As you all know, there are tons of apps available in the Google Play Store, and every other app marketplace out there, no matter which platform we are talking about. There are over a billion apps available in the Google Play Store, and a ton of those which resemble one another. The key, is to differentiate, but that won’t do you much good if people don’t notice your app and get a chance to try it out, right? Well, that’s where app marketing comes in. In order for your app to succeed, you need to market it properly, and in order to help you to do that, we’re going to share a sort of an app marketing guide with you.
So, the first 48 hours of launching your app is kind off crucial for the app’s success. You’ll need to do the best you can as far as marketing goes in the first couple of days in order to make something out of your app, in other words, you need to get people to notice it and get traction. Here are a couple of steps for you to consider:
1. The first thing you need to do is conduct a keyword research, the best way to do this is to use Google AdWords’ ‘Keyword Planner’. This is very crucial and should be done without question.
2. Make sure to use the appropriate keywords in your applications title and description, which will help people find your app and differentiate it at the same time.
3. Prior to launching your app to the Google Play Store (or any other app store), you’ll need to create a launch page or a website for your app. This will basically be a home to all the info people need to know regarding your app, a showcase if you will. Make sure to include this link pretty much everywhere, that way you’ll help consumers inform themselves.
4. Compile an e-mail list. You’ll need to use e-mail pretty heavily as a developer for various purposes, but mainly for press releases and important notifications. Building an e-mail list will help you immensely, and you can use a service like ‘MailChip’ for example, which is rather simple and straightforward.
5. Make plenty of screenshots, promo images and quite possibly a promo video as well, so that you can share those with the public. If you’re not exactly great at image or video processing, you might want to hire a professional to help you with that, this part is also very important.
6. You might want to submit a press release to various tech blogs/websites, like the one you’re reading this article on. This will give you a lot of exposure and especially if you have a unique product on your hands.
7. Speaking of tech sites, you should probably even take advantage of the app review services in order to promote your app even further and make android monetization possible by doing so.
8. Social networks have become really huge over the years, and it is crucial that you use them, especially the most popular ones like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
9. Social networking is so important, that we’ll list them twice. In addition to the aforementioned sites, you can also use Instagram, Pinterest and Stumble Upon, Quora and Reddit is also a powerful tool, but you’ll need to learn how to use properly it because it’s significantly different than aforementioned sites.
10. It is also wise to use Google Alers to monitor the happenings surrounding your application. This will immensely help you keep track of what people are talking about, and let you provide feedback in a timely fashion.
11. Communicate with tech journalists, or at least try to do so. There is no better way of sharing your app than getting people to write about it and expose it to a ton of people.
12. Conduct guess blogging sessions in order to promote your app, and try to raise the hype surrounding your product any way you can.
There you have it, a small list of steps you’ll need to take in order to have a chance among the millions of other applications out there. That being said, there are a number of marketing tools you can take advantage of, like: Tapstream, Mixpanel, Applyzer, Localytics and AppLaunch. There is also a ton of other services which can help you on your path, like tools for app store SEO, websites which offer such services include SearchMan SEO, AppCodes and MobileDevHQ. And last, but not least, mobile app networks that might help you along the way. There are a lot of them too, here are a few: Tapjoy, Facebook Mobile App Installs, Google’s AdMobe Mobile Ads, Airpush… and so on.