Even a small $5,000 marketing budget might not be realistic for an indie developer like yourself, but fortunately it’s 2013 when a free mobile marketing strategy is a feasible plan of action. Ultimately the goal is to monetize your app, whether iOS or Android, but without much of a budget your promotional strategies to acquire downloads (and sales) are limited. Fortunately there are plenty of free or next-to-free resources and strategies to promote your mobile apps while on a budget (if you even have one). As we outline these mobile app promotion strategies below, we’ll include actionable resources to get you started on your mobile marketing campaign.
1. Public relations tips to promote your app like a pro
“Public relations” doesn’t sound all that intimidating, and it’s not exactly rocket science. Someone from your team pulls together a press list of influential journalists and bloggers, spits out a press release, and disseminates the news that your “disruptive” app has finally launched. As much as you’re shopping your app around as the next Instagram or Candy Crush Saga, the harsh reality is that you’re probably not going to get press coverage by tier one publications including TechCrunch or AllThingsD – and they don’t owe you any favors either (unless you’re friends with them). For most developers, it takes a bit more gusto than simply emailing a pitch to tech journalists. So how do you maximize your chances of getting press coverage for your mobile app? Here are a few pointers.
What you need to know to put together a press kit
For the convenience of the journalists, you should start by putting together a press kit - and this is particularly important if you’re an unknown developer with a product coming out “stealth mode.” After all, no one but you and your team are familiar with your app. There are a few ways to be creative here. You can transform your press kit into a YouTube video. If you’d like to opt for the more traditional route, you can type up a press kit on a PDF to distribute through email. Or a third option is to default to press kit templates like Storyboard. Whatever you do, trust me. Journalists will appreciate having a press kit on hand that they can fall back on.
While the press kit doesn’t need corporate sophistication, the following points should be addressed:
Background info on your mobile app
What is the app that you’re promoting?
Who are the founders?
When was the app launched?
What are the app’s key features?
What does it do?
What is the competitive advantage?
Contact information (offer your company email address – NOT your general email address)
Key statistics (if you have any during testing)
Screenshots – I can’t emphasize the importance of screenshots. Every blog post is accompanied by a photo, so with that in mind, we’d recommend you to offer high resolution photos of your logo and app’s features.
Awards and/or recognition (if relevant)
How to find a journalist's email address
This is the most frustrating part. Emailing a publication’s general inbox is useless 9 of 10 times seeing as how the email will get buried under hundreds of other PR professionals inundating your target publication with requests for coverage. While ideally Vocus or Cision is a goldmine, these services cost thousands of dollars per-month, which isn’t necessarily a savvy investment in the first place.
Here’s a quick trick, and this is where Google (or Bing if that’s your cup of tea) comes into play. If you’re looking for a particular writer’s email address like “Francis Bea” from Papaya Mobile and you’re stumped, play around with the name by typing Google Search queries like so: "Francis+Bea@papayamobile.com," "fbea@papayamobile.com," or "bea francis @papayamobile.com." You’ll discover that in many instances the journalists have shared their email address publicly somewhere on the Internet, whether through a tweet or even on a public forum.
If you’re short on time, you can try your luck on Fiverr or Craigslist and request a PR list for your target industry for just $5.
Make friends with writers at industry events
This is a no brainer. It’s a writer’s job to hang out at conferences and mingle with other tech luminaries and professionals. There are plenty of free meetups out there and free (or cheap) conferences like SXSW where you can manage to mingle for next-to-nothing. And where there’s alcohol involved – which is often the case – you’ll find it pretty easy to strike up a conversation and grab their attention, granted that you know exactly where these journalists will hang out.
Note: Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Highlight are all great ways to scope out the location of journalists, but please don’t be creepy about it.
However if you’re not sure about what technology conferences you should probably attend, here are a few you can browse to get yourself started:
Techmeme’s “Upcoming Tech Events”
Gary’s Guide – a quintessential resource for New Yorkers and technologists
Gameconfs – a directory of game industry events
Have a plan B: Tell journalists why you matter right now
If you find that the first round of press hasn’t met your expectations, there’s always another way. Try to figure out your app’s relevance to the latest news, even if you’re piggybacking on another company’s announcement or breaking story. Say that your app is a MMO FPS game and Electronic Arts announced the launch of a game that combines the MMO and FPS genres, your mobile game might have superior graphics thanks your proprietary engine that renders animated models in a jiffy. You should leverage this competitive advantage and make that your story’s selling point.
