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The Top 5 Greatest Mistakes in App Marketing

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Without exception, an app’s marketing will dictate the extent of its success. Whether it’s a mobile or a web app, there exists more than just one angle of approach to marketing; for whichever plan you devise, remember to avoid these common mistakes. 1. Inadequate focus on your app’s USP Your chief objective while marketing should be to prevent your app from blending in with the rest on the app store. This is why successful marketing is contingent on the promotion of a product’s unique attribute – that is, its Unique Selling Proposition. If you feel as though you’ve lost a grasp on what makes your app unique, stop and ask yourself: The majority of your marketing efforts should be centered around how you will provide the answers to these above questions. If you plan on delegating all marketing responsibilities to a team, avoid the mistake of assuming that each individual is already on-board with the app’s selling point. The success of an app depends on its popularity, which is largely contingent on how it’s being marketed: the marketing team’s collective understanding of your app’s selling point is as vital to your app’s success as the selling point itself. 2. Unfamiliarity with the market’s evolving stratagem The common denominator between the most successful apps today concerns App store Search Optimization. ASO refers to the technique of choosing and incorporating specific keywords into an app description/name to generate the most visits from App Store search queries. The central ASO trend seems to be gravitating towards the incorporation of simplified phrasing and keywords within the app’s description and title. The image below contains the top apps from Google Play Store’s Health & Fitness app category. Each of their names briefly yet concisely reflects their function: Notice how the two pedometer apps are simply named “Pedometer.” Before you publish your app, ask yourself: which keywords would a typical user search with to find an app like mine? 3. Neglecting feedback Neglecting feedback is one of the most irresponsible things an appreneur can do. While marketing, your goal should be to improve communication between you, the developer, and the user. How big of an impact on an app’s reviews does opening channels of communication have? Note the contrasting levels of effort invested in bolstering user-developer communication between the app SoundCloud and Yik Yak: Unlike SoundCloud, notice how Yik Yak’s developers implemented a review and feedback feature directly into their UI. The results were on par with what we expected:    Although more users installed SoundCloud, approximately 3 times as many users left a review for Yik Yak (relative to each of the app’s installations).Fulfilling the demands of your current user base improves your application’s chances for success: your app is more likely to gain traction after it meets the interests of its user base. Better products equals better reviews, and having better reviews leaves an overall better impression on your app for potential users to see. 4. Launching apps with poor timing Setting and promoting a release date is a great way to build anticipation; however, be sure to leave adequate time for beta testing before the app’s launch. If you release the app too soon, there’s a good chance that it’ll contain either unattractive glitches or experience-breaking errors – overlooked glitches and bugs will put a strain on any app’s reputation. Even if the errors are addressed and fixed, the disproportionate ratio of negative to positive reviews will likely bottleneck the potential of your app’s success, making it unattractive and that much more difficult to market. Also, try not to overlap your app’s release date with that of another highly anticipated app or tech. There’s no risk in planning your app’s release for a later date; there is, however, a risk in endangering the success of your app by sharing its launch date with that of another anticipated product. 5. Creating false expectations Market your app in a way that neither sails over nor falls short of its intended functionality. When marketing and developing, stay focused on your app’s selling point. Don’t try to impress yourself and others with unnecessary implementations that are irrelevant to your app’s chief function – aim to mitigate clutter. In other words, market what you develop, and develop what you market.

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How to Keep Your App Relevant

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An average iOS phone is said to have 48 apps downloaded in the United States. This means marketing for your app doesn’t end at the download. Keep your users coming back by keeping your app relevant and up to date with trending themes, features and other attractive app elements. Understand your consumer audience and look into other apps they may be using and what they are doing. It’s important to know what you are up against but also vital to keep an eye on how other apps are updating their service. Netflix is a great example of a service that stays relevant for their users. They offer movies appropriate to holiday seasons and feature movies which star celebrities that are trending in the news. Netflix also achieves to make their service relevant to even the individual through their movie rating feature and ‘Top Picks’ selection. Below are some basic methods of keeping your app up-to-date: Experts in the field discuss the importance of immediate gratification and results which translates to relevance. They believe relevance is the key to influencing user behavior. For most apps the most important dimensions to understand relevance through is location, user profile and date/time. To keep your app moving to the top, make a deliberate effort to keep your app relevant to users.

