MARKETING MOBILE APPS
Before you develop your app, you should have a pretty good marketing strategy in place. This will help when designing the app and what features it will use and what style it will be in and what kind of name it will have.
Even if you are not interested in developing game apps, I recommend watching this video about game app development as it talks a lot about marketing and monetization strategies.
The Truth About Apps Video via Game Academy
Apps are becoming a big thing and marketing them is an important task. Watch the video for some stats on app usage and a bit about marketing.
Importance of Marketing Video
[Mixpanel]
Mixpanel in 5 Minutes
Segmentation Video
It is important to have your app optimized for users. Many people have chosen to use Mixpanel for this. It seems to be one of the most recommended items for app developers that would come up in our searches. Many websites use it as well. It is always good to know exactly what is going on so you can remove bottlenecks and streamline onboarding and making it as easy as possible for people to use your app or website.
[Scorch - Lose less customers during onboarding process]
With Scorch you will be able to make onboarding very easy for people. They click a link on your website, choose their phone, and put in their phone number, and boom, they are sent a link to start downloading the app. At the time of this writing it is free and currently in beta. The video shows how it works. Sign up to be notified. It will be worth it for your marketing strategy. Anything to reduce friction in onboarding is a good thing.
[Appbackr]
Appbackr is an interesting marketplace. The interface before signing up is a bit confusing but you can see what it is all about from their FAQ page.
Appbackr is a bit like a crowdfunding platform but also helps people get their app seen in the Appbackr marketplace. You can do pre-release campaigns, but no longer will they allow the concept campaigns. This can be a great way to get your app seen by a lot of app wanting people. They are there to see NEW and exciting apps. Just have to provide them one.
[Marketing Strategy Articles]
When you are marketing an app, you are going to need a pretty good strategy.
To get the most out of your marketing efforts, have a landing page (Squarespace works) where you show off the app and what it can do. Use an embedded YouTube video for the demo video. You can use a screencast or other explainer video to quickly grab attention and explain the app easily.
Text is useful for describing things but when it comes to an app or something new, people would like to see a demonstration in video form. It catches and holds peoples attention far more than just plain text does. Pictures are nice too but don't capture the moving concepts that you are trying to convey.
Here are some amazing articles and PDF resources. Start at the top and work your way down. That is how we planned the list out.
- Mobile Apps: Marketing and Strategy via Standford University (format: Video, time: Over an hour) (direct YouTube link) by The App Dream. Start at 47:56 if you only want to hear the app marketing portion. The rest is very good material though so I recommend listing to all of it if possible.
- How this woman got her app downloaded millions of times. She talks about how to get a product to sell itself. When a Product Sells Itself: How I Got Millions of People to Download My App
- This article talks about how just building an app won't automatically have people finding it and downloading it but some ways you can get it marketed. If You Build It, They (Probably) Won’t Come
- Life Lessons By Way Of App Marketing by BlueCloud Solutions
- App Marketing 301 – Answers From The Man Who Took Down 45+ Million Downloads by BlueCloud Solutions
- Android vs iOS – Development, Monetization, Marketing by BlueCloud Solutions
- 4 Hour Apps (PDF) by BlueCloud Solutions
- About game marketing by Game Academy
- App & Game Business Guide (PDF) by Game Academy
- Marketing Warfare (book, low cost) by Al Ries and Jack Trout
- Blood, sweat, and tears: How we got from 0 to 500K downloads on a budget via TNW
How To Make Mobile Apps
1) COST OF DEVELOPMENT
2) FUNDING DEVELOPMENT OF MOBILE APPS
3) GAME APPS
4) DO I NEED AN APP?
5) BEFORE DEVELOPING YOUR OWN APP
6) HOW TO MOCKUP AN APP
7) HOW TO MAKE A MOBILE APP WITHOUT CODING USING APP BUILDERS
8) LEARN TO CODE FOR MOBILE APPS EASIER THAN YOU THOUGHT
9) GET APP DEVELOPMENT HELP
10) HOW TO FIND AN APP DEVELOPER
11) TOOLS, RESOURCES, AND STRATEGY FOR APP DEVELOPERS
12) MARKETING MOBILE APPS
13) PAID ADVERTISING AND AD NETWORKS FOR MOBILE APPS
14) MOBILE APPS MONETIZATION STRATEGY AND WORTH