which increases the likelihood of conversion actions;
- the highest possible user return rates: on average, one and a half times higher than that of classic advertising.
Moreover, such promotion is your chance to effectively stand out from the competition. Every day, new and new products appear in the App Store and Google Play stores, and only those who can stand out from the crowd, that is, can organize the most effective promotion, will be able to attract the attention of the audience here. And here we come to such a question as ASO.
What is ASO?
Before moving on to getting acquainted with how ASO is used to promote Fin-Tech applications, it is necessary to understand what exactly we are talking about at this point in time. This is what will allow you to understand why a business should take advantage of this offer. So, App Store Optimization, or ASO for short, is the process of attracting a user audience and subsequently retaining it using search in application stores. By and large, we are talking about a technology that is quite similar to SEO, but it is used not for promoting websites and other services, platforms, but for mobile applications.
Today, ASO is actively used both within Google Play and in the App Store, directly influencing what position a given application will occupy in the search. It is also responsible for the indexing process itself and conversion rates. That is, the main task of App Store Optimization will be to increase the number of organic installations of software products, increase the number of conversion actions, retain the attention of the user audience and increase the income of product developers.
Using ASO will be extremely useful for everyone who has a mobile application. Accordingly, it will also be relevant for promoting Fin-Tech applications, in particular:
- Banking and financial software products.
- Various utilities used in the Fin-Tech industries.
- Mobile games, especially those that require payment for certain options or use in general.
- Medical, service, educational applications.
- Anything related to the e-commerce category.
- B2B, B2C products.
- Applications dedicated to meditation, health, fitness and much more.
The list of such areas can be quite long, because App Store Optimization will be useful for the vast majority of Fin-Tech applications. But there are exceptions here.
Limitations in using ASO
Along with the points we discussed above, there are cases when using ASO may not give the desired results in promoting Fin-Tech applications or its capabilities may not be sufficient in practice. In particular, we are talking about the following:
- applications with the narrowest possible functionality, often limited to just one option, such as a flashlight, currency converter, calculator, and the like;
- niches that cannot be called completely legal, such as gambling: slightly different rules apply here, there are their own specifics;
- internal company applications developed specifically for staff, not going beyond the organization;
- software products presented in too saturated niches: here, without investing additional resources, it will be impossible to survive in the conditions of fierce competition;
- paid applications, where the possibility of free use is not provided at all: conversion rates are too low.
If we talk about the financial niche in general, then promoting Fin-Tech applications using App Store Optimization gives really good results. But it is important to understand that the competition is gaining momentum. In most niches, reaching the top of the search results will be really problematic in a few years. This means that if you are planning to launch such software products, then think about implementing such an idea today. Tomorrow, their promotion will cost you much more.
We will talk about how to ensure the promotion of Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play further.
Elements of pages in the App Store and Google Play that affect the visibility of the application
Working to increase the visibility of a software product in stores, ensuring high conversion rates, and retaining the attention of the user audience requires optimizing a number of elements on the page of this application in the App Store and Google Play. In particular, we are talking about key components that have a direct impact on the effectiveness of ASO:
- Icon. This is one of the most important visual elements that users pay attention to. It has a key impact on conversion actions. Often, one glance at the icon will be enough for users to form an opinion about your product and decide whether it is advisable to install it in general.
- Title. This is what the store's search engine will index. Therefore, when writing the title, it is recommended to use key queries that will be as relevant as possible to a specific product and the area for which it is intended.
- Subtitle. Initially, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that it will be relevant exclusively for the App Store. It is also subject to indexing and has a direct impact on conversion rates. With its help, you can reveal the features of the product and its specifics in more detail.
- Keywords. Also relevant for the App Store. Here we are talking about the field that will be hidden from users. Here you can write all those key queries that will be relevant for your niche, including competitors' brands. That is, here you have a chance to rank for the widest possible range of user queries, but without public mention.
- Brief description. Typical for the Google Play store. This is what will be indexed by the system. You can present the description as a full-fledged SEO text, up to 4000 characters long, including key phrases here, ensuring usefulness for the reader.
- Reviews, ratings. This is what has a direct impact on the behavior of the audience, forms people's trust in your brand or, conversely, causes instant denial. It is in your interests to stimulate the audience to respond back. Optimally, if the rating of your application in the store is 4.5 and higher. This is what guarantees 60% more attention from users than applications with a rate below 4.0.
- Videos, screenshots. They also have an extremely serious impact on the conversion rate. Google Play will display this information after the user clicks on a special button in the search or after he goes to a specific application page. But in the App Store, screenshots and videos will be visible directly in the search.