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Using Social Media For Your App

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Social media is running unrestrained through the streets of the 21st century, and as a creator of an app, you need to harness it and take control. With seemingly everyone you meet a part of some form of social media, it is an important marketing strategy for your app to be a part of social media as well. With social media, you can attract new users and maintain a presence for current ones, thereby driving overall demand for – and subsequent revenue from – your app. There are several benefits to using social media, and app creators are becoming more and more aware of this, using social media in new and effective ways to encourage current and prospective users. Tinder, for instance, uses social media outlets such as Facebook and YouTube to spread awareness of important issues such as sex trafficking and forced marriage. While not explicitly a promotion for their app, these posts generate positive attitudes towards Tinder from current or potential users. Another example of successful social media marketing is Angry Birds. The app has Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts, and posts about two to four times a day to each site, making sure to always remind their followers about their app. This leads us to the first most important aspect to successful social media use: Some of the most popular social media sites include Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. Which sites you join depends on your app and the amount of time you are able to put into social media. Based on the importance of having a social media presence, making time should be a priority, though if you genuinely cannot find the time to maintain many accounts, then stick to just a few – there is nothing worse than following a social media account only to find that it is blank and unresponsive. Whether you have just a Facebook account, or if you have six other social media accounts, you need to maintain a consistent presence on each. You can post twice a day to each account, once a day, or once a week – just be consistent. Additionally, make sure to maintain a uniform voice across accounts and your app. Trustworthiness and credibility dissolves once the voice waivers. Once you have established your presence, you can move on to using social media to your advantage. Continue reading to learn the key factors to successfully using social media to promote your app. With users constantly demanding more from your app, you will have app updates fairly regularly. When this time comes, it will be helpful to have social media accounts to inform your users about any new features your app has and generate increased interest, instead of relying on them stumbling into it themselves. New updates are a way to incorporate not only your new ideas into the app, but also user feedback. Negative feedback can be combatted – as long as you are actually working to improve a critiqued feature – by ensuring users via social media that their ideas are being heard, and updates are being made. By knowing that app creators aren’t simply focused on their own ideas and what they want, user satisfaction goes up, and therefore commitment to the app as well. Social media can be used in two ways to create a dialogue: user-to-user, and you-to-user. The former is a great way to connect people using your apps if the app itself does not have a community or forum option within. By starting conversations between users, they generate a deeper connection to the app and are more likely to continue returning to it. The Crowdfire app is a great example of effective community building; it has a strong presence on Google+ where users can come to share ideas and inspiration. The latter type of dialogue is helpful for increasing credibility and reliability. Consistently responding to feedback from users reminds users that there are humans behind the app, and give users something with which they more naturally connect. Responses to positive feedback show that you care about the user and are doing this for them, while responses to negative feedback show that you are listening, as mentioned above. Social media is a fantastic way to begin building up your user base before you even launch the app. If you’re a pre-established offline company with any sort of following, you can use social media to announce your new app and make sure your already devoted customers know about it when it comes out. For new companies, generating a social media following focusing on hype for your app is a quicker way to get your app seen and downloaded than without this extra social media marketing. If your app makes use of in-app credits, for instance coins or points, that can be used to access other features of the app, then consider offering a certain number of credits as a reward for the user linking in with you on social media. Doing this is a win-win situation, with emphasis on your win. Because the user has received a reward, they now have more reason to use your app (to redeem whatever it is that the reward will provide), and therefore a greater likelihood of continuing to come back to it. You will also now have a greater presence in their daily life, even if there are days where they do not use the app, because they have chosen to follow your social media accounts. This will also lead to more committed users. While you will use social media for general promotion and relevant information, it is also beneficial to remind users of the extra content they can access with in-app purchases, if your app has them. The combination of seeing this option in both the app and on social media will create a lasting impression with your users and make it more likely that they will make a purchase. Don’t think that you have to stick to sharing content that

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App Indexing: The Latest & Greatest in Marketing