Or you can simply offer yourself as a source to explain why EA’s mobile game graphics is limiting the potential of EA’s game. You might be surprised. With major product announcements, journalists are constantly on the lookout for third-party sources.
Oh and one more thing. This tip might sound counter-intuitive, but if a writer has already covered the launch of two, three, or more apps in the same category within a span of two or three weeks (for example three messaging apps), there’s a pretty good chance that they’re not willing to cover the launch of another app for a while. If that’s the case, you’re better off associating your app with current news as outlined above. There is however one exception. Tech journalist will typically cover apps that other reporters are buzzing about.
If you have additional questions about conducting public relations campaigns for your mobile app, let us know and we’ll answer them in the comments below.
Have a plan C: Get your app reviewed by niche app review sites
A complimentary channel to get your app into the “press” if you turn up empty handed after reaching out to your target tier one and tier two, is to get your app reviewed by review sites. And you can even exercise your creativity by reaching out to new media review channels like YouTube channels.
If you’re launching an Android app, you can check out these following niche Android app review sites. While the idea here is to promote your Android apps for free (or next to nothing), some of these websites will ask you for some compensation in exchange for bumping up the priority of your app’s review.
2. Promote mobile apps the right way with social media
Social media marketing is a bit of a mystery. On one hand it seems easy enough to invite all of your friends to like your app’s new Facebook page and populate it with memes and industry relevant articles, but I hate to break it to you. This is the bare minimum, and the bare minimum just isn’t good enough.
Bake viral features into your mobile app with Facebook's API
This tip might not be relevant to every app, but if you’re looking to promote a game or any social app for that matter, you really should look at Candy Crush Saga and how that game crushed it in downloads. The game’s stickiness leveraged social; people had to ask friends for extra lives or invite them to unlock new levels, and consequently whether through word-of-mouth or peer pressure friends would pick up Candy Crush Saga. Not only that, since you can see your Facebook friend’s progress on Candy Crush’s map, friendly competition is encouraged.
I do want to emphasize that a social integration via Facebook’s API isn’t a strategy for every mobile app. If there’s one quintessentially infamous game that irritated users, it would have to be Farmville. I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of your friend’s requests to send them virtual goods.
Not sure what to post or tweet? Here are a few ideas
Publishing random content you’ve scraped from Reddit – memes in particular – that fit somewhat within the scope of your app’s relevant industry, isn’t necessarily a terrible idea but it’s not that original – nor should you make it a habit.
If you’re just starting out with your mobile app’s social media marketing strategy, we’d recommend this plan of action:
Document your app development process on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ and share bite sized updates (whether successes or challenges) with your early adopters. Everyone loves a good story and exclusive (original) content like behind the scenes photos of your team at work, or concept art.
Even asking your design team to field recommendations for character designs or new features from your Facebook fans would be a great way to get fans involved.
Of course even if you have too few fans to your liking, running small contests like asking friends to invite your Facebook friends to like your Facebook page for exclusive in-app goods would be an effective word-of-mouth app promotion strategy, granted that you have the resources and time to spare.
Reddit, Digg, Hacker News
This one is a given. Try your luck with Reddit and Hacker News and ask for the community’s opinion. For instance, /r/Android on Reddit has a weekly app appreciation thread every Saturday. Submissions can include your own apps, but you also need to recommend an app other than your own. My recommendation to you when you’re dealing with Reddit or Hacker News is to be honest about the motive for promoting your app. Reddit in particular has a knack for sniffing out corporate campaigns in a heartbeat, which would spell disaster for your brand’s image. So tread carefully.
If you happen to reach the front page, be ready to man your servers in the inevitability of a crash; if not, life goes on as usual.
Reach out to celebrities or influencers
You never know. Celebrities are jumping on the startup bandwagon and throwing their money into companies left and right, and influencers are always on the lookout for the next hot tech startup whether it’s to invest or promote. It’s worth tweeting them your catchy intro video or telling them why they should check out your service. There’s really nothing to lose here. But if you’re looking for a celebrity investor, we’d recommend you to think twice about the value of a celebrity investor would offer unless you have Ashton Kutcher or Bono’s attention.
