Ask any technology investor what the hot area is today, and they’ll tell you it is mobile. Indeed, more people own a smartphone now than ever before, and that number is growing every day.
Currently, the App Store has around 1 million apps, and it adds about 20,000 apps per month. In total, there have been over 50 billion app downloads. The Google Play Store has over 1 million apps, and there have been over 50 billion downloads. So, it’s a big market with a large user base for both iOS and Android.
If you’re curious about how to promote your mobile app, this article is for you. In this post I’ve compiled a list of resources that you can learn from and use.
Complete Guides
1. How to Market Your Mobile App – Smashing Magazine gives a thorough guide for marketing a mobile app.
2. A Marketer’s Complete Guide to Launching Mobile Apps – HubSpot lists 13 steps for introducing a mobile app, all the way from pre-launch to post-launch.
3. Building an iOS App – Written by Apple, this article takes you step by step into making your first iOS app.
4. Building an Android App – Written by the Android team, this article explains how you should go about making an Android app.
5. App Promotion Guide – This in-depth article goes into detail about developing an app, assessing competition, building a quality app, initiating marketing, establishing a promotional budget, creating hype, and more.
6. The iOS App Marketing Strategy Guide – Apptamin writes a thorough article covering a range of topics related to launching and promoting an app.
7. 3 Simple Steps to Marketing Your Mobile App – Prefer to watch a video? This one from Neil Patel gives you three steps for promoting your app.
8. Three Inbound Marketing Strategies – This post is an extension of the above-referenced webinar.
9. 10 Inbound Marketing Tips – These 10 tips aren’t groundbreaking or even new, but they may help as a reminder. Also, they could be a good start for beginners.
10. How do you Market a Mobile Application? – A few Quora answerers give their advice on approaches to take when marketing a mobile app.
11. 20 Things Every iOS and Mobile Developer Should Consider in Their App Promotion Strategy – Kate Matsudaira breaks down all the details you need to know when forming your app strategy.
12. FAQ Regarding Apps and Marketing – If you’re a beginner and thinking about launching a mobile app, read this article with common questions and answers.
13. An analysis of 671 million push notifications – Push notifications are a big asset that marketers have to keep users engaged with the app. Unfortunately, many marketers are not using them correctly. To improve the notifications, you need to focus on good timing and personalization. Learn more in this post.
14. How to Use Snapguide to Promote Your Mobile App – Snapguide is an up-and-coming platform that people use to spread their apps. Want to try it yourself? Read this guide.
15. 9 Tips for Promoting Your Mobile App – The Next Web runs through tips on promoting an iOS or Android app.
16. How to Pitch Your App and Get it Reviewed – Getting your app reviewed on a popular site is an important aspect of marketing. This post runs down some of the basics you’ll need to know before you pitch.
17. 10 Mistakes Startups Make When Promoting Their Apps – Companies make mistakes. The more you can avoid, the better. Run through this article to see if there are any potential mistakes you can avoid.
18. Using Facebook to Promote Mobile Apps – Forrester has found that 19% of iOS (15% of Android) downloads come from people finding apps on social media. This 11 minute video gives tips on how to spread your app through Facebook.
19. Seven Do’s and Don’ts for Mobile App Marketing – MarketingProfs’s infographic runs through seven tips to keep in mind when promoting your app.
20. Thriving in an App Store World – Apple employee Michael Jurewitz gives a talk on strategies you can use to be successful in the App Store. A must watch.
21. Understanding App Store Pricing – Part 1 – Being from Apple, Jurewitz understands the App Store quite well; he was formerly a developer tools evangelist. In this 5-part series he writes about understanding App Store pricing. Also check out part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.
22. How to Use Updates to Promote Your App – App updates are a way to remind users that your app is still around on their mobile device. It’s also a chance to write great copy and entice users to check out the app again. This article tells us how to do that.
23. Google Play: Marketing 101 For Developers – Patrick Mork, Marketing Director (former) for Google Play, presents ideas to help developers market their Android apps.
24. 6 Tips on Designing a Great App Icon – Having a well-designed app starts with the icon. Learn what to avoid, and get tips on making a great icon. Apple also has some great tips.
25. Tracking Your App Marketing – Understanding how your marketing is performing is key to refining it and eliminating wasteful ad expense. This article gives a list of tools and services you can use to track your app marketing efforts.
26. Getting Featured on the App Store – This Quora thread breaks down the key attributes of apps that get featured on the App Store.
27. Mobile App Tracking – If you want to track the effectiveness of your marketing, you’ll need to know which campaigns bring the most downloads. Mobile App Tracking is a service that helps you do just that. Tapstream is another service that does it, too.
28. Growth Hacking Apps – Michael Patzer runs through the success he’s had in marketing his mobile apps.
29. 10 Tips for Mobile App Landing Pages – Unbounce gives us 10 tips for creating effective landing pages.
30. App Marketing Conversations – Apptentive holds video conversations covering various topics related to marketing a mobile app.
31. Some Tips on Pricing – If you choose to charge for your app, the price you charge becomes integral.
Bonus! Nobody wants to use an ugly, unintuitive app. Hear from Apple and Google about designing for both their respective platforms. First up, check out Apple’s great guide. Android also has some design principles to abide by.
App Store and Google Play Store
32. Why is App Store Optimization Important? – Gives data and some background on why you need to be optimized for the App Store.
33. App Store Optimization – Provides a background on App Store Optimization as well as helpful tips.
34. Optimizing Your Google Play Store App Details Page – Article details the ins and outs of writing the summary of your android app. Even if you have an app on the Play Store, you’ll still want to view this as it may provide some good ideas.
35. Getting Good App Reviews – Clearly, too many bad reviews can damage your app. This short post gives some ideas on structuring your app review process.
In Conclusion….
Mobile presents a unique challenge. People will willingly download a free app (assuming they’re interested) but getting them to regularly use and engage with the app is another conundrum. Pew Internet performed a study that showed of the people who had a mobile device with apps installed, more than half report using five or fewer apps on a regular basis.
The app Color received a ton of buzz (primarily because of its $41 million round) and presumably got a lot of initial downloads (some say 1 million during launch) because of all the press and stir around the app. A year after launch, the app only had 30,000 daily users, which was far underperforming. The app announced it would shut down at the end of year 2012. Overall, the app was active for 21 months.
So while marketing can help people become aware of your app and even increase downloads, what determines if they’ll actually engage with it is the quality of the app and what the user gets out of it.
I hope these resources give you some ideas for marketing and maybe some inspiration for building the best mobile app possible.
About the Author: Zach Bulygo is a content writer, you can follow him on Twitter.
Comments (26)