Mobile app marketing or promotion refers to the process of optimizing an app with the aim to make it more useful, user-friendly and search-engine friendly so that it gets better rankings and more downloads in the App Store and produces more ROI to the app owner.
The standard app marketing process covers various aspects such as App Store Optimization, link building, off-page promotion, social media marketing, paid ads, among others.
The job is usually performed by a proficient app marketing agency.
These techniques are workable and we use personally in our work.
Besides that, there are many other things you can do in order to promote your app by yourself, create a buzz about it in the industry and bring more users to it.
Let’s discuss how.
How to Market an App Successfully – 101 “App Promotion Techniques“ for Promoting Your “App” in 2019
Many people’s made the app but they don’t know how to promote them. There are many things to consider while running your app marketing campaign. For the better understanding of these techniques, we’ve discussed the techniques with the examples and screenshots of our personal projects work.
Are you ready to dive deep into this guide?
Let’s dive in!
1. Get to know your customers
Although this step must be followed even before the app has been launched, there is no harm in doing it now.
It is crucial that you understand the target audience of your app and has created an application that is up to their expectations. There are a lot of things to consider while providing your customers best solutions & services.
If it is not, your app probably needs to be updated.
2. Catchy App Name
With so many similar apps out there, yours is not going to stand out of the competition if you are using a generic, keyword-based name for it.
For Example, check this app: Tiktok
Think of something unique, relevant and attractive enough for your app title.
3. Add to the right category
There are hundreds of categories and sub-categories in the Play Store (and App Store).
Add your app to the right category to make it easier to find.
4. Take Help From Influencers
There are influencers/experts in every industry who can promote your app to the targeted audience in a better way using their own networks. The best way to find the best influencers is Youtube. Reach out to them for help.
5. Creative App Icon Name
The app icon name, which appears along with your app icon when the app is opened in a device, should be relevant and creative.
6. Unique Content
Make sure that your app has a unique, useful and high-quality content that has been created only for that app and does not exist anywhere else. Nowadays, Google is mainly focused on the user intent content. Without knowing the user intent, you can’t create a awesome content.
7. Create and Optimise a Mobile Website
If your app already has a dedicated website or even a web page, make sure that it is properly optimized and mobile-friendly. The mobile friendly update is the most important factor for rankings. According to the research, mobile friendly website helps to increase the business leads faster. This is obvious that if you have an app that you should have an mobile-friendly website. If not, create one now.
8. Optimize App Store Description
If you are launching a new app on the App Store, you should get its description written by a professional writer who can include all the right words to attract more audience while clearly explaining the app’s features and purpose.
You might be wondering how to Optimise the App Store Description?
Pretty Simple!
Well, App description limit is up to 4000 characters, it means you can do creativity in the 4000 characters description. Creativity does not mean the full of keywords in the content. In a simple way, it means the content should be very user friendly and informative.
Check this how we optimised the app description for proper reading and best user experience:
We’ve optimized the description by covering the main features in points and bolding.
9. Gather Free Media
Invite newspapers and columnists to write about your app by offering them free incentives and/or download. Also, send out one or more press releases about the launching of your new app.
10. Create a Blog for Your App
A blog can do wonders for the promotion of your app. If your official business blog already has a good user base, consider adding regularly blogs posts about your new app to inform more users about it and create a buzz in the industry.
11. Keyword optimisation
Besides finding and adding all the right keywords at all the right places in the content of your app, you should also pay special attention to the keywords section of the App Store where you can add search-friendly keywords for your app.
For example, check this app, this app has properly keyword optimized title like this:
Brand + "Main keyword" "Main keyword" + Brand
12. Get Sponsored
Find people or companies that can benefit by associating with your app. Get them to sponsor your app and get free publicity and promotion. This is the very easy task if you have a practice on it.
For example, Nowadays many games and apps are now doing paid advertising.
You might see some ads in games and apps when you are running:
This is the perfect example! You might see some ads like this when you are playing games. This is one of the best ways to market your app like a real professional.
All you need to find the relevant categorized niche apps and pitch them an email for Sponsor Ads.
13. Mention the app in your business emails
Make a mention of your Mobile App in every business app you send, either by including in the Signature text or through a banner or in any other way. It will increase the reach of your app.
