After spending considerable amount of time and putting in a great deal of efforts, you end up developing a new mobile app. However to make it a mobile sensation you would have to once again spend considerable time and effort to promote the app. It is one of the most fundamental problems that the app developers face every time they launch a new app.
Marketing or promoting your app is more of an art of making the app more easily discoverable. Your potential customers should stumble upon your app more often than your competitors or if you have some peerless and awesome idea then the general masses should at least get to know about the innovation.
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker
To master this art of influencing discovery you first need to know about how apps are being discovered. Once we know how people are discovering apps, we can target our marketing strategy accordingly. According to a report by Forrester here are the most popular ways that your app gets discovered by users in both iOS and android platforms:
1. Browsing through the platform’s official store – 63% iOS, 58% Android
2. Word of mouth recommendations – 50%iOS, 41% Android
3. Browsing top-rated or most popular app lists – 34% iOS, 25% Android
4. Pre-installed app (app installed by the device manufacturer as default) – 20%iOS, 23%Android
5. Through social media platforms – 19%iOS and 15% android.
6. Discovery through general browsing on internet – 16%
7. Direct discovery through Search Engine searches – 14%
8. Ads in newspapers or magazines – 7%
9. Reading blogs – 7%
10. Reading newsletters – 6%
11. TV ads – 6%
12. Smartphone ads – 6%
13. Radio ads – 3%
14. Other – 7%
Related Infographic:
Mobile Marketing Mania | An Infographic
How to start App Marketing
As you may see from the list above, your application store’s profile is the most important aspect of all. Aside from optimizing the app marketplace profiles, which is very important by the way, the top 4 ways of discovery cannot be directly influenced. However, working on the rest of the factors would indirectly affect your app store’s profile and will produce results in long run.
Based on the above mentioned ways of discovery, we can broadly classify app promotion into 3 categories
- In-Store App Promotion
- Online App Promotion
- Offline App Promotion
All three are actually interconnected and a myriad of techniques and tricks can be classified under each category. Moreover some tricks are interdependent and are practically not considerable unless some other step has already been taken.
In the subsequent posts, we would be focusing on every practical trick in the book related to app promotion. We would be talking about ways that are dirt cheap to ways that require exorbitant expenses. We would be focusing on the suitable waits for your app based on your genre and budget, and we would be discussing as well how can different types of app promotion cost you.
Here are all the posts that we would be publishing in coming days:-
Online Marketing
1. An Ultimate guide to App promotion through Social Media platforms
Highlights:
- how to prepare Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ profiles
- Is Facebook ads a good idea
- How to promote your social media profiles and create friend base
- how to encourage social media likes
- how to gather feedbacks for your app
- Pinterest, Vines, YouTube, and other social media profiles you should make
Click here to know more.
2. How to design your App Website and how to promote it
Highlights:
- Design features every App website should have
- Call to action
- How to prepare your blog
- some examples
Click here to know more.
3. App developer’s Guide to On-Page and Off Page SEO
Highlights:
- On-Page SEO
- Off page SEO
- Forum posting
- Classifieds, Press Releases
- Guest postings
- Wikipedia page
Click here to know more.
4. Paid App Advertising: Sources every App developer should know
Highlights:
- When and Why to opt for paid advertising
- Google Programs
- Cost Per Click Campaigns
- Affiliate programs
5. How to harness the power of videos for your app marketing?
Highlights:
- Why Video marketing
- How to setup your Youtube Channel
- What videos should be there in your video channel
- Tools to create easy videos
Click here to know more.
Offline Marketing
6. Offline App Promotion: Everything you need to know
Highlights:
- Why Offline promotion
- Community Contests
- Event sponsorship and hosting
- Trade Shows, Awards, and other app related events
Click here to know more.
7. Bridging the Gap between Offline and Online Promotion of App
Highlights:
- How to use website URL for offline and online promotion
- Hashtag
- Power of QR codes
- Promoting offline events online
Click here to know more.
In-Store App Promotion
8. How to optimize your in-store profile for more downloads?
Highlights:
- Why Optimize In-Store App Page
- How to select and place target Keywords
- How to take advantage of ratings and reviews of the app
- How to formulate good App description
- Take best and necessary screenshots
- Add App videos and gameplay trailers
- How to set In-Store app Localization options
Click here to know more.
What to expect?
Each post will offer practical methods to boost your app downloads and popularity. In addition we will talk about how much it would cost you to execute the method and industry verticals that these methods would me most beneficial for.
In short these techniques are must know for every app-developer and app entrepreneur before foraying into app market. These articles would be very useful for every project scale and every industry type.
Rachit Agarwal
