Mobile App Marketing

82 Ways to promote your mobile app, Mobile App Marketing

Mobile App Marketing

Do you know that as of June 2013, there are 900,000+ apps and 50 billion+ apps being downloaded on App Store (iOS)?

Are you also aware that as of April, 2013, there are 850,000+ android apps and 48 billion+ apps downloaded on Google Play Store?

You can see these numbers are quite huge. This also mean that as an app developer you have a strong competition from other mobile app developers. In order to succeed, you need to have an aggressive mobile app marketing plan.

With this post, I would like to share 82 different ways to promote your mobile app. Please include these ideas in your mobile app marketing plan as how you feel suitable. Please also share your experiences while doing an app marketing.

Before we go straight into ways to promote your iPhone or android apps, I would like you to answer a simple but yet very important question:

“How can your app bring positive change in app user’s life?”

It is a “value” that matters most. Value mentioned here is not in terms financial gains but it is more about keeping larger vision in mind when doing either Android App Marketing or iPhone app marketing.

Mobile App Marketing Techniques:

Following are the 82 ways to promote your mobile app to keep your competition behind:

  1. Use Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool – Find relevant & profitable keywords to target. (https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool‎)
  2. Use Google Trends Tool – to understand how well your keywords are performing. – (http://www.google.com/trends)
  3. Use Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker – https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
  4. Free Search Term Suggestion Tool from Trellian – http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
  5. Use KGen – Keyword Generator – Firefox addon that allows you to see which keywords are strong on a specific web pages.
  6. Niche Bot Classic – Use Free LITE version to collect 20 daily searches and keyword tips. http://www.nichebotclassic.com
  7. Study Wikipedia and see which keywords they are using to rank high on specific topic.
  8. Use Twitter Advanced Search to understand what people are tweeting about – https://twitter.com/search-advanced
  9. Use Youtube search to find out relevant keywords for your app.
  10. Study your competitors’ website, their apps and its app descriptions to collect important keywords.
  11. Use about 3-5% keyword density in your app description.
  12. Prepare a list of 10-20 keywords and use then as tags in your app description.
  13. Create coming soon or launching soon page. Use: http://launchrock.co
  14. Come up with catchy & easy to use “App Name”.
  15. Is your app icon clearly describes what the app is all about?
  16. Include all your social media profiles which you had setup for your app in your app description.
  17. Use “Bullet Points” and “Paragraphs” for easy reading in your app description.
  18. Make it very easy for the prospects to contact you if they have any questions before downloading your app. Create FAQs & nice little contact us page on your app website.
  19. List your app to the correct category on iTunes (for iPhone apps) and on Google Play (for Android Apps). Ask your iPhone developer or Android developer and he should be able to help you submitting the app to respective app store properly.
  20. Is your app being offered at the right price? The best price to offer for the paid app is $0.99. If possible, launch a free app and then ask the user to upgrade it with premium or paid version later.
  21. Host an app launch party, have a cake with app’s icon on it! Invite friends, colleagues and industry experts at the party.
  22. Create App Landing Page or 4 or 5 Page website. If you don’t know how, just contact me.
  23. Make sure that your app landing page or app website is 100% SEO friendly.
  24. Make sure that you include Blog on your website where you should include app news and events, app updates, customer testimonials, app success stories, company news and events etc.
  25. Create 3 types of videos: 1. Viral Video 2. “How to use app effectively” video 3. App customer’s testimonials.
  26. Create video channels on 25 major video websites like Youtube, Vimeo etc. and submit all your videos to your channels.
  27. Youtube is Google’s own product. Tring tring 🙂 so promote your video nicely on Youtube. You will get good rankings on Google as well!
  28. Offer a free download or promo codes to newspaper columnists or if your app is a game offer free downloads to game enthusiast.
  29. Write SEO-friendly Press Release. If you don’t know how to write, hire professional press release writer.
  30. Submit your app’s press release to 25 major press release distribution websites. For e.g. PR-insider.com
  31. Create twitter account. Make sure the logo, background and header image are all set with your app’s branding style.
  32. Create Facebook account. Create branded fan page for the app.
  33. Update about the app details on your personal LinkedIn account as well on LinkedIn company pages.
  34. Participate in Questions / Answers websites such as Yahoo Answers, Answers.com and LinkedIn Q&A.
