The app market is a crowded one and for that reason it can be a little difficult to stand out from the pack and get your app noticed. It’s reasonable to assume that some developers may build apps simply because they love doing so, but surely the majority of app developers are building apps because they want to make money from their hard work and creation. To do this you’ll need to market your application just like any other business has to market their products to the consumer. Here are some helpful Android marketing tips to help you get started in marketing your application to the masses, in no particular order of course.
The first is the most obvious, as it really all begins here at this stage. You need to build a great application. If you want your app to be successful then it starts by designing and building something users will love. Something they want and possibly even need to use on a constant basis. There are many layers to this, including your idea for the app, but most importantly everything is in the details. Paying attention to detail can make a world of difference. Focus on giving the user an experience to remember, make sure your design is compelling and functional, and it can really help to have an attention grabbing icon that will intrigue people. If users love the icon, it might just sway them to give your app a look when they might have otherwise not given it a second thought.
Building apps may be mostly about coding, programming, and design, but you will still need to sell your app like any company sells their products. Tell people why your app should be downloaded and why they would be happy to use it, how it would benefit them by using it, and bring attention to what you want your app to do. Sell the importance of your app to tech blogs, app reviewers and other news media so they can help you spread the word about how awesome your app is and why people will love using it. When it comes down to it, selling your app is an important part of the process.
In today’s world, much success for an app, or any other product can be found within heaps of positive reviews about what you have to offer. Great app reviews are an important if not almost pivotal step in the process of marketing your app successfully. Word of mouth can be a very powerful tool in helping you sell your app because essentially, people are selling the app for you by speaking of positive experiences and what they love about the app. Other users will see this and want to try things out for themselves. Getting plenty of good reviews though is something you’ll probably have to work at, so it might not be a bad idea to test your app in a beta preview so you can work out the kinks. It’s also not a bad idea to give users incentives for trying things out as it could help to convince them to leave you a great review. As a part of this process, if users are having issues, address them head on and fix any problems they’re having so they might bump their review up later on. Eventually, your app might be ready to leave a testing phase and you hopefully would have smoothed out any areas where your app needed a little polishing.
Just like with reviews, people like to share their experiences with stuff they love through social networks where they have family and friends and followers they think might be interested in what they’re using. Social networks have altered the way we share our excitement for things we love and this can help you market your app in a big way. People love to be social in this day and age so making sure your app has at least a few social tie ins is a good marketing tool you can place at your disposal. Social interactions are a huge form of word of mouth, let why not let users share the presence of your app with others? Depending on the type of app you have, seek out the best type of social interaction for users to share, like game scores, fitness goals, or ways to share tasks with others.
Making sure users will have an easy time finding your app is also a crucial piece you won’t want to forget. Keywords can make or break a users chances at finding your app should they only be able to see it doing a simple search. Many apps don’t end up in the lists we see in the play store and as this is a very real scenario that could happen, making sure to insert keywords to make your app searchable may just be essential to users finding it. Keep in mind keywords need to be relevant to your app in some way especially now with the new Play Store policies set forth by Google recently, but nonetheless you’ll want to make sure appropriate placement of relative words is there.
Another marketing tip that could help your app is making it free. It isn’t impossible for developers to get their app on the Play Store and immediately gain a following even with a paid app, but you can’t bank on that. Giving your app away for free in addition to the already listed steps could gain you a following as people love free apps, although many would gladly pay for some if they’re excellent. If free isn’t something you want to do, consider making it extremely cheap or inserting optional micro transactions. Although many people aren’t fond of in-app-purchases, if they’re not rampant and greedy many users will overlook them. Then you can give the opportunity to get rid of them with a simple one time purchase for a premium version of your app. If it’s cheap and doesn’t include IAP’s, users may also be more likely to try it out, and that’s what you want. With enough time and some great user feedback, your following could grow.
One should never underestimate the power of advertising which can be a powerful tool to help you market your Android app. While there are numerous ways for you to get free advertising for your app, sometimes paying for it may be the only option if the ads aren’t reaching enough people. You could also choose to buy downloads although this method is not something we necessarily suggest you do. The option however is a reality and you wouldn’t be the only developer to seek such a practice. You could also look into an app review service which would have a media outlet give your app a thorough review and alert their readers to its presence. If you really wanted to get creative, you could try your hand at some sort of cross promotional deal with another application or service of some kind if you have the means. You may or may not end up using every single tactic listed here, and these are just some ideas on how you can market your application if you wanted a pointer on where to possibly start.