4 Ways To Better Market Your iPhone/iPad/Android App
Planing your marketing app efforts for your iPhone, iPad, or Android app is critical. Marketing your app is not as daunting as one would think. That being said there is still a process or strategy that should be put into place to give your app a chance at succeeding in the very competitive world of iPhone/iPad and Android apps. There are 316,229 approved iPhone apps, 67,931 iPad apps and 113,124 at the time of this post, indicating that there is a lot of competition in the app world. According to Gartner the industry leader in market research, app sales will approach 15 billion dollars in 2011 (via TechCrunch). With the increases app sales there will be increased development and more competition. Here are 4 ways to better market your iPhone/iPad or Android app to success.
1) Start early- Before you start coding you should develop a marketing plan around your app idea. Determine who you are targeting, the branding, genera, niche market, how are you going to get your app noticed and incorporate this into the development process. A check of the competition is also a good idea before development starts. For example if you are making a "Flashlight" app you may want to see what the competition is in this utility category so you can add a feature or concept to make your app stand out from your competition.
2) Create A Web Page- Developing a web page for an iPhone app is mission critical. You should look at your app as a product, if you look at any different then you are short changing yourself. In this day and age if you have are selling a product and have no website are not meeting the consumer where they are looking for information, which is on the web. The cost to set up a website is 0, so the decision to do so is a no brainer. A developer outfit that has a great blog, which can suffice as a website is Bolt Creative, the creators of the hugely popular "Pocket God" iPhone, iPad, and Android app. A couple of important features you should include in your website are 1) upcoming news about your app release, updates, improvements, etc and 2) contact information for customer service. A third bit of information that would be useful on an app website are FAQ's (frequently asked questions) for users to solve their own problems without having to contact you.
app marketing
3) Create Social Media Profiles- Once you have determined your branding before you app development or during app development (lets be realistic) you need to create profiles in all the major social media networks. The social media networks to concentrate on are Twitter, Facebook (Fan Page), Friend Feed, Touch Arcade, YouTube, MySpace, and any other social network where you can disseminate status updates about your new app. One of the social networks that is grossly under used by developers is YouTube. If you can develop an app you can do a short video trailer for your app to some cool and post to YouTube. Another tip is to use your friends and your own personal social footprint to help grow your new app branded social media profiles.
4) Plan Your Launch- Keep it simple stupid is the best plan of attack here. Here is what my simple plan would include: 1) send out a press release using prmac, which costs about $20. 2) Hold a giveaway by using your Facebook profile, Twitter, etc to get people to share that your app has launched. You can giveaway promo codes, iTunes gift cards, but giving away and iPad or iPod Touch will generate some buzz and you want all the buzz you can get. A few tips, for giveaways, keep the time frame of the giveaway short like a day to no more than 7 days and make the requirements for winning easy to do such as "Please like my fan page" to win.
The 4 tips in this blog post will help you to get a handle on planning to market your iPhone, iPad, or Android app. While these tips are but a few they are meant to give you a better chance at making your app chart to success and higher revenues.
