Let’s say that you’ve just finished creating your new mobile app and you’ve published it to the Google Play and iOS App Store. Now what can you do to get people to use your app? As a mobile developer, your skillset is obviously based around building the app so when it comes to promoting it and getting installs it’s easy to feel lost.

This post will give you some of the basics for promoting your app, establishing a username and collecting feedback from those users.

The Basics of App Promotion

Just because you’ve published your app doesn’t mean that you’re going to suddenly have a ton of people downloading your app. There are a few basics of getting people to install your app that you can use to get consistent growth for your app.

• Paid Promotion:
• Free/Organic Growth:
• PR/Word of Mouth:

Strategies for Driving App Installs

Email List

One of the most valuable assets you can have when promoting a digital product is an email list. This allows you to communicate directly with potential and existing customers. If you provide valuable content in your emails and show how your app can help people, you can drive tons of new installs and buzz around your product.

Social Media

People spend an average of 3 hours per day on social media. If you aren’t promoting your app on social media, you’re missing out on a big opportunity. Social media is also very powerful for driving app installs because people are likely already on their mobile device, so they can install directly to their device.

Even if you aren’t driving installs directly from social media, it’s also a valuable tool for building brand recognition for your app. Users may need to come across your app’s name multiple times before they understand what your app does and actually trust your brand name.

Reddit

Reddit is a powerful marketing tool that often gets overlooked. Because “marketing” on Reddit gets you banned quickly people assume that they need to look for other methods for promoting their products.

Reddit has communities (called subreddits) dedicated to specific topics. This makes it simple to find people who are interested in your app’s industry or competitors. While you probably shouldn’t just post and say “download my app!”, there are a number of ways that you can increase awareness on Reddit. One strategy that we’ve tested out is sharing any articles that have been written about your app, but not by you directly. This will get people reading about your product without feeling like they’re being sold to.

Blogging/SEO

Blogging and using SEO tactics on your website can bring in a ton of traffic. If you can rank for keywords related to your product or industry, you can get thousands of people visiting your site per day looking for information about your product. As you gain traction on your website, Google and other search engines will start to recognize your site as an authority in your industry.

Posting blogs on your website is one of the easiest ways to get more content on your site for Google to index. The main benefit to gaining organic search traffic to your site is that this traffic is sustained and fairly consistent. Once a page on your site ranks for a high volume keyword, you can get thousands of visitors per day with no additional effort or money.

For example, if you have a restaurant review app, you can write articles related to the best restaurants in different cities. Then if people are searching for “best restaurants in Los Angeles”, they will come to your site to read about the best restaurants near them and then you can pitch your app within the post.

Guest Posts

If your website is new and you haven’t developed a reputation, one of the best ways to raise awareness for your brand and your app is to get guest posts on other sites related to your app or industry. This allows you to reach other sites’ readers and increase the exposure of your content.

Not only will posts on larger sites increase awareness, they can also help you build backlinks to your own website to improve your site’s Google rankings. There are many ways to get guest posts published. You can reach out to sites and see if they are interested in covering your product, or you can provide a complete article for them to share on their site.

Press Releases

Press releases are another way to get media, including TV, newspapers, and online publications, to cover you product. You can send out press releases to announce the launch of your product, announce product updates, or to provide insight about a topic in your field.

One crucial element of using press releases to promote your product is having a well written releases. The goal of a press release is to catch journalists’ attention and get them to write about your product. If your press release contains errors or isn’t clearly written, it will simply get passed by and you won’t get any press coverage. You can write your press release yourself or hire a PR firm to do it for you.

YouTube

YouTube is one of the largest “search engines” in the world. It is a great place to provide informational content about your products and if a video starts to get a lot of views, you can get a ton of traffic and installs from your YouTube channel. If your app is related to video or has strong visual elements, YouTube can be the perfect place to showcase your app’s features and functionality.