App Promotion

Key ways and places to promote

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A short and snappy post to highlight some of the key ways to acquire users. Hope you find it as useful!

Ways to acquire users:

1. Target a niche that passionately believe in your solution. NOT EVERYONE. Organic growth will come from here if you really fulfil their need. Then move onto adjacent market segments. Take a read of “Crossing The Chasm” for more detail.

2. Promote early adopters and make them feel special.

3. Ride the current technology / consumer preference trends.

4. Create exclusivity, scarcity or urgency with your product.

5. Make your users commit to you vocally (allow them to share your service and encourage them to do so).

6. Look at the data and see who is actually using and engaging with your service. This is your true target market. Try and target people like them.

7. Don’t focus on number of accounts. Rather, focus on level of engagement (and retention). It’s far more important.

8. Promote to your friends and family.

9. Post to social and email channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ as well as your various mailing lists).

10. Conduct content marketing (videos, infographics, presentations, Ebooks).

11. Reach out to specific groups / communities online and offline (answer and ask questions as well as tailoring your speech for each specific group/community).

12. Reach out to popular blogs and forums related to your product (that will understand and empathise with your problem and solution) and engage.

13. Get influencers to endorse your product (identify these by using Klout, number of followers and the level of engagement they receive on different channels).

14. Get key partners with credibility on board (e.g. suppliers, distributors, large corporates or even celebrities).

15. Be cross-platform compatible — reduce friction for users as much as possible so they are left with no choice but to buy into your product(make sure your service is on all major mobile platforms and your website is compatible with the different browser types).

16. Get featured in the press (contact press members through Twitter and other social channels, get a dialogue going, engage with them and start a rapport before asking to be featured. You’ll be much more likely to get coverage. Alternatively submit a short and snappy pitch to the new outlet and see if they pick it up. Make it too long and they may just skip it!

17. Conduct search engine optimisation (for major search engines in an attempt to increase your search engine ranking. Create as many backlinks as possible and don’t forget that app store optimisation is also very important).

18. Online advertising on Facebook, Twitter, Google AdWords/Admob and iAd.

19. A/B test your website and app using tools like Optimizely and Mixpanel.

20. A/B test your ads to find out the most effective variations in terms of text, images and calls to action.

21. Promote your app using street teams / other offline initiatives.

22. Submit your service to some of the following websites:

1. http://betalist.com/

2. http://adopterr.com/

3. http://startupli.st/

4. http://www.betabound.com/

5. https://geekli.st/home

6. http://breue.com/

7. https://hallspot.com/business