14. App icon optimization
The icon/logo image of your app is another crucial element that needs to be optimized for the maximum exposure and user impact. It should be strictly relevant, unique, high-quality and attractive.
15. Promote via App Introduction Video
Videos are nowadays getting a lot popular and for good reasons. By creating a basic 30-second introduction/demo video of your app and publishing it via your official YouTube channel, you can tell people what your app is, how it works and why they should download and use it, in an interactive and appealing manner. This is the necessary step towards the app promotion.
There are many reasons and importance of why your app should have an explainer video.
The interesting fact!
Around 42% of people download the mobile app if they are satisfied with the concept of the app by watching explainer video.
16. Optimize App Screenshots
App screenshots are added to give users an idea of how the app works and what all features it has.
Include only the best screenshots that good, attractive and in high-definition.
17. Promote your App Video Online
Other than creating and publishing the promo video of your app, you can also consider sharing it to multiple platforms online to further increase its exposure.
With the help of video, you can easily communicate with the existing customers and can convert more visitors into customers.
18. Publish on other App Stores
There are many good app stores, other than the Play Store and App Store, where you can publish your new apps to give them more exposure and increase the number of downloads.
19. Get a free/demo version of your app
If you are planning to launch a paid app, also release a free or demo version that can be used to access the basic functionalities. And then the users who like it can upgrade for more.
20. App Analysis Campaign
It may sound overdoing to some, but it is actually not. In fact, a launch event is a perfect way to get the word out there about your new app business.
21. Participate in App Awards
There are a number of sites that organize awards and competition for app developers. Participate in these events to get free publicity, press, and promotion for your app.
These are the most important famous app awards sites:
- OZApp
- Appy Awards
- Appsters Awards
- The Webby Awards
- Apple Design Awards
- Best App Ever Awards
- AppCircus competition
- Best Mobile App Awards
- Ericsson Application Awards
22. Target A Global Audience
By making a few changes in your app, you can possibly make it compatible for the international market rather than limited to a specific region. This will increase your app reach and business.
23. Social media promotion
Post regularly about your app on social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, preferably through dedicated accounts.
There are many ways to promote your app on Social Media like:
- Join Relevant categorised Groups and Post on Them Regularly.
- With the help of Pinterest pins, you can easily promote your app through images.
- Schedule and monitor your posts on social media
- Connect with Influencers to promote your app on their social media pages.
- Get your friends on social media to share your posts.
24. App SEO
Whether you’re aware or not, Google also shows app results for related queries in its search engine.
You can improve your app’s SEO to get featured in the top search results for these queries.
25. Publish Your Story
Every brand has a story. If your app story is interesting enough to get the user attention, get it published in a popular magazine or blog offline/online.
26. Give exclusive interviews
Get in touch with your local or an online journalist and offer to do an exclusive interview about the story and release of your new app.
27. Create a Facebook page
Create a dedicated Facebook fan page for your app and motivate people to like and follow it.
This is a free method for creating engagement and making your app more viral.
28. Get your app featured in top blogs
Search for top blogs that write about apps (in your industry) and contact them to get your app featured in one of their blog posts.
This will give your app a lifetime of exposure, traffic, and links.
29. Get Started Early
Start the marketing plans for your app at least a few weeks before the launch date.
Contact journalists, connect with bloggers and do everything to ensure a big launch.
30. Integrate Social into Your App
Integrate top social networking features such as Facebook likes and sharing, Tweets, commenting, etc, into your app to enable users to share more about your app.
31. Create A Landing Page for Your App
If you have a business website, create a dedicated landing page where more information about your mobile app will be given and connect it with your App Store page.
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32. Market locally
If your app is useful for local people, make sure to market it using local sources like the press, TV ads, newspaper ads, radio or media to tell more people about it.
33. Promote on Q&A Sites
Write answers to app-related questions of users in your target industry on online Q&A forums like Quora, Yahoo Answers, etc.
This is a great and genuine approach to your target audience.
34. Add App Links on Your Website
Include app download links either through a banner or in the text or anywhere else on your website to make more of your existing site visitors download the app.
For example, check this how we’ve added these two buttons in the footer. This helps to aware people of our app.
35. Participate in Online Forums
Join relevant online forums and communities where you can talk about your app and help people who are searching for answers relating to your industry.
There are tons of forums available online for GST discussions like this:
36. Invite Reviews
Invite the users of your app to share their reviews not just on the App Stores but also on your website, social media and review websites like Yelp, Glassdoor, etc.
