Promote mobile apps for free

Vibha Sharma

With more and more people riding the bandwagon of creating their own apps for various different platforms — Android, iOS or Windows, it is a challenge to make one’s app visible to users. While one can always make the apps more popular by pumping in a lot of money, however, there are some ways, which app makers can use to promote their apps for free.

A developer can start the teaser website highlighting what the upcoming app is going to offer. One can even ask for visitor’s feedback through a survey form. A small widget that allows subscription to the site will help the developer collect the email addresses of the interested individuals who could be the potential users of the app. And once the app is launched, a personal notification can be sent on all the gathered addresses.

It pays to start creating a buzz on social media networks — Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest. An app is developed to solve some problem, to simplify some process or for entertainment. It is good to present the problem or the objective first and then invite ideas from others. Gradually leading them to one’s app is a great way to create the much-required hype before the launch of the app. One can start blogging and vlogging (video blogging) about the app as well, which helps potential users see value in the app. Videos on the apps can be very creative and intelligent to catch the visitors’ attention. One can even request other co-bloggers to host these videos and guest posts on the new app. It is observed that the attention span and memory of the web-users is very short so the app needs to be promoted several times in a week.

One can request some experienced app developers, users and app review sites to review the app in advance and their reviews are a great way to create a lot of buzz for the app even before it is launched.

AppBrain, AndroidLib, AppsZoom,FreshApps, AppVee, Apptism are some of the sites on which the apps can be reviewed and users prefer to check these sites before downloading/investing in a new app. In case there are some negative reviews, make sure these are ironed out before the actual launch of the app for general public. By doing this, app developer gives a message that users’ feedback is important and is given due respect.

If the app is not a free app, one can promote it at a reduced price for initial two weeks so that one gets bulk of customers availing that offer in the promotional period. One can even put rewards for every 20th, 50th and 100th customer of the app. If possible, there must be a lite version of the paid app so that users get to see the utility of the app to finally pay for it.

Running contests on social media sites and blogs is a great way to connect with more users and chain grows exponentially once it catches users’ fancy. It is always good to stay connected with like-minded people. Look for other developers who are working on similar apps and create a social group, including all these developers; keep exchanging ideas for betterment of the app.

An app developer must study App Store Optimisation(ASO) well, before publishing the app. ASO is the process of optimising mobile apps to rank higher in an app store’s search result. The higher is the ranking of one’s app, the more visible it is to the potential customers, which translates to more traffic to the particular app page. ASO requires good understanding of target users and the keywords that are most used for searching.

Statistics reveal that the title of the app, keywords, total number of downloads; ratings and reviews are the main factors that impact ASO significantly and eventually draw more users to a particular app. Press can be used to get more visibility for the app and to reach the target users. One can submit the press release for newspapers, magazines, journals and TV shows.

Ideally no app should reach the frozen/finished state. The developer should try to keep refining and improving it by incorporating more features that the customers may want. The app should always breathe with freshness and newness. So for all those developers who are dedicatedly working to develop new apps, make sure the apps do reach the users and the only way to do that is to create more noise about the same.