Regardless of what you are selling, you must start with social media amplification. How is anyone going to know about your app if you do not put it out there?

If your app is ready for a test drive promote it to people that would potentially use it.

Test drive it with your friends, family, and co-workers, get their feedback before showing it off to the world. You will find your friends and family are going to be very honest and critical. Take each criticism as critique and work to improve any faults your app may have.

You do not necessarily need a website but if you want to be as big as Facebook or LinkedIn a website for a desktop application can cater to all users.

You need an advertising and marketing budget because not all promotional campaigns are free.

This in-depth guide will show your how to market an app and take your app marketing strategy to the next level.

1. Customer Research

Like I mentioned before, your friends, family and co-workers are the first people you should ask for their opinions. Once you have done some research invite a handful of people to test out your beta version before the full launch. As your customers what they think. Give your customers the free version before deciding on monetizing your app.

Finding people to test your app is not as hard as it looks. If you have a blog and you have email subscribers, introduce your app via a newsletter. Give your subscribers an incentive to download your app. The incentive could be a special discount, or giveaway in exchange for a series of questions in a survey or questionnaire.

You need to comprehend what expectations your current and potential customers have with your app. By asking questions you are learning how to uncover gaps you may have not thought of or may have missed. You then are building a relationship of credibility and trustworthiness between you and your customer.

Remember a happy customer will tell their friends and family, whilst an unhappy customer will tell the world. So you need to get your customers to believe in you and your product or service.

Ask your customers how they would like to see the app and how it can be improved.

Retaining customer satisfaction gives you free advertising (word of mouth).

2. Networking

As with any project you undertake you need to build a large network of connections, whether it be joining social media groups and pages, to building an email list of subscribers or a network of followers.

I personally use LinkedIn for business and depending on what I am marketing, I will advertise on social media pages, I own or relate to. I have made my Facebook profile public meaning anyone can connect with me and anything I post can be seen publicly.

Although LinkedIn is business based, most of us are humans and we like to see up and coming trends just like the next person.

Posting articles and backlinking them to your blog will help to spread brand awareness.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencers which have massive followings are a good place to start. Send your named influencers, YouTube, TikTok etc freebies and ask them to review your app. Do your research first not all influencers fit all. Start by developing honest, authentic, and mutually beneficial relationships with influencers. Start a conversation before selling yourself.

Find influencers who align with your user base and target audience. Most social media platforms give influencers data on follower demographics. In addition to social, you should also look for bloggers to partner with and promote your app before its launch.

Using this strategy an leveraging the power of influencers can prove beneficial and will drive mass amounts of traffic to your app. To find a list of influencers visit buzzsumo.com

4. Affiliate Marketing.

Invite people to market your app in exchange for a commission. Join an Advertisers/Publishers program such as awin.com cj.com shareasale.com and get affiliate marketers to advertise on your behalf.

5. Leverage Your Website or Blog

If you have a website specifically to app design and development or a website offering a range of services, you could have a page dedicated to app development. A good example is www.ukwebsitedesigners.co.uk offer app development and have a page https://ukwebsitedesigners.co.uk/services/website-app-blog-design-development

Your website if it is search engine optimised, ranked and indexed it could be one of the greatest assets to promoting your app. If you regularly write about app design and development and have content with the latest news and trends you will find that the app you are promoting will become popular if you add banner ads and backlinks to every post, you create, including a call to action at the end of every blog post to invite your viewers to download the app.

Writing about apps is straightforward but writing about the app you have created needs a little more work. You should have an in-depth description of what your app does and tutorials as well as screenshots.

When writing the blog post solely about the app you have developed, have an introduction followed by a story how you came about developing the interface. Let your target audience know the purpose behind it. Tell your audience what benefits your app can do to help people and include videos on how to use the application.

6. Email Marketing

They say the money is in the list and what they mean by this (marketing gurus) is that you need a database of email subscribers. You can use your own subscribers or there are ways to buy lists. I prefer making my own at least that way I know that people have subscribed to my content.

If you have an autoresponder you could add into the signature a link to your app. Regardless of what emails you send whether they are from tech support, your own newsletter or even the payment confirmation email should include a footer with one line advertising your app. According to a study by Exact Target, “91% people check their email daily.

7. Create a Teaser Video

Videos are an easy way help to capture your audience attention, not everyone wants to read, and would much rather just watch a 30 second introductory video. Videos can be shared and re-sharded on social media platforms. Your demo video can be embedded in your blog post, Instagram, and YouTube channels. A good promo video can retain your audience attention and for helping people understand what your app is all about. By seeing it in action, they can make a very conscious decision about their choice to test out your app.

https://ukwebsitedesigners.co.uk/services/uk-video-creation

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8. Consider Alternative App Stores

Do not put all your eggs in one basket, create a SEO link wheel of places you aim to advertised and market your app. Consider classified ads, sponsored ads, and marketplaces that advertise apps. Do not limit yourself to just Google Play and the App Store; there are plenty of other app stores on the internet where you can upload your app. According to One Platform Foundation, if an app is submitted on other relatively less popular stores, it will increase the expected downloads 200% more compared to Google Play.

9. Competitions

Enrolling in contests and competitions can gain you tons of press, exposure, reviews, and plenty of downloads. You may not win every time but as they say, “you got to be in it to win it”.

10. Search Engine Optimisation.

By far the most important things to know is you need a blog dedicated to app development or a landing page on your website where you can upload content on a regular basis. SEO is not set and forget you must work hard to get your articles, websites, blogs, and apps ranked. Once you have added all your keywords, meta descriptions you must manually upload your articles to Google Search Console. You need to create backlinks and have other websites linking back to you.

11. Spread Brand Awareness

Once you have created your blog post or video content you need to share it on all social media platforms, groups, and pages. This is where networking is handy because the bigger your audience the more people will see your app.

