App Promo is extremely proud to announce that its new client Julius the Monkey, from Paul Frank is featured in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Come join Julius in his new mobile application Swashbuckler, now available on the AppStore-http://bit.ly/DownloadSwash
Make sure to check out his latest video http://youtu.be/L_X0GQV40Q4 and don’t forget to download the app today-its Free! Happy Thanksgiving to all!
You don’t have to look to far for opportunities to market your app. The best place to start is with you and your networks. In part 9 of 10 of our app marketing 101 series, we look at how to leverage your own networks and find net new ones to help market your app.
Use your Networks to Spread the Word
No one can do a better job of selling your app then you which is why using your own network is extremely important to get the word out.
If you work for a company send out internal announcements to your team announcing the launch, success stories and feature updates for your app. Ask them to download, rate and review your product.
Use your own social networks to post announcements and send links. Both personal (Facebook) and Professional (LinkedIn) networks will come in handy here. Now’s not the time to be shy with your accomplishments. Use your network to push the word out and ask your network to help share the announcement with their own networks.
Update your business materials with a call to action to download your app using a QR code and/or the direct download link. Use this in your email signature, on your business card, and letterhead. Showcase your app on your social networks. Mention it on your voicemail. A good rule of thumb is that anywhere you would traditionally plug your website you should now start to include marketing for your app.
Market at Conferences & Networking Events
As a representative of your app, a great way to increase your network and gain visibility for your product is through attending, sponsoring and speaking at conferences, industry and network events.
If you are speaking at or exhibiting at an event, arrange for a giveaway of your app to the participants. Use promo codes if you have them available. Or issue a one-day sale corresponding to the day of the event. Be sure to update your entire event collateral with a clear call to action to get your app.
Beyond gaining downloads, these events are a great way to grow your communities so come equipped with business cards providing your Facebook page, Twitter and LinkedIn details.
Submit Your App for Awards
Nothing gives credibility faster to an app then awards. But you don’t need to win the grand prize in order to see the benefits.
Getting nominated for awards from credible sources is as much a marketing opportunity as winning one. Of course the latter is a bigger story.
Whether you are nominated or have won an award, update your marketing collateral to reflect this achievement including your app product page and even release notes.
Talk Directly to Users in Forums
Being active within forums related to your app is a great way to seed word of mouth directly with users as well as to gain valuable insight in what your audience would expect from your product.
Become a valuable resource within these forums to further your credibility and sell your app. Ask and answer questions. Add to the conversation.
Avoid hard selling your app. Make the community aware of your app by including it in the signature of your posts. Choose your avatar as your app icon and your forum name your brand or app name.
When you choose to explicitly use forums for marketing keep your messages beneficial to the community and in context to the conversation. Often times Forums have topics started specific for this purpose. It’s a great idea to post your releases here, as often bloggers are members and will crawl these communities for future stories.
In Part 8 of our 10 part app marketing 101 series, we look at a SEM or Search Engine Marketing to help improve the discovery of your application online. A large part of discovery for your app will happen as a result of search. Your goal as an app owner is to make sure that your application comes up in the search results when users are looking for it. But as this is everyone’s goal, you will also need to find ways to make sure that you are not only in the results but that your ranking is high enough for users to find you.
Search engine marketing (SEM) touches on many aspects of your marketing campaign from app description, to press release to configuration of paid ads. So making sure that you spend some time and effort thinking about search engine optimization (SEO) at the start of your marketing will maximize your campaign.
Finding and Selecting Keywords
When it comes to search nothing is more important than the keywords you choose to attach to your product marketing destinations. Keywords are extremely effective tools to ensure that when a user is looking for your app or a service/niche your app fulfills, you show up as a result.
1. Make Your Own List
The best place to start when identifying keywords is to make a list. Think like a user as they approach a search engine. What keywords would they use to get your app as a result? What keywords are you already starting to use in your marketing efforts? Your positioning statement and elevator pitch you mastered describing your app’s purpose and benefits are a great place to gain some valuable keywords.
2. Look To Your Competitors
Add to this list by looking to your competitors. View your competitions keywords by using the Page Source option in your browser. Do some searches within the search engines to see who comes up. Leverage those words that work for you to be sure that your product comes up amongst the rest. You will also want to identify opportunities where relevant keywords produce little competition as these terms have a larger chance of pushing you up the rankings for this result.
3. Ask Your Network
Ask your friends, coworkers or users to describe your app and what terms they would use to search for it. Getting an outside opinion from someone not as close to the product is an optimal way to figure out what actual users need when it comes to search.