  35. List your app on free online directory such as DMOZ or paid Yahoo Directory.
  36. Place free classified ad on Craigslist & BackPage.
  37. Submit your app to popular app review websites such as 148apps.com.
  38. Create Pay Per Click campaigns on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
  39. Create QR codes of your app and publish it everywhere including your visiting cards, brochures & all business stationaries.
  40. Make a good use of email marketing but make sure that email marketing campaign is CAN-SPAM compliant.
  41. Include your app URL in your email signature.
  42. Word-of-mouth marketing is still a powerful tool. Apply it on your app marketing plan.
  43. Create nice app t-shirts or coffee mugs and distribute it for free.
  44. Look for partnership opportunities with prominent authors, industry leaders or influencers.
  45. Do a local seminar about the app at Chamber of Commerce or other offline networking meetings.
  46. Run a contest with creative ideas within your local community, give a prize to winner, create press release of this event and publish it online.
  47. Submit your app’s pictures / screenshots to Pinterest & Flickr.
  48. Invite other bloggers to talk about your app on their blogs.
  49. Use email opt-in on your website for the app users to subscribe for an app newsletter.
  50. Submit your app to social bookmarking site such as stumble upon, digg.com etc.
  51. Create Google+ profile and add your app URL in your profile.
  52. Create about.me profile and mention about your app in your profile.
  53. Submit your app’s blog to populuar free blog directories.
  54. Write articles on your app’s relevant submit and submit it to article directories like ezinearticles.com
  55. Publish customer’s reviews and testimonials which are being published on respective app store to your app’s website.
  56. Embed YouTube Videos on your apps’ website.
  57. Create nice PDF presentation of your app and submit it to PDF sharing website such as slideshare.net.
  58. Participate in Mobile App Developer’s discussion forums and introduce your app to the forum members.
  59. Use Facebok Ads for app promotion.
  60. Create nice app banners and promote them to various banner ads network.
  61. Use Mobile Advertising platforms. Two popular examples are: Google’s Admob – http://www.google.com/ads/admob and Medialets http://www.medialets.com
  62. Use Appflood which is a commission free cross promotion network. http://appflood.com
  63. Inform about your new app to your existing partners, customers and other stake holders.
  64. Advertize your app in industry specific magazines and newspapers.
  65. Create Hashtag about your app on Twitter.
  66. App File Size – Reduce the app download file size to below 50MB so 3G mobile users can easily download. More than 50MB mobile user needs wi-fi connection to download your app.
  67. Use mobile market specific affiliate networks such as: http://www.mobpartner.com/en
  68. Allow users to share the app or may be game score directly from the app to social networks such as twitter or facebook.
  69. Do guest blogging on relevant blogs and mention about your new app in your post or may in the author’s bio.
  70. Do local radio advertising.
  71. Use Google Analytics for your app website and check “bounce” rate. Less than 40% bounce rate is good.
  72. Use reward apps like http://www.junowallet.com/ to drive more installs.
  73. Build an app that solves a real “problem”.
  74. Put an app icon sticker on your own car.
  75. Distribute flyers about your app within a local community. Well, who knows you might have lots of app enthusiast next door.
  76. Create an app trailer or app in making video and distribute it on popular video sites.
  77. Create interesting app wallpapers and distribute it for free.
  78. Create QR code of your app and use it on all your business communications. Email Signature, Website, Letterhead, Envelopes etc.
  79. Create Web 2.0 sites like weebly for your mobile app.
  80. Participate in trade shows related to mobile apps.
  81. Create interesting infographics related to your app and distribute it to websites like http://visual.ly
  82. Use Free New Relic account for deep mobile app monitoring and management: http://newrelic.com/pricing2

More resources on Mobile App Marketing

Apart from these 82 ways to promote your mobile apps which I’ve compiled, I would also like to recommend you study the following four links:

How to market and promote your games and apps – Part 1 / 4 http://www.raywenderlich.com/11359/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-1

How to market and promote your games and apps – Part 2 / 4 – http://www.raywenderlich.com/11633/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-2

How to market and promote your games and apps – Part 3 / 4 – http://www.raywenderlich.com/11767/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-34

How to market and promote your games and apps – Part 4 / 4 – http://www.raywenderlich.com/11794/how-to-market-and-promote-your-games-and-apps-part-4

Hope you had enjoyed reading my this post on “mobile app marketing“, Please share your experiences on mobile app marketing in the comment form below.