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App Indexing is Google’s answer to the conundrums facing all appreneurs: declining user retention, engagement, and overall loyalty rates. The buzz surrounding App Indexing lately is, in our opinion, warranted. Essentially, Google’s refined search engine will also include a thumbnail alongside all appropriate results that, when opened, will redirect the browsing user to a pre-designated screen on your app. If the user does not own your app, then they will instead be redirected onto the app’s installation page through the Play Store. Indexing was exclusively available for the Android community until May 2015 when, under the pressure of increasing demand, Google’s team developed and released an API for the iOS platform. Google’s product manager even acknowledged the apparent advantages inherent in App Indexing in a post on Google’s official blog. “With the addition of these install links, we are starting to use App Indexing as a ranking signal for all users on Android, regardless of whether they have your app installed or not” — Product Manager at Google, Lawrence Chang. Even though App Indexing has been free and available for both platform developers for over a year, only 30% of top-ranking websites with an Android app and 19% with an iOS have made use of its benefits. By indexing your app with Google, you’ll be ahead of the marketing curve and better-equipped to contend with some of thehighest ranking apps out there. Use App Indexing to your advantage while you still can! The Discovery of Deep Linking Standard hyperlinks contain URLs that direct a user to a site’s homepage. Deep links, however, are hyperlinks containing URLs that redirect the user to a particular location or piece of content on a website. The recent development of hyperlinking with apps, however, has allowed developers to redirect users straight to their apps from their websites. By deep-linking a user to a specific screen on their app, developers bypass the normal amount of input required by users to visit particular content on their app. Taking deep linking to another level, Google hybridized its search engine with app deep linking for the sake of re-engaging users with the previously installed yet forgotten apps on their devices. Here’s the kicker: if a mobile user inserted a query into Google’s search engine and does not own the app yet clicks on its thumbnail anyway, a deep link to the Google Play store will send them to the app’s particular installation page through the Play Store/App Store instead. This is called deferred deep linking, and it’s extremely useful in that it helps both developers and Google by improving the Play Store’s traffic and increasing the amount of exposure that indexed apps receive. With another type of redirecting called contextual deep linking, developers can mine information about their users, including where they’re coming from and how they were ultimately converted from a potential user into an actual consumer. Developers use this to re-evaluate their marketing strategy and to essentially get the most bang for their marketing buck. How to index your app with Google Search Getting an app indexed requires implementations into your app’s source code and your app’s own dedicated website for Google Search to reference. The process to acquire an index for your app is slightly complex; luckily, Firebase offers detailed instructions, and different SDKs such as CocoaPods and Branch equip developers with necessary tools for free. Create support for App Indexing inside the app itself Acquired by Google, Firebase is a data and service provider that specializes in app development, analytics, and indexing. For Android The process will be much more tedious relative to that of iOS source coding; Google provides the API through their Google Play services, so it’s just a matter of implementation. The steps are broken down into fine detail here. For iOS Firebase suggests that interested developers install the SDK CocoaPods to help attach the necessary index dependencies into the app’s Xcode project. Again, the process for iOS is much more straightforward compared to android’s; more details about debugging and installation are also covered on Firebase’s website here. Test for App Indexing functionality For Android Follow the steps provided here by Google. For iOS Observe the impact that App Indexing has on your app’s growth For Android Google provides an optimization service through their Search Console, whichhas its function rooted in app analytics: “Analytics typically focuses on how the user is behaving after they click; what are they clicking on, how often they click, and so forth. Google’s Search Console focuses on how what happens before someone enters your app. Specifically, if you’ve implemented app indexing, the Search Console will provide you with a ton of data about how users are searching for, finding, and navigating to the content inside your app” – Mariya Moeva, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst For iOS Unfortunately, the Google Search Console is not available for iOS apps. You can still, however, measure the impact that app indexing has on an iOS app through various methods of analytics: you can start by comparing and contrasting your pre-index user count against your post-index user count. Branch Another indexing service, Branch also offers their own open-source SDK. What’s unique about Branch is their original API, which allows Branch’s own development team to monitor and safeguard your app’s indexing on a daily basis – app indexes need to always be up to code with Google’s requirements.

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3 Tips to Promoting Mobile App on Instagram and Facebook