3. Optimize your mobile app to beat the competition
There’s really no easy way to rise up to the top of Apple's App Store or Google Play for 99.9 percent of developers. So for those of you that don’t have a budget for a dedicated PR person, nor a publisher to help your app make a splash, the least you can do is maximize the chances that your app is discovered in an app store with these app store optimization and visibility tips.
Keywords are more important than you think
As much as copywriting is the last task on earth you’d want to focus on, especially if writing isn’t your forte, selecting the right keywords to describe and name your app can be crucial to its discovery. The app store uses the name, keywords, and company name in its search engine. With that in mind, it’s in your best interest to position your app to target similar keywords that your competitors are using and those niche keywords that haven’t been used.
To help you with generating app store keywords, check out iOS and Android keyword tools like Sensor Tower and MobileDevHQ.
A couple of extra tips when selecting keywords for your app:
There’s no need to repeat your company name or app name in the keyword field since.
If your app is multilingual or international, try adding a couple of keywords in those target languages.
Use A/B testing to ensure an eye-catching icon
Mobile users are drawn to beautiful icons and will in fact judge the quality of an app simply by eyeing the icon’s design. A great way to test out the quality of your icon is to conduct A/B testing by investing a few bucks into Facebook ads. Try a Facebook ad campaign split between a few icon designs and analyze the results to uncover the icons that attract the most clicks.
Choose an app category wisely
Let me start off by saying that you don’t need to publish your app in a highly contested app store category. What you really want is to rank among the top ten of apps, even if the category isn’t all that popular. In retrospect the number of downloads that the “Navigation” category on Apple’s App Store would garner for instance would pale in comparison to the downloads you’d get if ranked on “Productivity,” but of course ranking highly is far easier in a category with fewer competitors.
Get users to review your app
Make sure to ask users to rate your app.
Why is this so important? Think of it this way. I’m willing to bet you’ve decided to skip an app download because the app had too few ratings.
Publish your app on alternative app stores
There are plenty of alternative app stores to pick and choose from, but if you're launching an Android app or localizing in China we can help you identify the app stores you need to be on. Check out these resources below:
10 Google Play alternatives to boost Android app installs
10 App Stores in China You Really Ought to Be On
4. Rally eager early adopters
Word-of-mouth, personal network, or friends, call it what you want; early adopters are your strongest assets. One way of corralling these beta-testers is by inviting all of your Facebook friends to an event or your brand new Facebook page. A lesser graceful option is to spam forums. But there are far more effective and less annoying ways to drum up support. And the fact that people want early, exclusive access works in your favor.
Erlibird
There are a couple of ways to achieve this. For starters, Erlibird is one strategy that may not have crossed your mind. What is Erlibird? The platform offers the chance for early adopters to get free access to the beta version of your app and in return provide feedback. It’s a great way to drum up early support and some new email subscribers. If you play your cards right, you might manage to make an evangelist or two out of your early users.
Invite early-adopters to to test your app
There are a few ways to enable people to try your app out all without the hassle of forcing a download in the first place. App.io, Pieceable, and App Surfer display apps within the convenience of a browser. The downside is that you’re on your own when it comes to establishing your app’s visibility and finding new users, which you can do via social media, word of mouth, or PR.
Participate in forums
Forums or list servs are great outlets to discuss your app or ask for advice. In fact, if you’re with like-minded people within your industry like the New York Tech Meetup listserv there’s a good chance that there’s someone there who knows an influencer or two who would be willing to open doors for you if you’ve caught their attention. At the least, you’ll get some valuable advice on improvements that you can make (and the advice is free).
But we know what you really want…
Of course at the end of the day, what you really want is to have your app surface to the top of the App Store charts. Unless your app gets covered by many major tech blogs in a span of a few days, or you pay for installs, it’s going to be a long, uphill climb to the top and getting there isn’t even guaranteed. The easiest way to acquire installs in a short amount of time and with minimal work would be to pay for it with a CPC or CPI campaign, which you register for on AppFlood. However, to ensure maximum exposure for your mobile app, you should supplement your ad campaign with the four mobile app marketing best practices we've outlined above.
If you have any other recommendations for iOS marketing tips, Android marketing tips, or even ways to promote Windows apps for free (or on a budget), let us know in the comments below.