Seven Things to Include in Your App Marketing Plan

Marketing is crucial to the success of an application. It is important to do as many things as possible when making an app marketing plan. As app stores are becoming more and more competitive, it is becoming difficult for new apps to be found. Hence, a robust marketing plan is needed for every app that goes out there.

This is by far the best marketing technique and is used by almost all the big game companies out there. For anyone who is launching his first app, it might still be possible to do this by finding other companies who may be willing to exchange ads with you. You can contact the app owners and ask them to partner with you in exchange for ads or money. This might be a tough task to execute but if done well, this could land you a lot of downloads. Many app owners have abandoned their apps and can also do this. There are many cross-app marketing tools out there that you can use for this depending on your needs.

There is a huge market for non-English speakers in many countries. It is always a good idea to localize your app for multiple markets. Localizing an app doesn’t cost much. Ask your developer to provide you with the excel sheet file with all the words used in the app and get it translated by someone on Odesk or Elance. This may open many markets for your app. If you want to increase the user base of the app, it might be a good idea to use Facebook ads or buy ads from non-English speaking markets like China, India, or the Middle East where the cost per click for ads is much cheaper than in English-speaking countries.

Social media integration where you allow your users to share your app on popular social media websites helps a lot. If it’s a game app, allowing score or success sharing on every level of completion helps you drive a lot of users to your app. It’s a free advertisement of your app, especially in the case of Facebook where it's coming from their circle of friends.

It is a good idea to include a direct feedback option. This way you can reduce the negative feedback that would otherwise come as an app review which may hurt. If you cannot afford to put expensive development hours into this, a Google form in Webview might be a good idea. You can also keep changing it as you desire without requiring you to submit a new version of the app.

It’s cheap to set up a website these days. If you are considering press releases or sending app review requests, it is a good idea to set up a website because of the content that will back-link to your site. This will also help you get downloads from search engines.

A demo video is very important. Many users prefer watching a video of an app before downloading it. You can link it in your press release and it will quickly give them an idea of your app. It is very important if your app is paid, users can see the video and see what they are paying for.

Setting up social media pages on Facebook, and an account on Twitter will help you distribute your content like videos, news related to your app, etc. to your users. These pages should be advertised on your website as well as inside your app. Mostly your first user on the pages would be those who have already downloaded the app. Whenever they do something on your page like a video or a photo, it will help you get more downloads from their network of friends. These pages will also be helpful when you launch apps in the future as you can market to your existing user base.