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Facebook offers all appreneurs the opportunity to utilize its limitless platform for user acquisition. Whether your budget is impressive or mediocre is of no concern to Facebook – all that’s required is a valid credit card account and an accessible Facebook profile. Note that our ad will automatically be placed on either Facebook or Instagram depending on its performance on either platform.   Whether you have Android or iOS app, before diving in, we highly advise that you: 1. Getting Started Follow the link here and click “Create Ad” Next, click and choose the Get installs of your app objective under the Consideration column; click Create Ad Account Enter in the appropriate information and click Continue Choosing your target audience The success of your Facebook ad is contingent on how effectively it can reach its intended audience. After entering in your app’s URL, select who your ad will target based on their gender, age, location, interests, behavior, and language Specifying a Custom Audience Take the extra time to familiarize yourself with Facebook’s vast optimization capabilities – we highly suggest that you create a Custom Audience plan! With the proper amount of care, you’ll increase the accuracy of your ads, meaning that your ads are that much more likely to target and convert potential users into actual paying customers. For more on creating a Custom Audience plan. Facebook allows us access to its splendor of data for no extra cost. Scroll through the following targeting options to access Facebook’s detailed optimization system: 2. Choosing your budget Scrolling down, the budget that you input represents the average amount of money that Facebook will utilize for your ads. We suggest that you start with a small budget until you’ve tested just how well your ads are performing. You can organize your budget on a per-day basis, but note that Facebook may automatically allocate more than your determined daily budget on a single day if your ad incites more conversions on that day; however, to make up for the extra spending, Facebook will spend less money on subsequent days to maintain the average of your allocated budget. It’s wise to toggle on the Set a start and end date option and select those dates for when you might expect to find peak user interest in your advertisements. Optimization is the key to spending your budget as efficiently as possible. Next, click the drop-down labeled Show Advanced Options Optimization for Ad Delivery If it’s not already selected, change the objective of your ad under Optimization for Ad Delivery to App Installs. That way, your ads will be optimized to reach only those people who are the most likely to install your app. This option is always the most preferred for tighter budgets. Otherwise, change it to Link Clicks for a broader target audience. Bid Amount A bid is a representation of your interest in showing your ad to a potential user. Your bid will compete against other advertisers whose ads are also eligible for display on a particular user’s News Feed. If you win during such an auction, you’ll often be charged less than your designated maximum bid. When You Get Charged You can choose to either be charged whenever Facebook displays your ad to users or whenever your Facebook ad converts a potential user into an actual user. The former choice affords you with the freedom of bidding at different rates, whereas the latter demands a definitive amount of payment per app installation. We suggest that you pay by impressions until you’ve conducted further budget testing. Ad Scheduling The Ad Scheduling function is limited to advertisers who select the Lifetime Budget plan. The minimum limit for this plan is $1240.00. Gaining access to Ad Scheduling allows you the freedom of specifying the time-of-day for when your ads will be served to your prospective audiences. Delivery Type We suggest that you leave this toggled to Standard. Accelerated ads are typical for time-sensitive requests, and manual bid pricing would also be required. 3. Formatting your ad Facebook allows for up to six individual ads with their own unique images and headlines per order. Note that although other formats are available, the Single Image option is the most efficient pick. Create a Facebook Page To get the most out of your budget, we highly advise that you create a Facebook Page. Doing so will afford you access to more advertising opportunities. Your Facebook Page will effectively host your ad; without a host, your ad can only be displayed to the right-hand side of Facebook’s News Feed, instead of in the News Feed itself. Choosing an Image/Video The images or videos you choose should capture the attention of your audience while accurately illustrating the app’s function. To avoid poor reviews, you should only set up those expectations that your app can promise to meet. To avoid advertisement fatigue, be sure to include a new and unique image or video. In other words, don’t overuse the same visual theme throughout each of your different ads. And when in doubt, look to your competitors for new ideas! Adding text Facebook determines your ad’s performance in part by how much text overlays the ad’s image. Use this tool here to determine if your image meets text proportion expectations. Before adding text, we recommend that you abide by these general principles: Call To Action As is appropriate with the theme of this guide, for the purpose of increasing conversion rates, change the Call To Action button to Install Now All Finished! Once you’ve formatted your ads, click Place Order, located at the lower right-hand corner! To view how well your ads are performing, make sure to routinely visit your Ads Manager: locate and click “close” at the lower left-hand corner You’ll then be redirected to this screen You can manage your account’s dashboard by clicking the upper-right hand prompt Ads Manager as is displayed in the image above.