- Internal metrics. Here we are talking about the number of updates, installations, purchases, information, user activity per day and month, stability of operation, which is manifested in the absence of failures. Internal metrics are used in both stores, but it is Google Play that has a critical impact on the promotion of FinTech applications.
This means that during ASO it is imperative to pay attention to the optimization of each of these components. We will talk about the main stages of the implementation of the upcoming work below.
ASO for Fin-Tech Application Promotion: Step-by-Step Recommendations
The last few years have brought about radical changes in the technology of Fin-Tech application promotion and ASO in general. Today, it is clearly not enough to collect the semantic core and write metadata. It will be necessary to implement a much larger and more comprehensive work, including the following stages:
- Competitor analysis.
- Collecting semantics.
- Writing metadata.
- Creating graphic elements.
- Keeping the attention of the user audience.
We will consider each of these points in more detail.
We perform competitor analysis
Determining the closest competitors and collecting information about them — one of the key stages of promoting Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play stores. This is what will allow you to identify really strong market players and understand what measures will help you bypass them in the search results. It is important to realize that a competitor is not someone who has an application similar to yours in name or design. Here, first of all, you should pay attention to the functionality of the product, as well as the target audience. That is, if you see software products that solve the same problems as yours, then you have a competitor in front of you.
Compare the target audiences and make sure that this is really the case. In order to maximize coverage of the consumer market, it would be a good idea to also evaluate suppliers of niche related products. In order for you to have the most clear picture of the state of the market in your niche, you need to analyze at least 50 applications. Of these, you need to select approximately 5-10 that have the greatest impact on both the audience itself and the search results of stores.
So, when you already know your competitors, you need to analyze the characteristics of their work. In particular, pay attention to how many software installations were made in the context of a particular country. Pay attention to the semantic core and how the application page is designed here. Carefully study the icon itself, video, screenshots, positioning. Be sure to study the functionality of the application and compare it with your product. You must understand that there are options that will not have any impact on the search results in the App Store and Google Play, but for users they will be critical, which will affect the ranking indicators.
For maximum convenience, the collected information must be structured. In most cases, the best option is to create a table, build graphs visualizing the state of the market. This way you can select the main countries for targeting your application. So, if we are talking about global software products, then here it is worth betting on the USA, Germany, Great Britain, France, South Korea. In parallel with this, the least priority will be countries with a low GDP indicator, for example Nigeria, Vietnam, India. If you are focusing on the local market, then, accordingly, it is necessary to collect information about local competitors.
Now the most in-depth analysis is needed. Highlight the following key points:
- the average rating of the application and the number of its installations: the lower it is, the more opportunities for growth you will have;
- visual design: design, focusing on certain functions;
- determining visibility in search, the number of key queries used, positions in the search results;
- the quality of filling in metadata, the information entered into them: for the App Store this will be the name and subtitle, and for Google Play - name and description;
- implemented technical solutions, their effectiveness, impact on external display and position in search.
Pay attention to competitors with a high rating. They have already collected the correct semantics, have solutions that work in practice and give good results. This means that you can take their developments into service, ensuring high efficiency of ASO and, as a result, a good position in search for your product. The more visual and structured the information received is, the simpler and more convenient it will be in subsequent processing.
Collecting semantics
Most of these works are performed by an ASO specialist, but even if you don’t have one, you can implement everything yourself, since this process is not difficult. It is important to understand that the semantic core is a set of key queries that are obtained by analyzing competitors’ metadata, search suggestions in the App Store and Google Play, as well as recommendations from ASO tools that you use in practice. That is, you need to analyze the titles, subtitles, descriptions and select those phrases that are used most often when describing the product. And the system itself will offer you query options during the search. Most of these works are performed using automated software solutions.
To form a full-fledged semantic core, you will need to collect at least 100 relevant key phrases for each of the countries where you plan to promote the application. With all this information in hand, you will need to:
- divide all queries into separate categories: relevant, partially relevant, questionable;
- delete all unnecessary, combine duplicates and sort by frequency of use;
- form a set of key queries for subsequent use in promoting your product.
Despite the fact that today there are many ASO tools that automate this work, it would not be superfluous to manually check the resulting semantics to ensure its quality.
Writing metadata
Specifying all the necessary metadata is an extremely important, if not the key stage of promoting Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play stores using the principles of App Store Optimization. Based on the information you provide, the bots will understand what kind of software product is in front of them and, as a result, will display it in the selection in response to the corresponding user request. At this stage, you need to do the following work:
- Analyze the key queries that you collected in the previous stage. In the phrases, highlight the main word and determine its frequency. The main focus should be on those expressions that are most often found in your semantics. As a result, you should get a table of key queries structured by frequency of use: high-frequency, mid-frequency, low-frequency.