37. Get Featured on App Review Blogs
There are hundreds of famous blogs dedicated to talking about and reviewing mobile apps. Contact them and get your app featured there.
See this blog, you can gain sponsored blog post opportunities on these famous blogs which are specially made for the app reviews.
38. Keep Your Content Ready for The Press
Journalists usually do not have time to go through every story and collect more information.
They prefer if they can find all the related information from a single source. Get them the story that they publish outright.
39. Share And Re-Share
Simply writing a new post about your app once in a while on Facebook is not enough to give your required exposure; re-share the same content multiple times over a period of time for better reach. There are many methods to create the social sharing links for easiness of the work.
40. Keep Your Online Marketing Channels in Sync
If you’re using your existing online channels to promote your app, make sure that all the blog posts, PR and content are in sync across all these platforms to avoid inconsistency.
41. Research And Find LSI keywords
Keyword Research using Google Adwords and other tools to find long-tail related keywords, search terms and queries for you and optimize/promote it for the same.
These are the LSI keywords which help to gain more powerful keywords with less competition.
42. Send App Launch Announcements
Besides posting a dedicated App Announcement post on your official blog, you should also send notifications to potential and existing users via email, WhatsApp, Facebook, and other means. You can do a lot of creativity in your Facebook post for more user attention towards your post.
43. App Auditing Campaign (This is Great)
After all the activities of making app, make sure you’ve done your app testing and analysis for errors and crashes according to the Google ranking algorithms. There are so many steps you need to take while testing and analysing your app.
First of all, We are going to analyse the app according to the search engine point of view for better performance.
So what are the main points which should be considered?
Very Simple!
Think according to the users, if you are a user and you are searching for the app. There are many things you will see before downloading the app like their concept, screenshots, reviews(most important), ratings. Important Things to consider are the following:
- Title
- Description
- Icon
- Screenshots
- Demo Video
- User Reviews
- App Downloads
- Keywords
- App Size
- App Localisation
- Backlinks
- App Install Volume
- Updates Releases
For example, check this report, you can make the report like this:
For checking crashes and errors, you need to have Google Firebase. The errors and crashes in the app look like this:
44. Use Barcodes to Promote Your App
Create a barcode containing the details and downloadable link of your app and provide it everywhere, in your ads, promotional materials, packaging, etc.
This is one of the best & latest technique that you can try in your own app to gain more downloads.
As you can see in the above image, how barcode technique is very effective.
45. In-store marketing
If you have an offline (brick and mortar) business, do not hesitate to ask your customers to download your Android/iOS app for more convenient.
You can even provide a barcode by scanning which your customers can instantly download the app.
46. Get A Responsive Website
Make your website mobile responsive to ensure that your mobile visitors can easily navigate from the website to the App Store to download your mobile application.
Nowadays, Google prefers responsive websites for giving the ranking. According to their latest updates, responsive websites helps to increase ranking as well as traffic of the website. Whether content is limited on the page, the responsive website helps to maintain the balance of user engagement.
There are numerous benefits of having a website responsive:
- It helps to Increase the Mobile Traffic
- It helps to Improve the Page Speed
- It Helps to decrease the Bounce Rate
- It helps To Increase The Conversion Rate
- It Helps to improve the User Experience
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47. Update Your Voicemail Recording
Add a mention of your mobile app by updating your voicemail recorded message on business and official phone lines.
48. Promote Through Facebook Groups
Facebook has dedicated groups for every kind of thing, and you can surely find and join groups relevant to your business.
Then, you can talk about your app and share occasional download links there in these groups.
49. Email marketing
Send useful app newsletters, updates and information to your existing and potential users via email on a regular basis.
Hire a professional email marketing service if you not sure how to do that.
50. Promote Your App Offline
Other than in-store promotion, you can also use offline marketing methods like flyers, stickers, posters, and even newspaper ads to let more people know about your new app.
51. Keep your app updated
By updating your app on a regular basis and upgrading it with new features and technologies, you are telling the user that you value them and their reviews.
52. Word of Mouth Marketing
Whether you are on a business meeting or attending a social gathering, do not hesitate to talk about your new app or simply hand out your business card containing the download link or QR code.