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App Store Optimization Tips

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To make a positive first impression it is important to present yourself as best you can. Whether it be wearing smart clothes, submitting a great resume or even smiling to catch someone’s attention. For mobile apps: the app store is your stage and your app profile and screenshots are your outfit or resume. It is vital to present your app with its best foot forward for downloads and popularity. Steve P. Young, the host of the Mobile App Chat podcast, discusses some of the strategy behind app store optimization – specifically in regard to app screenshots. This post will be summarizing and extending his discussion. App Screen Shots Firstly, it is important to address what you want to achieve with your screenshots. According to Young, the four elements to capture within your app screen shots are: attention, interest, desire and action. These events will lead to an increase in downloads. All good mobile app screenshots should attract the attention of potential users. Some tricks in standing out and grabbing browsers attention include social proof, unique benefit or authority. Don’t be afraid to show off your previous success. If your app has had over a 1000 downloads – say so! If you have developed apps previously that have been a success – let the browser know! Browsers also respond to authority. If the previous example is the case, where you’ve been a successful app developer in the past, or you are an established figure in the category of your app it can be very effective to add credibility to your app through your reputation and photo. Another pull for app screenshots is to be upfront about what makes your app unique and thus better. Potential users will appreciate the time you save them from reading through your entire app description. App Description Young advises that once you’ve caught the browser’s attention it is vital to stir their interest. In the description your app, or the screenshot images, it is important not to get too caught up in the details of the features. Instead, use the screenshot of the feature to highlight how the app gives the user options and increased convenience to their everyday lives. For example, the Seamless app emphasizes the variety of food options they offer through demonstrating the feature to choose through distance or cuisine. Moreover they use a screenshot of simple screens where it is obvious that with one simple and convenient click the user’s food will be on its way. In addition to building browser interest, desire is an important element in convincing the browser to become a user of your app because your service will satisfy their unique need. Therefore, your app store screenshots should represent the voice of your app that users can relate with. In the description make sure to describe your potential user’s problems in detail so they feel as though you have built this app specifically for them. In any sales scenario it is key for you to identify the customer’s needs. Call to Action Finally, you want to lead customers towards taking action and downloading your app. Make sure to give them images of encouragement ‘buy now’ or ‘click to download’. Promotional encouragement has also been very successful in the past and demonstrates that you value every customer who chooses your service which can lead to customer loyalty.

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Why Stars and App Reviews Are Crucial

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The App Store has its own rating system. Before we download an app, we make note of how many stars and the type of reviews it received. For users, stars and reviews promise quality in an application. It is human nature to go after the most sought out and highly revered product. The higher the rating, the greater chance you have of a shopper purchasing your app. Initial Impression Potential users Initial impression works psychologically. Luckily Apple provides a platform that embodies a convenient application rating system. Imagine this: You open the App Store on an iPhone/iPad and see a list of the most popular applications at the time. How many apps are we ready to look through? I’d say 30—max. We see the top apps with 4-5 stars and we trust them more. The chance of downloading or buying increases solely due to the number of gold stars. But for many, basing the quality of an app just on stars doesn’t cut it. That’s where the reviews come in. These are people that went out of their way to test the app and say something about it. It’s human nature to criticize so a positive review is really saying something about quality. Before you were in the dark, about to dive in but worried about wasting your time, a positive review told you it was ok to jump in, your trust increased. The rating is on the face of your app. It is crucial that you work on getting positive feedback, reviews, are constantly improving your product to keep users happy. How App Store Reviews Can Increase Downloads iPhone users are not billionaires. Somebody simply has spare time to express his/her opinion about an application. Somebody genuinely enjoys the app and wants to share his/her joy with other people on the App Store. Users might not even know the weight of the impact that their one review holds. One great interview alone can result in thousands of downloads! Reviews bust users’ doubts about purchasing. That’s why it’s crucial for developers and publishers to gather reviews. To land at the top of the App Store, you need a high number of downloads. How do you get downloads? Organically convincing users that they NEED your application by having a high star rating and great reviews; that’s how. Some Insights For App Developers If you want to promote your application inside the App Store, you need to go outside the marketplace to find traffic, audience, your first hundred users or so. Their actions and opinion can help you to gather your first reviews and ratings; your future depends on feedback on these initial users. Here are some tips on how to go about doing so:

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When Done Correctly, App Marketing Is Easy