4. Use Online Resources
Finally, using Keyword Tools like Google’s AdWord Keyword tool found here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal is a must have resource to utilize when you are selecting your keywords. Use this tool to help choose and validate keywords. In using keyword tools like Google you will be able to learn upfront which keywords should result in the most searches and what the competition is for each. These factors are great ways to focus on
When selecting keywords, be as specific as possible. Avoid focusing solely on vague terms like “app”. Leverage terms that are unique to your product and product offering. Key industry terms are extremely useful as are any sub-brands that may be associated to your app. If you’re apps is a game, for example, use your character names as keywords. If your app is content-based, use your topics and authors.
Additionally, it’s inevitable that your list of keywords will be long. Make sure you understand what your top or priority keywords are versus the long tail terms. Consistently echo the top keywords in as many places as possible.
Keywords will grow as your product grows so don’t see this exercise as a one time deal. Whenever your product grows to add new features or your industry changes to include new terms, make sure that you update the metadata for your marketing pages, product descriptions and other sites.
Maintaining and grooming your keyword list will come in handy for future press releases and paid advertising like AdWords when the time comes for your next marketing campaign.
Where to Use Keywords
The answer is everywhere you can online.
You will definitely want to incorporate these keywords in the metadata of your web marketing site for your application. The most effective way to do this is:
But your site is not the only place you should be using your keywords. Consider anything that will be posted online as possible search results. If this is the case, then you will want to make sure that your keyword strategy is consistent in the following places:
Search Engine Optimization for Mobile
As app owners, the best place for a user to find your product is on their phone. This will increase the chance to download which is your main goal. As your product is mobile, it is definitely important to make sure that you optimize for mobile search.
The biggest step in mobile SEO is to make sure that you have a mobile optimized marketing page. A fully optimized mobile page will rank higher in the mobile search results than that of a desktop page so it is in your best interest to have this created when you are developing your online marketing presence. In addition, this page will be of better use to the users who click on it, as they won’t have to work (pinch, zoom etc.) to use it.
When building your mobile site make sure you consider site performance, rendering and speed. You will also want to leverage the keywords you are using on your desktop version but cater it for mobile.
Remember that search on mobile is on average much shorter than that on web so you will want to think about fewer and shorter keywords for mobile
You should also utilize Google’s Mobile Keyword Tool to see which desktop terms work and don’t work as well using this medium and perhaps what new keywords should be added.
SEO Takes Time So Plant Seeds Early
The key thing to remember for search engine marketing is that it takes time for the keywords to be crawled and used by the search engines.
Knowing this, make sure you give enough time to start to judge your results and make modifications. Also, you may wish to start your efforts early through a coming soon page both for desktop or mobile even before your product is released – including your priority keywords both in the metadata and visual text on these pages.
If you are in a hurry, you can try to speed things up by submitting your sites to the engines directly but there is no guarantee on the turn around for these requests.
One of the most effective short-term marketing tactics is the use of promotions or contests to spike activity for your product whether this be downloads, purchase or in-app usage. Attaching a sense of timeliness or urgency to any marketing campaign is a proven way to maximize your results.Whether the time of year provides you with an opportunity to promote your app or you choose to create a moment to put attention to your app through a contest – a valid reason to market your app. In this week’s app marketing 101 series article, we review the ins and outs of using promotions and contests to effectively market your application.
Leverage the Calendar Year
You only have to look as far as your calendar to find key marketing opportunities. Promoting your app around events that are relevant to your app niche or purpose is a great way to increase visibility in context to the right audience.
Some great event-based marketing opportunities are:
Promotions during this time can take many forms but all use the calendar event to form positioning for the market campaign. For mother’s day, as an example, you may run a paid media campaign focusing on why Mom’s use your app. Later on that year you might run a campaign focused on how this is a must-have app for students during Back to School.
Identify the event, find true relevance in it as it relates to your product and then run a promotion around it.
Some promotion ideas include:
Price Promotions
Discounting your price, or putting your app on “sale” is one of those ways to promote your app around an calendar event. But you don’t always need to tie it to a seasonal milestone.
Price promotions can take many forms. You can offer your audience a limited offer, free trials, discounts and markdowns or even a giveaway.
It is important that when entering a price promotion you have a plan with clear goals in mind and you have also analyzed the download and usage data and feedback from your users to see if this is the right thing for your app.
If your app is doing well with the pricing model you have established, it may not be the best time to alter the price. Pricing changes are best used when traffic is low and you are looking to increase new users.
