Congratulations, you signed up for OuterSpatial! You’re probably excited to get your new award-winning app into your visitors’ hands, but maybe you’re also unsure about what to do next? If so, we’re here to help!
Your OuterSpatial license includes access to tools that make it easy to bring more visitors into your app and foster engagement within your existing community. These tools will help you promote your presence in OuterSpatial, onboard visitors directly to your organization’s information, and highlight all of your organization’s authoritative information.
In this blog post, we’ll cover these tools in more detail.
Promotion Package
To start, we highly recommend that you take a look at the OuterSpatial Promotion Package. We wrote it to provide direction and inspiration for your organization as it develops materials to market its presence in OuterSpatial. It contains copy and design recommendations, graphics, and information on different marketing strategies your organization may want to utilize.
Campaigns
You can use campaigns created in OuterSpatial Manager to promote your app and help “onboard” visitors to a specific screen within the app. Each campaign created in Manager has a deep link and associated QR code you can use on your website, in newsletters, on social media, or even on print media like brochures and signage.
If you’re not familiar with deep links, they are basically just web URLs that point to a particular piece of content inside an app. OuterSpatial campaigns also attach QR codes to deep links to allow visitors to use their phone to scan a code rather than having to manually type a URL into a browser. QR codes can be printed and used in the field at kiosks, trailheads, and visitor centers.
Following a deep link, or its associated QR code, will take your visitors directly to a particular screen in your app. For instance, you can create a campaign that takes visitors to a trailhead screen in your app and place the associated QR code on a trailhead sign. When scanned, the visitor will be taken directly to the trailhead screen in the app.
You can read more about how deep links work in our campaigns knowledge base article.
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Calls to Action
Adding a call to action to your website, social media outreach, and/or newsletter(s) is a great way to let visitors know about your new app. We recommend using the same tools your organization already uses for its marketing and outreach.
Dedicated Web Pages
Publishing a dedicated web page on your website that talks about your new mobile app in detail is a great way to ensure visitors who search for your mobile app on Google or another search engine can quickly find information about your app. We recommend including a description of the app’s features, high-quality screenshots of some of your organization’s screens within the app, and a clear call to action visitors can follow to download and/or launch the app. Using the App Store and Google Play button images (available in our Promotion Package) linked to an OuterSpatial campaign is the ideal way to publish a clear call to action for your visitors.
Follow these links to see examples of dedicated web pages a few of our partner organizations have created:
- Five Rivers MetroParks Mobile App
- City of Bloomington Parks Mobile App
- Society For The Protection Of New Hampshire Forests Mobile App
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Newsletter
If your organization does email marketing, adding a call to action to your newsletter is a great way to promote your new app. We’ve included a few screenshots below of newsletters our partner organizations have put together to promote their mobile app.
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App Badges
Adding a badge to your site that links into your application is another great way for visitors that land on your website to seamlessly transition to the mobile app. If you’re using the official App Store and Google Play button images (which is highly recommended), you should link directly to the OuterSpatial App Store and Google Play store URLs.
Follow these links to see examples of live app badges a few of our partner organizations have created:
- Five Rivers MetroParks - View the side bar
- Society For The Protection Of New Hampshire Forests - View the footer on all pages
- California State Parks - View the side bar on all park pages
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Web Page Deep Links
A great way to seamlessly “onboard” visitors into your app from your website is to add a prominent call to action (like a button or a link) on your park, trail, etc. web pages that use a campaign deep link URL. When visitors click on this call to action, they will be taken directly to the corresponding screen in your mobile app.
Social Media
If your organization maintains a presence on social media, including campaign URLs in your posts is another great way to encourage visitors to download and start using your app.
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Challenges
Running a challenge in OuterSpatial is a great way to motivate visitors to get outside in new and novel ways, and many organizations see a significant uptick in usage of, and engagement with, their app while running a challenge. In a nutshell, challenges allow you to ask visitors to complete a series of tasks, like responding to a questionnaire or checking-in to a trail, using your app.
Our organization partners have used challenges to conduct backcountry camping and trail use surveys, run scavenger hunts for kids, and encourage visitors to explore areas and trails that might be a little off the beaten path. If you’re interested in creating a challenge, take a look at our knowledge base article and reach out!
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Summary
Hopefully this blog post will inspire you to market your app widely and often! If you have questions about marketing your app or just want to bounce some ideas off of us, don’t hesitate to reach out to our customer success team.
And if your organization is not yet using OuterSpatial and is interested in joining the community, please reach out to us at sales@outerspatial.com to set up an introductory meeting. You can also check out our on-demand “Introduction to OuterSpatial” webinar here.
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