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So, you’ve had a custom app made, or you’ve built your app by yourself and alongside your development team. You’ve laid out all the plans, identified its key purpose, recognized the needs of a target audience, and taken the steps required to end up with a workable, effective, and efficient final product. Now it’s time to make sure that it makes a splash in all the right places, and gets into the hands and smartphones of your prospective users and customers. As any app developer knows, promoting an app can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle. Marketing isn’t something that comes particularly naturally to a lot of people in the tech world, and faced with the task of advertising and spreading word about your creation is something that all too many people shy away from. While there are plenty of different approaches you can take, and a multitude of paths you could potentially go down, one thing’s for sure: in 99.9% of the cases, it simply isn’t enough to stick your app on the App Store, and hope that the customers will somehow stumble across and download your platform. Thankfully, in reality, app marketing isn’t particularly difficult. There are countless sites out there dedicated to promoting and discovering new apps which work for users in particular industries, or with particular needs. What’s more, there are thousands upon thousands of places in which you can put across your app’s unique features and usability, where members of the public or people in specific sectors will be looking for their next smartphone solution. In this blog, we’ll be looking at some of the most straightforward and simple ways you can promote your app outside the App Store, and hopefully generate some real buzz that will see it rocket to the top of the charts. Promote on Your Website If you run a company or service, then your website is naturally the place where your customers will be heading to find out more about what you do, and inquire about your services. Therefore, if you’re trying to promote your app, your website should – without question – be the first place you go to make your initial marketing efforts. Make sure that you have made mention of your new app on your website’s homepage, and provide a simple link from your website to your app’s listing on the App Store. It’s also a good idea to dedicate a sub-page of your site solely to your app, where you’ll be able to outline its key benefits and features, and offer a video demo or series of photos showing exactly what it’s capable of. Blogs, Forums, and Newspapers The blogosphere is an ever-expanding, continually bustling corner of the internet, where people of all walks of life explore the latest developments in their fields. If you have a blog or newsletter attached to your own website, it would be a very good idea to include news of your app for your customers to read. If not, you should work towards getting a blog dedicated to your app featured on a popular website frequented by your target customers. Newspapers, too, will allow you the chance to spread the word about your app. Think carefully about the kinds of online and print newspapers which most strongly appeal to your target audience, and get a press release sent out which explains why your app is the must-have new feature for your customers’ smartphones. You’d be surprised at how effective this approach is, as traditional news sources and industry magazines carry with them a trusted and professional clout which some blogs may lack. Added to this are the many forums and chat sites out there – the Reddits of the internet, and its many imitators. These are the perfect places to offer promotions to those willing to test our your app, or promo codes for free downloads and special features. Get the forums on your side with some juicy offers and enthusiastic postings, and news of your app will spread like wildfire. App Store Optimization If you aren’t already familiar with the world of SEO and other types of optimization, then it’s something you need to get onto as soon as possible. The App Store can be a bit of a jungle at times, and unless you’re particularly savvy with the way you market and optimize your postings, it’s perfectly possible for your app to become buried beneath a hundred thousand others, and the several hundred apps which are added to the service each and every day. Think carefully (or do some solid research with Google tools) about the types of keywords your potential customers will be using when searching for an app, and make sure that those keywords are included with some logical density in your posting. That way, whenever a Google search or App Store search for a particular type of app is typed into the search box, your app will pop up at the very top of the listings. The same goes for picture optimization; you can use images and video to boost the way your app appears on the App Store, and make it more attractive for those seeking a specific solution. Going Viral The main ambition of any app developer is for their app to ‘go viral’. This means it starts being talked about and shared on social media with ferocious speed and intensity, and quickly becomes a trending item online that an exponential number of people are searching for and coming across. Going viral isn’t something you can guarantee – it’s one of those slightly strange internet phenomena which seems to happen quite randomly most of the time – but you can certainly boost your chances of it happening. How? By using the power of user reviews and referrals, and ensuring that influencers and key players in the industry are talking about your app to their followers, who then go on to share the app with their followers, who talk about it within their

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When Done Correctly, App Marketing Is Easy