Remember to be careful of the header titles you use (H1 & H2). Consider headers around the industry you are. Write content such as “30 best food apps” or “30 best game apps”.

12. Create an Eye-Catching App Icon

When is a brand without a logo. A logo or icon represents the identity, credibility, and trustworthiness from its competitors it eliminates confusion because it is instantly recognisable. With over 1.6 million apps in the Google Play Store and 1.5 million in the App Store, there’s a lot of noise in any category you choose you to have your app in. Once a logo or icon is relatable and is seen on a regular basis it sets your brand and app apart from others. Not everyone can design logos or icon, so it might be an idea to hire a professional.

To make your app icon stand out, it should:

• Have a unique shape that stands out
• Do not overcomplicate the design, keep it simple
• It should be a vector or illustration (do not use photo images)
• Have a limited pallet of colours – 2 is enough to create contrast
• Use a tagline

Here are some great examples of some logos

Photo Credit: https://ukwebsitedesigners.co.uk/services/uk-graphic-designers

Ask people for their opinions and keep it simple. Sometimes your logo could be worth more than the app itself: https://fabrikbrands.com/most-expensive-logos-expensive-brand-logos/

13. App Store Optimization (ASO)

Just like websites and domain names it is important to name your app that has keywords relevance. If your app is a brandable name (made up word or acronym) it is going to prove harder to market. You will have to consider a lot of paid advertising to make your brandable app a household name. App store optimization (ASO) is the equivalent of search engine optimization (SEO) for the Google Play and App Store. Just like search engine optimization, app store optimization focuses on keyword relevance, search relevance and the keyword density in your description. Your app description is one of the most important things you can focus on in your mobile app marketing efforts.

Competitor research through platforms like App Annie where you can search something like “dating apps” and see what apps show up and their ranking.

Remember the app marketplace is saturated with apps so you must do what it takes to stand out from the crowd.

14. SEO Link Wheel

Get your banner ad on all your websites, pages, and groups you manage. Every time you write a post add your banner ad at the top and bottom of the post. Create backlinks and interlinks. Leverage those existing customers and visitors to get more of them to download your app. Do remember to include App Download Links On Your Website and in the banners you are promoting.

15. Social Media Marketing

Connect to all trending social media platforms and wherever you can create a matching name for your app. If you’re already in the social media promotion game and have a Twitter profile, Facebook page or LinkedIn page, make use of that space to promote your app. Sometimes usernames are already taken so be creative by adding a keyword + location or location + keyword.

16. Get Featured on Mobile App Review Sites

Ask your subscribers in your email list and on social media planforms, groups, and page to leave a review after they have used your app. Give your audience an incentive to leave a review in exchange for a promo code offer. There are review sites already catering for this and you must send them a pitch, in other words convince the website that your app is good enough to be reviewed by them and therefore featured on their site.

17. Public Relations

When launching a new business, it makes sense for the world to know about your brand. Whilst social media amplification can help spread brand awareness it also is wise to use tabloids to get your app mentioned in all the national papers. Some newspapers are solely online, and you can either buy advertising space or get journalists to write about your invention.

If you do a press release you must get the relevant PR kit directly from the publication and follow protocol, alternatively use press release sites that is open free for all journalists to use your story.

A good mobile app PR kit consists of:

An App Summary Guide

You should introduce your app and how it’s used, target audience.

18. Your Press Release

The press release is the content between you and the press. It should describe what your app is about and how it can benefit an audience, plus other data. It should be a statement whereby journalists can write about the product you are trying to promote.

19. Screenshots (App & Lifestyle)

You will need to show screenshots of your app for visualisation. You need to be able to sell your app with images.

20. Founder Bios & Pictures

When you are introducing your app for the first time, make sure to write a bio about your or the founder of the company and how you came about designing and developing your app. Sometimes you will read about founders and their reasons to build an app. These types of quotes help set a message about the company behind by building a trustworthy strong brand.

21. QR codes on personal cards

Don’t forget to add QR Codes to your window displays, your business cards, email signatures and your content you are sharing with the world. These QR codes can be discounts to purchases or direct download of the app. You can add QR codes to leaflets and editorial publications, even have a QR Code t-shirt or car magnetic banner.

22. Recruit Customers Locally

Networking and local meetups, events and conferences can be a great place to recruit new mobile app users. Give out leaflets or hire a company to distribute leaflets on your behalf. By bringing along a stack of business cards or promotional merchandise to an event with your app download link and give them out to everyone you speak to, which will help with your advertising efforts.

Consider hiring a stall where you can promote your app to passers-by.

23. Guerrilla Marketing

Consider Guerrilla Marketing, what that means do something outrageous, something wild and adventurous. Think outside of the box. Do something that gives the wow factor.

24. Roll Out New Updates Regularly

Do updates regularly, you do not want your app to stop working because you will lose custom. Your customers need to know you are always making the app better. Just like Microsoft Windows and Apple iOS they rollout updates to help your devices to run smoothly. Discuss bug fixes and future updates by keeping your audience in the loop.

25. Industry Forums and Podcasts

Most forums are a free to register but to use certain features you may need to upgrade. Just like commenting on other people’s posts do not try to hi-jack their content with the app you are promoting. The more times you comment without advertising the more recognisable you will be, which in turn gets you followers where you will be able to advertise your app directly.

Hang out where your target audience hangs out. If your target audience is the gaming industry join the gaming forums, social media groups and pages.

Conclusion

There are tonnes of ways to promote your app without spending a dime. You just need to have the know-how. Always try free marketing and advertising strategies first before parting with your hard-earned cash.

Here are some other ways of generating more business:

40 Ways To Get More Business.

Keywords/Tags

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