How to promote your app? 6 Essential techniques

There are many ways of promoting your app, as many as different kinds of apps. But how we blend in, plan and carry out the strategy will be the key to our campaign’s success. We’ll now summarise some of the best practices and strategies to help you increase your visibility and the number of downloads. Using these techniques will enable you to differentiate yourself from your rivals in the industry. You don’t know how to promote your app? Then pay attention!

DO YOU NEED MARKETING SUPPORT? FIND YOUR TEAM

Updated info: Discover the Best App Marketing Strategies [2020]

1. Include your keyword in the app’s name and its description

Ask yourself what are your users going to be searching for – or do some research on it – and try to fit these keywords in the app’s name and description (including in your rating’s comments). Using a keyword in an app’s name has proven to bring about a significant improvement in its positioning, as this field (our app’s name) is more important than its description.

As for the use of keywords, we have to take into account that further repetitions of a given keyword will not matter once it has shown up 5 times, so it will be better to focus on other keywords for the app promotion’s sake. Testing new keywords and synonyms for common generic searches may place us in higher positions in the listings. In short: it’s better to appear among the top 5 of an uncommon search result than among the top 50 of a common generic search.

2. Update your app’s icon so it matches with current app design trends

It’s important to remember that our app’s icon is the first opportunity we have to attract users towards our website straight from the list of results. This is so mainly because it’s the first impact that our app with have on our potential user, making it thus very important to integrate and express “what our app is for” in its design. We’ll achieve differentiating ourselves from our rivals in the industry by conveying the essence of our app through its icon (making sure it’s not just a logo).

Using all 100% of the icon’s surface is an interesting resource available to us (square with rounded edges). It delivers a sense of tailored design that’s both efficient and effective. Following current design trends in app design is another resource that’s always at our disposal. And it’s now as easy as designing an icon in “material design” (platforms as Yeeply can help you find freelance designers for this purpose at reasonable prices).

3. Add text and context to the screenshots you’ve included

Users will look at our screenshots before reading anything, so selecting luring images is one of the most important aspects from a conversions and sales standpoint. Some basic tips are: add a value functionality or proposal to each screenshot, but just one per screenshot and keep it as short as possible. It will be best if the screenshot is based on the app’s context of use; adding a hand holding the Smartphone will help you convey empathy and help users imagine themselves using it.

4. Prepare three press releases

Planning optimised news and press releases will help us chart a path towards where we are heading. It will reduce the amount of time devoted to its management and allow us to ‘tell a complete story’ to our media contacts (at least during the first months of the app’s life). The classic remarkable milestones are: “The app’s birth or history”, “The app’s release on the stores”, “The public’s warm reception of the app”, “A case of the app’s suitable use” and “The app’s new functionality”.

An important aspect associated to promoting an app will be to carry out a previous research regarding influencers (journalists or trendsetters in general). If you are not planning to devote a lot of time to it, it’s better to choose around 10 people (there is always a person behind any newspaper, blog or company and we’ll not establish relations with legal persons) and focus on connecting with them. We’ll read the content they create, share it and show them we care about it, going beyond our interest in them being attentive to our app.

5. Updating our app on alternative stores

There is a growing number of users who – for different reasons – choose stores other than the main ones (App Store and Google Play) to look for the apps they are after. By updating our app on these stores, we’ll be reaching out to new users, who are somehow trying to discover innovative apps. Some of them are: Amazon’s store, Softonic, Samsung, AppBrain, 1mobile, Opera, Aptoide, SlideMe, Andapp, etc. – among others.

6. Exchange ads with other developers

To exchange mobile advertising between apps is a logical solution for growing without having to pay. In fact, it seems quite natural to use this method among our own apps. However, this way we would always end up reaching the same users. Tappx is the best example as it’s the largest open community to exchange ads among app developers. It works in a fair way: we’ll insert advertising in our app from apps belonging to other members when joining the community. For every click we generate, we will get another one in exchange. This is the way it works, allowing us to exchange ads with over 4,000 developers. Our app will be promoted even in great apps like Questioned (from Etermax) or Soccer Runner (from U-Play Online) and these will be on ours in return.