"92% of Consumers Trust Referrals from People They Know." - Nielsen
53. Use Referral
Add a ‘referral reward system’ to your app, rewarding existing customers for every new customer they bring to the app.
In other words, use your existing app users to advocate your business.
54. Add Maps To Your Apps
One benefit of mobile apps is that they can be easily integrated with existing smartphone features like Google Maps.
By integrating the feature, you can make it easier for your app users to find your business location and/or navigate locations.
55. Comment on Relevant Blogs
Find niche blogs about the mobile app or your business industry and participate in the discussion by adding valuable comments on relevant blog posts. Mention your mobile app or link in your comment in a natural way.
56. Give Freebies
Give potential users a reason to download your app by offering them free benefits like rewards, free tickets, etc., for signing up on the app.
57. Accept User Reviews on the Website as Well
Besides the official App Store page, you can also allow users to share reviews and feedbacks about your app on its dedicated web page on your site. Showcase these as user testimonials to attract more leads.
58. Reach the customer
Personal marketing is still the best way to make a good first impression on your customers. Depending on your app type, reach potential customers personally via physical mails, pamphlets or letters.
59. Make Your Acquaintances Your First Customers
It is hard to get customers at the beginning for a new app. Ask your family, friends, and acquaintances to try your app and share the word with others.
60. Get a Celebrity to endorse your app
It is obvious that celebrities use mobile apps. If possible, get a famous personality, even a minor or local one, to endorse your app. Try twitter.
61. Run App Contests
Apps can be better promoted with mobile contests to help bring more users onboard and keep them interested and engaged with it.
62. Tell Users About App Benefits
Simply telling them to download the app is not going to work. You should tell them why they should download it and what benefits they will get by using your app.
63. Mention Your App on Business Items
If you are running an online or brick-and-mortar business, add the mention of your app on business items like envelopes, receipts, shipping boxes, etc for more promotion.
64. Respond To All Your Reviews
Rather than sending out an automated answer to customers’ queries & reviews, take time to read them thoroughly and answer each of them seriously. It makes customers feel cared.
If you have no time for management of your reviews, then you can hire a professional local SEO services company, who can handle your all local reviews and respond to the reviews quickly.
65. Paid Ads on Facebook
Facebook gives you an option to make your app more popular by using “Facebook app install ads” through which you can show your app to more relevant visitors.
66. Promotional Free App Offer
Offer your premium app for free to a limited number of users or for a limited time period. This will get you many downloads in no time.
67. Paid Twitter Posts
Like Facebook, Twitter also lets you promote your products via the platform to get more sponsored downloads and installs for your app.
68. Update Your Email Auto-Response
Change your email’s, both personal and official, auto-response message to add about your app with a link to the download page.
69. Create a teaser page
Create a landing page showcasing the teaser of your app, inviting users to sign up for pre-registration, before the app is launched. Promote this page everywhere.
70. Improve the user-experience
As your app gets older, you will start finding things to improve and bugs to fix in your app. Make sure that you do that in order to enhance the experience of your app users.
71. Join LinkedIn Groups
You can find and join Linkedin Groups relevant to your app. There, you can participate in discussions, provide answers and share occasional links of blogs and press releases about your app.
72. Use ‘Notifications’
Smartphones have the Notification feature that you can use to occasionally show offers, deals, news, etc, to the users who have already downloaded your app. This will improve the app engagement.
73. Write Guest Blogs
There are hundreds of blogs out there where you can write tech news and posts for the promotion of your new app.
The posts need not be promotional in nature but a simple mention of your app is enough to get you good influence.
74. Focus More on User Retention
Getting users to your app is not sufficient, you should also make efforts to keep them engaged and entertained.
For this, you need to make constant improvements in your app and make it better for the user.
75. Create a PowerPoint Presentation
Create an engaging and intuitive presentation for your app through PowerPoint and upload it to popular sites like Slideshare and LinkedIn.
76. Use Content Discovery Tools to Find Blogs for Commenting
Disqus is a great tool for finding content in any niche. Apart from writing comments, you can create your own content and pitch it through content marketing platforms. There are many SEO tools available in the market for better efficiency of work.
77. Re-Launch The App
If your app has become quite old and needs a major update, you should rather consider re-building it from scratch based on the new ideas and recommendations your clients have shared over time.
But do not lose the basic touch that made your app popular all these years.
