7 Essential Tips To Help Market Your App!

You’ve got your app worked out, all the bugs are fixed but you can’t rest yet, for the most daunting part has yet to come. There’s no point in having a superb app if no one uses it! Here’s a few ways to help you market your app. Whether you’re part of a mega corporation or an indie developer, these few tips will help your app reach the masses.

1: Free things get attention

Everyone likes free things. It’s your job to decide if the app is a free or paid one and which aspects of the app is available and which is “premium”. Thread carefully here. If your app is free to use, never lock core features, people absolutely hate it. Just establish which features are “nice to have” or “extras” to be premium. If your app is a paid one, consider releasing extra features or early bird discounts; maybe even let it be free for the first hundred users. This creates a solid base of users with which to work with.

2: Peer Pressure

This one will seem pretty obvious. Get word out that your app exists. Get your friends to like it on Facebook, get your friend’s friend to tweet it, heck get your friend’s extended family to share it if possible. With social media being a powerful marketing tool now, it’s fair game for everyone to utilize this weapon of mass social destruction. A useful thing to note is that integrating the viral factor into your app helps immensely. Some of the most widely played games on social media require adding friends to gain additional resources. Peer pressure exists for a reason.

3: More Peer Pressure

You read that right, its peer pressure again. Beware of peer pressure against you. Going overly aggressive with sending push notifications to friends is annoying. How many Farmville notifications did you receive before deciding to never touch it?

Here’s an example of how you can get peer pressure to work for you. Reward users for helping their friends. Encourage them to seek help from other friends. The end message you want to send is this: “help me help my friend”. The recent ALS ice bucket challenge created arguably one of the best social movements of our times (although it helped a worthwhile cause rather than a singular person). Present your app in such a way where it promotes helping people and you have yourself a self perpetuating market.

Finding the right blend of ingredients is as important as selling the final cake. The cake is not a lie.

4: Finding the right category

Let’s face it; your new app is going to start at the bottom of the pile in the app store. There are about a few hundred thousand developers vying for a top 10 spot in a popular category. This sheer volume of apps is enough to drown out most mediocre apps. The pressure is intense on developers to make their apps the best. And the popular categories are perpetually occupied by those few persistent companies. But what if your app made the top 10 in the least popular category? It’ll still get more exposure than rank 92 in a popular category.

5: Pretty things get more attention

No matter what the app’s personality is, I won’t even give an ugly icon a second look. Call me shallow but it’s the majority is with me on this. Beautify your app; show a few screen shots of the most aesthetically pleasing views, give them something to drool over and watch people flock to your dazzling app.

6: Advertise!

Advertising equals resources spent. If you really want to advertise your app, consider making it such that it contains an “install now” button, so you really only pay when people actually download your app. Admob on Google is also a pretty nifty option to consider.

7: Lateral vs. Vertical marketing

Vertical marketing in a nutshell is when you appeal directly to those you intend to. A football app for footy fanatics, an RPG game app for bored teenagers and a shopping app for shopaholics. The defining trait of vertical marketing? Stiff competition within an already concentrated market.

Lateral marketing on the other hand looks at occupying niche pockets of unsaturated market, more likely than not, it often creates an entirely new market.

But you have to be prepared to rip up your product, or at the very least change it fundamentally. It is a simple concept once you understand it. The key is creating a “gap”. Pick a focus, add something that is illogical or irrelevant, and you have your gap. Now think of a way to bridge that “gap” between the two and you have yourself a new product with which to show the world. Can’t think of any examples? How about I sell you a car (focus) that won’t move (illogical gap)? Don’t want it? It’s ok, driving simulators are already used by thousands of driving centers around the world.

Of course, lateral marketing isn’t easily explained by a few paragraphs, and the above example is just one of the ways you can apply lateral thinking. If you’re interested, there is a whole host of sites dedicated to this topic, as well as a really good book.

Now this isn’t so much of a marketing tip as it is a change your app to fit their needs tip. But all else has failed, you can’t get any one to like your app; even your wife scorns it. Marketing isn’t going to cut it if the product doesn’t appeal.

So there we have it, a few tips and tricks to help you get your app to the coveted “Featured” page. Hope to see your app on it soon!