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So, you’ve had a custom app made, or you’ve built your app by yourself and alongside your development team. You’ve laid out all the plans, identified its key purpose, recognized the needs of a target audience, and taken the steps required to end up with a workable, effective, and efficient final product. Now it’s time to make sure that it makes a splash in all the right places, and gets into the hands and smartphones of your prospective users and customers. As any app developer knows, promoting an app can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle. Marketing isn’t something that comes particularly naturally to a lot of people in the tech world, and faced with the task of advertising and spreading word about your creation is something that all too many people shy away from. While there are plenty of different approaches you can take, and a multitude of paths you could potentially go down, one thing’s for sure: in 99.9% of the cases, it simply isn’t enough to stick your app on the App Store, and hope that the customers will somehow stumble across and download your platform. Thankfully, in reality, app marketing isn’t particularly difficult. There are countless sites out there dedicated to promoting and discovering new apps which work for users in particular industries, or with particular needs. What’s more, there are thousands upon thousands of places in which you can put across your app’s unique features and usability, where members of the public or people in specific sectors will be looking for their next smartphone solution. In this blog, we’ll be looking at some of the most straightforward and simple ways you can promote your app outside the App Store, and hopefully generate some real buzz that will see it rocket to the top of the charts. Promote on Your Website If you run a company or service, then your website is naturally the place where your customers will be heading to find out more about what you do, and inquire about your services. Therefore, if you’re trying to promote your app, your website should – without question – be the first place you go to make your initial marketing efforts. Make sure that you have made mention of your new app on your website’s homepage, and provide a simple link from your website to your app’s listing on the App Store. It’s also a good idea to dedicate a sub-page of your site solely to your app, where you’ll be able to outline its key benefits and features, and offer a video demo or series of photos showing exactly what it’s capable of. Blogs, Forums, and Newspapers The blogosphere is an ever-expanding, continually bustling corner of the internet, where people of all walks of life explore the latest developments in their fields. If you have a blog or newsletter attached to your own website, it would be a very good idea to include news of your app for your customers to read. If not, you should work towards getting a blog dedicated to your app featured on a popular website frequented by your target customers. Newspapers, too, will allow you the chance to spread the word about your app. Think carefully about the kinds of online and print newspapers which most strongly appeal to your target audience, and get a press release sent out which explains why your app is the must-have new feature for your customers’ smartphones. You’d be surprised at how effective this approach is, as traditional news sources and industry magazines carry with them a trusted and professional clout which some blogs may lack. Added to this are the many forums and chat sites out there – the Reddits of the internet, and its many imitators. These are the perfect places to offer promotions to those willing to test our your app, or promo codes for free downloads and special features. Get the forums on your side with some juicy offers and enthusiastic postings, and news of your app will spread like wildfire. App Store Optimization If you aren’t already familiar with the world of SEO and other types of optimization, then it’s something you need to get onto as soon as possible. The App Store can be a bit of a jungle at times, and unless you’re particularly savvy with the way you market and optimize your postings, it’s perfectly possible for your app to become buried beneath a hundred thousand others, and the several hundred apps which are added to the service each and every day. Think carefully (or do some solid research with Google tools) about the types of keywords your potential customers will be using when searching for an app, and make sure that those keywords are included with some logical density in your posting. That way, whenever a Google search or App Store search for a particular type of app is typed into the search box, your app will pop up at the very top of the listings. The same goes for picture optimization; you can use images and video to boost the way your app appears on the App Store, and make it more attractive for those seeking a specific solution. Going Viral The main ambition of any app developer is for their app to ‘go viral’. This means it starts being talked about and shared on social media with ferocious speed and intensity, and quickly becomes a trending item online that an exponential number of people are searching for and coming across. Going viral isn’t something you can guarantee – it’s one of those slightly strange internet phenomena which seems to happen quite randomly most of the time – but you can certainly boost your chances of it happening. How? By using the power of user reviews and referrals, and ensuring that influencers and key players in the industry are talking about your app to their followers, who then go on to share the app with their followers, who talk about it within their

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Rules are meant to break! 6 ways to market your app in an unusual way

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Being in the marketing sector often means calling out for the unusual. You need your idea or the product to make some noise, and this doesn’t come easy. Your product must resonate with the public to avoid failure. This brings us to an important part of the discussion, that is, the likelihood of failure. While looking out for unconventional and offbeat ideas is a great thing to do, the chances of failure are also increasing in the present times. You can understand this by the fact that although apps and websites clutter the internet on every topic, only 8 to 12 items make it to the front page of search engines. Why? This is because ranking high on Google, and even app stores is not that simple. Apart from the content and quality you offer, it also depends on how you reach out? This is especially applicable to app marketing. Whether you are a small scale business or a larger one, you must have an app. And this app needs to get enough recognition to ensure a better conversion rate. A lot of people might be creating more or less similar apps like yours. You need to stand out from the crowd. Here are six ideas that you can use to market your app differently: Final thoughts The virtual world will keep growing in size. And this growth tags along with a lot of unworthy content, countless copycats, and similar ideas. Unfortunately, there are no rules to restrict people from cheating ideas. All you can do to ensure sustainable growth is to work on your products and digital existence.

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