Click here for new mobile app ideas
78. Make Your App Your Brand’s Loyalty Card
Give your customers more opportunities to interact with the app by making it the loyalty card for your brand.
Include options like in-app payments, offers, store check-in, billing and reward points.
79. Create and Give Away Promotional Items
Get custom promotional items like t-shirts and mugs made for your app and give them to your existing or potential users through a contest or event.
80. Infographic Marketing
People love visual content even more than the text. Create interactive infographics about your app/niche and share them via your official blog and social profiles.
Infographic is one of the best ways to make better user engagement and helps to decrease the bounce rate.
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Some infographic submission sites are the following:
-
-
- visual.ly
- dailyinfographic
- coolinfographics
- datavisualization.ch
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81. YouTube Marketing
Apart from sharing an introduction video for the app, there is much more you can do on YouTube.
Create regular videos surrounding content that your target audience will find useful. Add your app details and link in the video description.
82. App Directories
There are a number of good App submission sites where you can submit your mobile app for free to increase its popularity and reach.
These are the most important App submission sites:
-
-
- appchatter
- androidapplog
- apps400
- preapps
- 100bestandroidapps
- appbrain
- apkmodmirror
- appnaz
- thegreatapps
- designnominees
- thepopularapps
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83. Promote via Hashtags
Create unique hashtags around the name and industry of your app and make them viral by promoting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
84. Create a Podcast
Podcasts are quite popular among users who love audio content. Create and publish content-rich podcasts to make your app reach these specific users.
85. Acquire Loyal Customers
When your app is in the beginning phase, your focus should be more on retaining users rather than creating more users. This will make them loyal and stay with you for the long term.
86. Bookmark Your App Link
There are a few top bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, etc, which are still valuable in terms of user reach. Post your app link there to make it more searchable.
87. App Interlinking
If you have existing apps, it might benefit to interlink those apps with your new app to send your existing customers to try the new app.
88. Create and Share How-To Videos
If your business is something where users can benefit from tips, consider creating how-to videos for your customers and share them on sites like Facebook, Vine, and Youtube. Add your app mention/link in the video or in the description.
89. Offer help
Use social media to personally connect with people who follow your business. Listen to their questions, provide suggestions and offer help.
90. Attend events as a Speaker
Speak at events, meetups, clubs and similar places to tell people about your new app and how it is going to change their lives or benefit them.
91. Post on Pinterest
Create custom images and other visual content and publish them exclusively on Pinterest to attract users there.
Conduct occasional contents and photo sessions to create more engagement and generate leads.
92. Reach Local customers manually
If your app provides local services, find and reach your audience locally and convince them to use the app by describing its benefits and features to them.
93. Hire A PR Agency
If the free promotion is not working for your app, consider hiring a professional PR firm in your budget who can help your app reach more customers.
94. Share app stories
Write (real) stories about how your app helped people in a situation. Share it on your official social channels or get it published in a newspaper/magazine.
95. Paid Advertising
Besides social media ads, Google ads is another popular option to generate paid traffic to your new app. This will also add to your app’s search engine reputation.
96. Deal with negative reviews
Deleting them will not do. Take the negative reviews of your app as seriously as you think of positive reviews.
Try to understand the user’s issue and provide the best solution possible.
97. Host app events
Host app-focused events, meetups, and competitions and invite people like app developers, designers to get together and discuss mobile apps in general.
98. Try StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon’s paid discovery tool has helped thousands of apps and online content become more visible and searchable by users according to their interests
99. Promote via Related Facebook Pages
Find pages that have a lot of likes and are related to your app industry. Reach them with an offer to mention your app name/link on their page.
100. Partner With Other Apps
Make partners with other app owners to cross-promote each other’s apps in a way that is mutualy-benefitting.
101. Exchange ad space
Use services like AdMob to rent out ad space in your app in exchange for free ads in other popular apps in your niche.
Final Thoughts:
While the above-mentioned app marketing strategies will work in most cases, the ultimate thing is improving the user experience.
If a user is happy and satisfied with your app, they will not only come back to it but also they might promote it to others.
There is no better marketing than a happy customer. Other than that, these tips are all you need to create a successful business on your app idea.
Need help with the marketing of your new app? SAG IPL is a professional app marketing company with over 10 years of on
This post first appeared on Technology Blog - Web And Mobile Development Guide, please read the originial post: here