Save Money by Learning How to Market Your Own Apps
As an app developer, you know that creativity is what drives tough market competition. It requires creativity to come up with a good app that is not only effective and useful to the customer, but also serves his or her needs. You also know that creating an app is not just about the technicalities, but also about how you introduce your app to the market. It is never enough to come up with an app, what matters more is how you’re going to entice the customers to even consider trying your app. This is where marketing strategies come in.
Mobile App Marketing Can Be Expensive
It’s true enough that good marketing strategies are usually executed by trained individuals who have undergone specialized trainings about bringing the product to its target customers. This is why the giants in the mobile app development industry form a separate team of marketing specialists who will package the apps created by app developers. However, forming a new team requires a bigger budget. Not to mention marketing itself also requires budget allocation. What’s good about this is that when you allocate money for marketing, such as paid advertisements, you can be sure that your app will do well in the market. The problem now is, when you are just a newbie in the industry and you don’t have the money for marketing, what do you do?
How to Market Your App on a Budget
You don’t have to worry. It is not the end of the world. There are many independent app developers out there who have been successful in the business even without shelling out big money for high-end marketing and well-trained marketing teams. In fact, you can do the marketing on your own. You just have to step up and go for the extra mile.
Identify Your Target Audience
In planning your marketing strategy, you have to pose some questions first:
- Who is my target market? What is the age range and gender? What are their interests?
- What is the purpose of my mobile app? What purpose will it serve my target market?
- Given my target market, what features should I include in my mobile app?
- Given my target market, what should be the over-all look and feel of my mobile app?
- What is the best possible avenue or mechanism to bring my app close to the hearts of my target market?
- How do I get my target market hooked to my app?
Planning Your Marketing Strategy
Here are some things you have to remember in coming up with less costly marketing strategies:
- First impressions last. When you package your app, be sure that you have a presentable and attention-grabbing press kit. What should be included in your press kit?
- A catchy name – Your app should have a recall.
- A unique logo – The name should be the first thing your customers will think about when they see this logo, so it should be good.
- Sample screenshots and videos – These will serve as a preview of what your customers can expect from your app.
- Introduce your app nicely. While most app developers disregard this, it is always recommended that you build a micro site for your app. It can just be a simple website with a few pages that will tell something about your app. In this site you can explain fully what your app is all about and what your customers can get from downloading it. You can also include a box here for feedback and encourage your customers to subscribe to your page for further announcements. In this way, your website serves as your personal space with your customers.
Create some buzz. Your customers should be aware that you have an app out there that they will enjoy. How do you do that? Take advantage of blogs. Write blog articles talking about your app and how exciting it is to use it. The more content you have in more blogs, the better it is. Be sure to use keywords related to your game so that your customers can easily find it on Google and other search engines. You can also maximize social networking sites and create buzz on Facebook and Twitter and have people, probably your friends, talk about it. In that way, information about your app will be shared from one person to another, creating hype. You can also ask the gadget and tech bloggers to help popularize your app. That way, people will talk about your blog at the first day of your launching.
- Ask for ratings. You have to know what your app users have to say about your app. This is why most apps ask their downloaders to rate their app, and you can do it too. The higher the rating your app gets, the higher chance it has to be downloaded. There are mobile users who check first what others who have downloaded it already said about the app’s performance and they base their decision on whether they’re going to download it or not on these reviews. It will also help you popularize your app because the higher your rating is, the higher chance of it being included in the top downloaded apps in the app store. Some app users are not going to browse all the apps. If your app is included in the list of top ten, then it will be positioned ahead of other apps and your app has a better chance of being downloaded right away.
Keep Learning New Marketing Techniques
Do not be discouraged if you don’t have the budget to popularize your app. Your app can still go a long way even if it is not carried on by a strong marketing team. For more effective strategies, you can also do your own research or undergo workshops on app marketing. This will definitely help you in packaging your own app. Who knows, you might just be a big name in the mobile app industry just because your app becomes popular in the market because of your branding and packaging.