Frequent price changes can signal a weakness or deficiency to your users and competition and can also start to train your audience to wait till there is a sale to purchase so be wary of how many times you go to make a pricing change.
Contests
There is a reason why contests are the first thing that comes to mind when you start thinking about putting together a promotion for your app. If done right, contests can create a flurry of traffic and downloads due to their time sensitive and often urgent nature.
When thinking about running a contest, make sure you have a specific goal in mind. Are you looking for downloads? Activity within the app? Viral sharing? Feedback?
Once you have your goal in mind, it’s time to be creative to come up with the contest model and prizing.
Keep these in mind when developing your contest:
Ultimately a contest is only good if people know about it so make that part of the contest plan includes how to get the word out. Using a social network, like Facebook, to run a contest is effective in this way, as interactions with the contest will instantly become available in the participants wall featuring it to their friends.
Prizing
Prizing is a key element in any contest. You will need to gain prizing that is both enticing enough to make people participate while still keeping the prize relevant to your app to ensure that you are attracting the right users.
If your app is premium, always give away the app for free as a lower tier prize in the contest.
Beyond what the prize is, make sure you understand the legalities around giving it away. Be familiar with contesting regulations in the regions you wish the contest to run in.
Make sure to log in on 10/2 at 10am to watch @Apppromo being interviewed Advertising Week streamed on @HuffingtonPost–http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtvarv_advertising-week-awe_news …
App-Promo is very proud to make the list of the Top IOS and Android Mobile Game Developer Resources:http://bit.ly/mobilegamedev This is a great honour that comes as result of two years of hard work, great clients, partners and an industry that continues to grow. We will continue with our promise to keep ahead of the curve and deliver consistent and solid results for our clients in app marketing, app strategy and app monetization services! For more information about our services, contact one of our representatives. We look forward to starting a conversation on the business of your application.
An important part of getting the word out for of application is the use of press. In this week’s App Marketing 101 article we look at how to write an effective press release and use PR and Blogger connections to maximize visibility of your app online.
Whether you take a formal route of writing and distributing a press release or informally reach out to your favorite blogs, the value of being featured online is both immediate and long term.
Short term, readers of blogs, news sites and traditional publications where your release was picked up will read your story. Longer term, however, those stories that were published online will be an important part of your search engine marketing, being available as results when users search for keywords related to your product.
Writing a Press Release
Before writing any press release, make sure you clearly understand what message you want to convey to your audience. Ask yourself:
Launch announcements, success stories, use of new software features or technology or how your app may be advancing efforts in your industry are all great ideas for a press release. But really, anything is release worthy as long as you clarify the benefit for users to read your story.
Press releases are best when kept short and to the point. Usually between 400-600 words is effective. It is also wise to organize your release into small paragraphs so readers can quickly and easily digest your story. Keeping your release shot will help you focus on only the most important information as well as have it all ready for republishing online especially as a blog post.
The two most important elements of your press release are your headline and your first paragraph.
Your headline needs to be catchy, descriptive and illustrate what the news is and why it’s a benefit to the audience. It should always include your app name.
If your headline provides the what and why, your first paragraph will focus on the who, where and when. Your first paragraph continues to flush out details related to your headline and should always include your call to action, which, most always will be to download your app.
Your press release should be written so that it provides all of the salient points of your story. For your app, you will want to make sure it’s clear:
You will want to make sure that you have all the necessary elements in your release for bloggers and the media to use to create a story. This should also include a quote from yourself, a brand owner or C-Level executive that can easily be lifted to include in any story.
Lastly, be sure to include a valid and available contact at the end of your press release that can answer questions, provide more information or arrange for an interview.
Above all else, make sure your news is interesting, spelled correctly and is accurate.
Your Release & Search Engine Optimization
A significant benefit of your press release is that it will exist on the internet as a search result. This is why writing your release with keywords in mind is extremely important.
When it comes to optimizing your release for search, focus on your headline and your first paragraph (especially the first few lines of your press release).
Leverage keywords you have confirmed work through paid media campaigns and your website if they are available. Lean on available online tools like Google’s Keyword Tool to help identify what words provide the most results.
Using your keywords will take some creativity. You will want to make sure that these words aren’t just listed randomly. And especially do not want to risk
Distributing Your Press Release
The most effective way to distribute your press release is through the use of online PR sites. They are especially useful if you don’t’ have connections with the press or have a press list created.
PR sites not only distribute your release to their network. They will also provide analytics and reporting which will illustrate the number of impressions your release has been read, the number of media deliveries as well as the number and names of publications that have picked your story up.