- Come up with a title and subtitle for your application, using high-frequency keywords. You can also use individual elements from low-frequency phrases as an addition, revealing the essence of the issue.
- In the App Store, fill in the block with key queries. When working with Google Play, you need to prepare a short and full description, also using keywords. At the same time, it is not recommended to register other brands in the names. The only exception here is the keywords field in the App Store.
If you have unused keywords, you will need to distribute them across other text blocks. But in any case, the basis of the metadata should be the so-called "anchor" words - those that are most often found in the semantics you have collected and that best reveal the specifics of the application, its purpose.
To maximize the coverage of keywords and, as a result, consumers, it is additionally recommended to use cross-localization. Here we are talking about using several language versions for the page of your software product. That is, locally - this is a separate language version of the application, which will undergo the indexing stage in a certain region. Today, the App Store and Google Play stores provide 39 such locales. Each of them will work independently of the others. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can use different variations of the same language, such as English (US), English (UK). As a result, you can use several separate sets of keywords for the same country, thereby scaling their indexing.
It is also important to understand that there are locales that are simultaneously indexed in several countries. They are called cross-locales. This is especially true for the English language and its British, American version. Most of them will be indexed in almost all countries of the world. But you need to focus on those languages that are taken into account by the search engine in your region.
Practice shows that one of the most common mistakes in promoting Fintech applications on Google Play, App Store is neglecting available cross-locales. In practice, this leads to a loss of up to 50% or even 70% of potential coverage. Why not take advantage of this opportunity, especially if there is nothing complicated in these settings?
Creating graphic elements
At the beginning of today's review, we talked about the fact that graphic elements have a significant impact on the user's decision to install the application. Therefore, it is in your interests to make it as attractive as possible. To get a good option at the end, use the following recommendations:
- Analyze your closest competitors and choose the trends that are relevant at the moment. It is not necessary to rely on the closest analogues. You just need interesting ideas that will subsequently become the basis for the external design of the software product. This is relevant both for the main screenshot and for the text accompaniment, background. Perhaps, in some cases, it will not be superfluous to add a photo of a person, highlight special functionality.
- Run A/B testing. Here, offer the audience several options and determine the one that will provide higher conversion rates.
- As a final option, choose not the graphics that will be the most attractive, but the one that will best demonstrate the value of your application to the audience.
In any case, do not launch changes until their effectiveness is confirmed by testing with the target audience. This is what will allow you to look at your product from the consumer's side, which will ultimately provide a more positive effect in promotion.
Keeping the attention of the user audience
Promoting Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play will still be ineffective if you do not think about how to keep the attention of the user audience. And here are some interesting recommendations:
- Use events. The use of events in modern ASO is one of the most popular tactics for promoting applications within stores today. In particular, Google Play provides Promotional Content, and the App Store - In-App Events. The principles in both options are similar: you demonstrate something unique and interesting about your product directly on the main search results page or in editorial selections. This is what will allow you to significantly improve the visibility of your application in stores, increase the chance of being in special selections that will be shown to a huge number of user audiences. In addition, such a solution will motivate old users to come back to you again, as well as attract a new audience.
- Push notifications. These short pop-up messages today attract more attention from the audience than other elements. This means that you can safely use them to return inactive users. Look at how your closest competitors use this notification. Perhaps you will find an interesting solution for use in your practice.
- Onboarding. Here we are talking about the design of special screens that will be shown to the audience when they first get acquainted with the software product. This is what will demonstrate to the audience the full value of your offer. If we are talking about a paid application, then here you need to show what exactly the person will pay for. This is where the decision will be made to subscribe to your product, purchase it, use the free trial period, or just leave.
- Changing the icon design. Most users simply get used to the icons displayed on the screens of their devices and simply stop noticing them. If you change their design from time to time, this will systematically revive interest in the application, remind the audience about it and help return the inactive audience.
Summing up
In today's review, we examined in detail the issue of promoting Fin-Tech applications in the App Store and Google Play stores using advanced ASO technologies. We hope that the information provided will allow you to promote your software product to leading positions in the store results, thereby attracting the attention of the user audience mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service will help to significantly facilitate the upcoming work. With their help, you will be able to easily collect information about competitors from different countries and regions of the world, including those to which access is closed at the legislative level. It will also be possible to run into restrictions and blockings without the risk of running into them, work with various social networks, launch automated solutions, including for collecting semantics and structuring them. And you also get maximum privacy and security of work on the Internet in general.
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