I come across new apps every week. Competition is so fierce in various app markets. Yet, some people still build cool apps that became famous and successful.
What are their secrets?
Their secrets are two things: Good products and a solid promotion.
Let’s assume you’ve built a nice app, you’ll still have to do a solid promotion to make your app famous and successful.
Where should you start from?
You’ll often hear programmers tell you that they promoted their apps through social media, press publicity, or customer referrals. This is a vague answer and can’t be acted upon. You need the right promotion to get your app out there.
Now, let’s assume you’re on a tight budget and still want to promote your app for free. How do you go about doing that? It’s simple.
This article will teach you how to market your app and get users with ease. This article will show you the promotion tactics that works. These tactics have been working for a long time and will continue to work.
Blogging is a great way to tell people your stories. Good stories will help you capture the attention of people.
Selling to people is much easier when you have their full attention. This is why blogging is an indispensable marketing tool for programmers who know how to use it.
Buffer is a web app that helps people (and brands) schedule their social media updates. It started as a side project in a bedroom in Birmingham, UK. Buffer is now a multi-million dollar startup. It won’t be where it is today if not for blogging.
Kissmetrics won’t be anywhere if not for their blog. As of September 2013, 50 percent of KISSmetrics’ revenue comes from organic SEO. This is a direct result of their blogging efforts.
Moz has a blog. Shopify blogs too. Even Hubspot has a blog. Top startups are betting big on blogging. Blogging works. It’s a great way to get free publicity for your new app.
“The day we started coding we started the blog. We’ve focus on creating quality content on our blog and distribute via social, some post being pretty epic in size/scope. This has done several things for us.
People share/discuss/reference our content and it ranks well for search, making it easy for prospective customers to discover Unbounce.
Our first two years, we grew our business with only one person in marketing and their focus was our blog.”
– Rick Perreault, CEO of Unbounce.
Blogging is even more powerful when combined with social media sharing.
Blogging is good for SEO. It will get you lots of prospects through search engines. But you shouldn’t neglect social media too. Experian spend 25% of our online time on social media (NOTE: the previously added link was removed, as it linked to a dead end as of time of publishing).
You should create better titles for your blog contents if you want to succeed on social media. Good titles are what will grab people’s attention on various social channels.
A wonderful tool like BuzzSumo will tell you effective titles that have worked before on social media. Leverage those headlines to write better titles for your own blog contents. Doing this will help your blog get people’s attention on social media.
On which social channels should you be?
There are lots of them out there: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Make sure you’re sharing your blog’s contents on all of them.
Having a promo video is a great way to create hype and build excitement around your app before it is launched.
A good promo video should be engaging. It should give people an idea of what to expect in your app. It should also tell a story that will amaze people.
Videos are so effective for marketing apps. Tiny Wings 2 – Teaser is a good example of how a hand-made low budget promo video can be. The video has attracted over 416k views on YouTube. Ting Wings 2 became a massive hit as a result of that promo video.
“Press is the best way to kick start your startup, and the best way to get it is to manually reach out to journalists.”
– Neil Patel
Instagram got on TechCrunch twice (one before launch and one on the day of launch. This helped Instagram amassed 25,000 users in the first 24 hours of launch, 300,000 by its third week and tens of millions after. Getting into press made Instagram famous and successful within a very short time.
The same is also true for Evernote. Evernote got thousands of users on its beta version within days of getting coverage on TechCrunch.
You shouldn’t be shy of getting into press if you believe you have a good app.
But how can you get into press?
The process is simple:
Build a target list of reporters who have covered similar apps in the past 12 months. You’ll often find their contact information on their articles.
Draft a captivating press release. You should ensure your press release is free of grammar and spelling errors. Make it compelling and ensure that you include information reporters will care about.
Tailor each pitch to each reporter on your list. Make sure you include their names, and tell each reporter what you like about previous stories they’d published. This will tell them you’re truly serious.
Follow up with each reporter. It’s likely that all the reporters on your list won’t respond to your email the first time you pitch them. You have to be persistent. You must keep following up with each reporter. Contact them more than once. Reporters receive a lot of pitches every day.
Following the above steps ensure you keep getting into press. It’s a numbers game – the more you pitch, the more success you have with your app.
Some sites and bloggers like reviewing apps. Why shouldn’t you start pitching them with your app?
Some of them will be happy to review your app. Sure, some bloggers will say nasty things about your app. While many bloggers you contact may ignore your pitch. Still, you can’t neglect those few that will be happy to review your app on their sites or blogs.
The most important thing is to have an app that’s helpful to many people. You’re half successful once you get that right.
Many bloggers and sites owners will be happy to review your app because they’re excited about the prospect of their audience using it. Your apps may feel like the next big thing to them.
It’s also more about the relationships you have with these bloggers or sites owners.
Getting your app reviewed will be so easy if you already have a lot of bloggers as friends. They’ll be happy to write about your app. That’s why networking is an important part of app marketing. This essential part is often ignored by most app developers. That’s why most of their apps fail.
Podcasting is one of the most powerful ways to get attention for your app. In fact, it’s an effective promotion channel that’s often ignored by most app developers. That’s why it’s going to be more effective for you.
The fact is, some people don’t like to watch videos. They also don’t like to read words. They just like to listen, but they aren’t much exciting things for them to listen to. Starting a podcast will help you capture this neglected audience and you’ll have hundreds thousands of users for your app.
Podcast subscriptions surpassed 1 billion back in 2013. So, it will be better you jump into podcasting before your competitors do.
You’ll need to develop a concept and goal before podcasting can work for you.
What’s your app about? And what do you want to talk about on your podcast?
For example, if your app is a fitness tracking software, you could start inviting fitness experts to your podcast show on a weekly basis. That way, you’ll be building an audience that cares about your app.
There are industries where no podcast show exists (or the podcast shows that exist aren’t that high in quality). Create a great app in that industry and start a podcast show to market your app. Your chances of success will be very high if you follow this route.
What are the things you need to start your own podcast show?
They are microphone, a video camera, an audio and video editing software, a file hosting service and you’ll need to create an RSS feed for your podcast.
You also need distribution. This is where iTunes and SoundCloud comes in. They help people find your podcast.
Apps are still a great way to make money online.
Dash was released in 2015 and it has so far generated over $271,500 in revenue. Overcast was launched in July 2014 and it made $164,134 in four and a half months. Manual launched in September 2014 and it quickly generated $123,413 in revenue in 100 days.
I can tell you more and more apps that are killing it.
What are you waiting for?
Create a wonderful app and market it using one or a combination of the above marketing strategies.
This is a guest blog from Michael Akinlabi.
Michael Akinlabi is a freelance writer and SEO expert. He enjoy camping, soccer, and meeting new people. He blogs at PluckMyFeet.com.
Tags: #Content #Marketing