You’ve spent hours of time on the development of an iPhone or iPad application. You’ve spent time making sure your app works right and looks a certain way and now that it’s done, you’re convinced that your app is so good it’s just going to sell itself. Wrong, think again. 
It’s not a secret that you need to do more than just throw your new application up on the app store and hope for the best. Not all apps are good enough to sell themselves, and in fact majority of them fall short from even attracting a modest number of users. The current structure of the app store is not designed to help developers promote their apps, even if you do create the most amazing app anyone has ever seen. With over 150,000 apps on the app store, good design alone isn’t going to skyrocket you to the top of the charts. An effective marketing plan combined with a well designed app however, can elevate all those hard spent efforts to the top of the pack in record time and make all your efforts worthwhile.
In order for people to download and use your app, they have to find it first and that can be difficult to achieve. The only way that large numbers of people are going to know that your app exists to download, is if an all out effort is made to get it out there in the public eye. You need to be social with it, be visible and talk about your app every you chance you get. The more public your app is, the more visibility it will have and the more downloads it will get.
Sounds simple, right? Well not exactly. If you’ve got the money you can hire an agency that understands your product and the audience you are targeting and let them drive the marketing efforts. However, if like most startups or indie developers or anyone else who’s on a budget then you need another more affordable alternative. Guess what, you’re in luck. You can successfully market your app with 1 or 2 people dedicated to the efforts. Ideally those people should have a background in marketing, but if you don’t have the budget to hire someone to help, you can accomplish a lot of it yourself with a little determination and focus.
What we’re really talking about is time and expertise. For many startups and indie developers on tight budgets, the combination of time and the right tools can go a long way when it comes to getting your app off the ground without hiring a large marketing firm.
TIP: Nothing can replace good design and well executed code, so start there first and make sure you have something that is worth promoting. The sad reality is that even the poorly crafted apps (and we know there are thousands of these) can get higher visibility than their better counterparts, simply because they’ve put more marketing behind them.
So how can your great app rise above the rubbish that populates the searches of the Apple app store and do it on a limited budget? Read on for some more tips.
Pricing: 
Consider price. There are thousands of apps currently for sale for less than $.99 cents. There is another category of apps that are in the $2-$10 range and then a smaller collection of apps that are offered at more than $10. What does this say about the value of most of the apps on the app store? That they are cheap. What does cheap imply? Usually cheap in my book means of lesser quality. iPhone users quickly tire of applications, according to a new study by Flurry Analytics. The number of iPhone owners that use an app at least once a week fell from 40 percent after the first month to 5 percent by the sixth month, researchers said. It’s reasonable to assume that many of these applications are the cheap ones they downloaded on a whim and then really didn’t find any value in them after the initial novelty wore off.
This clearly indicates that many of the apps are of low value. Often apps are downloaded in spite of the fact that their descriptions are poor or it’s impossible to tell what they really do because they are cheap to download. A free or $1 app is easy to download and easy to abandon minutes or days later. However, apps that require more money to download has the perception of higher value content and features that include updates and continued support from the developers. When listing an app at a higher price, these are likely the expectations as well as if met, these are the apps that will be recommended and may stick around awhile longer on the device. I’m not knocking free apps, there are a lot of great one out there, many of which are tied to web services or other services. What I am pointing out that there is an inherent difference in the perception of value in an application that costs $.99 verses $9.99.
Ask yourself a few questions before you decide on a price. How much time did I or my team spend on this app? Do I have any plans to keep it updated or invest more time in it?
I encourage app developers to think about pricing when they are developing their apps. Are you creating a cheap, low quality app or are you creating something of value? If you’re developing something good, your idea is well thought out and you spent time on the design and the interactions of your application than by all means set a price that says there is value in what you’ve put together. Now I’m not advocating a bunch of $100 apps on the app store but I am advocating that developers need to feel that their work is respected and appreciated and consumers want apps that work and do what they expect and don’t mind paying a few more dollars for that quality. With that in mind I believe that there is a sweet spot to setting the right price for your app.
TIP: Spend the extra time making your app good. Take the extra few days to make sure the UI makes sense to your users and in the end, charge for the quality of your work. If the quality is there, then the downloads will be there too, as well as the repeat customers.
Visual Brand:
Whether or not you have thought about your app or company as a brand, the icon, the UI in the app itself, your website and the language you use to describe the application are all part of the perception of your app and your brand. Everything visual relating to your app should be of high quality, be polished and well thought out. Nothing says “poor quality application” like a bad icon. After all, the first thing people see on the App store is the application icon. Even an application that is really well done will get overlooked if it has a poor or irrelevant icon.
I’ve often skipped downloading an application because even though it sounded like it would do what I wanted, the icon was so poorly done that I couldn’t believe that the quality of the app would be good. If you don’t take the time to make the icon look professional than why would I assume you took time in developing the code.
Tip: Spend time creating a good icon that is relevant to what your application does. Make a good first impression.
Application Website:
Put up a page or a website for the application that has a similar feel and look to the application itself. You don’t have to hire a web design company to do an elaborate website for your product launch. What you do need is 1 page online that clearly showcases the application, gives some information about the features, and some background information on who developed it, and if there are any plans for updates or continued maintenance of the app. Keep it simple and make sure that the quality of the images and the design matches that of your application. Have contact information on the website and if you haven’t launched the app yet, offer a signup form to be notified when the app is available for download.
A few good examples of app websites and pages:
- Tap Tap Tap
- Tapbots
- WordPress for iPhone
- Tap Tapas Parking app
- Bottle Rockets NPR app
- Tweetie
- OmniFocus
- OpenTable for iPhone
Target Audience: 
Figure out who is going to use your app BEFORE you launch it. What problem does your app solve, or what will someone use it for? Will your users likely be women, men, doctors, teenage boys, moms over 40, people who like cats, photographers etc. Where do they spend their time hanging out online, what do they like to do? Are they on cooking sites, parenting sites, game review sites, niche sites, online forums etc. Spend some time looking at these websites and online communities. Are there other apps being mentioned here? What type of apps are they? All of this information will help you identify who your target audience is so that when you do start promoting your app, you are reaching out to people who will likely be interested in what you have to say.
Marketing Efforts:
Once you have the first 4 things accomplished, it’s time to focus on actual marketing efforts. You can do much of this yourself with one or two people helping. If you don’t have time to dedicate to marketing yourself but have the budget then hire someone with experience in online product launches to help you. You want someone who’s familiar with social media and marketing online. You don’t need a huge team of people, just one experienced one should be able to help you make a big impact. If you don’t have time or money then you should beg your spouse, or your friends to help but by all means figure out a way to get it done.
Critical Tools for Marketing Apps
Online Channels
- Website/blog – Your App’s page. Make sure you use a distinct and easy to remember URL and that you have good photos and a demo of your application
- Social Media & Online Forums: Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, MySpace, YouTube and the list goes on. People you identified in your target audience above will be on social media and in online forums and may be interested in learning about your app and sharing it with their community.
- Targeted Review Sites: these are extremely important for helping to promote your app. There are numerous iPhone review sites online and lots of people reviewing apps. Getting your app reviewed by a few high trafficked sites can go a long way in quickly increasing your visibility and downloads. When you approach a reviewer, make sure that you’ve done your homework and you know what kind of apps they review. Just because they reviewed 1 iPhone app about travel doesn’t mean they are going to be interested in your new dragon game. More often than not, reviewers have their own niches of what they like to review and want to know that you’re familiar with them and their material before your pitch them a review of your new app.
- Press Releases: a well written press release that includes examples of how your app is different or solves a problem can go a long way in getting publicity for your app. There are online press release services that for a few hundred dollars will distribute your release to thousands of journalists, bloggers, newsrooms and RSS feeds as well as post an SEO copy of it. There are also free services for press release distribution that send to blogs and RSS feeds worldwide. Regardless of your budget you can get the news of your app launch distributed through a press release.
- Analytical Tools: With all the above activities, you need to have a way to track the “buzz” that is generated around your app as well as some hard stats on downloads and rankings.
- User Downloads for iTunes Connect – Tap Metrics , App Figures , AppViz , AppStatz , MajicRank ,
- Other tracking tools: Mobclix , PinchAnalytics , Mobilytics
- Tracking Social Media & Site Traffic: Google Analytics , IceRocket , Socialmention , HowSociable , Monitter , Trackur and there are many more
- Update your web page with info on the app, use good keywords and make sure it’s search engine optimized. Place a “coming soon” message or something similar so that people know that it will be released soon. Offer an email signup to be notified when it’s released. Start promoting your webpage even before the app is on the app store.
- Use social media carefully. You can create interest in your app with tact and without annoying an entire community by spending some time up front learning about the communities of people you are targeting. *you don’t want to send out a bunch of advertisement style messages for your app to people who are not interested. That’s the quickest way to get slammed down. Instead engage communities in your target audience that will likely be interested. Test the waters with a few key targeted messages about a feature or problem you’ve solved with your app that add value to the conversations going on. Ask for feedback and share information. Use searches and keywords to help relevant topics and people.
- Write a press release and schedule it to release the day after your app goes live on the app store.
- Track media who write reviews about your type of application. Read the reviews, see what they like and don’t like. Read user comments on the reviews. Observe the market space. This can be very helpful in finding ways to talk about your application. For instance if all the other similar apps don’t provide a feature and comments in their reviews always mention that they want it, chances are you will get more traction by promoting that feature that is in demand.
While this is certainly not a comprehensive list, it illustrates that there are a lot of free tools that you can use to analyze your traffic and your app visibility and help you start down the road of successfully marketing your iPhone or iPad app.
Marketing Your App
Assuming you have all of the above; a website setup, good looking icons and images and you know who will likely be interested in the kind of app you’ve created, you are ready to start marketing and promoting your app.
You can start promoting your app even before it gets approved and becomes live on the app store. Many successful apps start out by creating interest in their coming app through a handful of online marketing channels.
Some ideas on how to go about doing this
TIP: Don’t start blindly sending out information on your product to media, that’s the quickest way to end up in the delete file. Start out by learning who is influential about the kind of app you’ve developed and find out what kinds of things interest them. What are they currently reviewing etc. Spend some time getting to know them and make yourself visible to them through comments, social media and other avenues before you pitch a review of your app to them. They likely get hundreds of emails a day so keep your message very short, to the point and give them the reason why they should pay attention to you above all the other 100 apps pitches they’ve received.
The most successful of marketing efforts come with creativity and drive. When you start a marketing campaign think of it as a snowball. What are the little things you can do initially to get the ball rolling. Keep adding things and ideas to your campaign in order to increase it’s size and breadth and keep the ball rolling. Just make sure you do keep control of it all times.
Just a little time spent crafting a well thought out marketing plan for your app can guarantee you more success with your iPhone or iPad launch.