Bloggers & You
PR websites are great for distribution, but their networks often don’t focus on the independent blogger.
Gaining blog attention is critical when it comes to today’s press. The intimate, independent and niched nature of blogs has made them an essential information online source for all audiences.
Identify blogs that are related to your app. Mobile blogs, technology blogs and blogs by platform are a great place to start before looking to industry and subject matter verticals.
Start building relationships with those bloggers by reading, commenting, following and liking their site. The better your relationship with a blogger, the more likely they will pay attention to an email from you when you have some news to share.
When contacting bloggers with news, don’t just send them your press release. Do some of the work for them but providing a synopsis in your email focusing on the five W’s: who, what, why, when and where questions any story needs. Include screenshots, links to videos and your app store product page and most importantly, promo codes or actual binaries to test and try out your app.
Maintaining a list of bloggers that you have reached out and noting your success or interaction with them will come in handy for future stories you will want to run. Overtime, this will become your own press list you can you use for ongoing press for your app.
Prepare for Interviews
With the word out to the media and bloggers, you will need to be prepared for interviews. Interviews can come in many forms: over the phone, via webcam, in person or by email.
A great interview tip is to minimize the amount of talking you are doing and let the interviewer guide you through the process. Stick to answering the questions. Keep it simple and to the point.
Requests for interviews happen most often after your press release or outreach so make sure that you are accessible and are on top of your emails and answer unknown numbers on your phone.
Utilize Review Sites
Beyond blogs a great online resource for app discovery are app review sites.
Most app review destinations have a link on their site to submit your app. Don’t forget to include promo codes if your app is premium. Most often, your press release won’t come in handy for these types of sites, but the elements in your press release – app purpose, audience, benefits and features, will, so be sure to leverage this information when you submit your app.
Although most of these sites are free, many of them have started using an advertising model where you pay to be featured or reviewed on their site. Prices are usually less than paid media but do your research before paying for placement. You will want to know the traffic and the audience of the site before sending the funds.
Thanks to everyone who attended today’s presentation on How to be a No.1 App and not Lose Money at AndroidTO. It was a great session with a full house and it was really fun to present in the Scotiabank Movie Theatre! As promised please find enclosed the complete presentation for everyone to download. Please feel free to reach out to us or tweet us @Apppromo is you have any questions. You know you are a success when someone asks for your autograph! As always, we are eager to start a conversation about the business side of your applications to help improve discovery and overall success with your Android or other platform applications.
Welcome back to our weekly App Marketing 101 10-part series. In part 5, we tackle best practices in use of Paid Media to increase discovery of your app. Unlike some of the other marketing opportunities we have outline in our 101 series, advertising almost always requires funds to include in your marketing plan. That being said, paid advertising is both a great way to create discovery en masse and gain valuable insights on keywords and your demographic.
How to Create a Successful Ad
If you have some budget available, you can purchase ad space via the many ad networks that exist. Most are self-serve and are easy to access and utilize.
In order to maximize return on your investment for your ad purchase, most of your effort should go into creating your ad.
Before creating any ad, make sure you have a clear idea of your campaign objective. For the most part this will be to increase downloads for your app. Whatever the objective, make sure you keep your ad creative focused on achieving the copy you write to the image you select.
Keep your ads simple. There is not very much real estate to play around with for most of your ad opportunities, so you won’t want to clutter your ad with a lot of copy, busy backgrounds or too many images. Many ad networks cap the character limit image size forcing you to be extremely creative in how you get your message across.
Despite character and image restrictions, you will need to play around with copy and design to ensure that your ad grabs attention and is enticing enough to meet your objective. Images are the first thing that catches a users eye online and play a powerful role in the feeling and mood you are trying to convey with your message.
Mention your pricing or call out the promotion you are advertising in your ad. This is especially useful if your app is free or if a price change such as a giveaway or discount is in place for your product.
Above all else, include a strong call to action. If you are looking for downloads of your app, make sure you say, “Download this app”. Be clear on what you are asking your audience. Ads are not the place to be vague, so don’t be afraid to be direct and ask for what you are looking for from this ad campaign.
Select the Ad Opportunities Best Suited for Your Audience
When it comes to advertising online, there are many opportunities to consider. Think about who your audience is and where they are more likely to find you to make your decision on where to spend your budget.
Paid Search: Search ad opportunities like Google’s AdWords allows you to purchase simple text or text & image ads. This is a great way to test out your SEO strategy and the results from these campaigns should always go back into making future search decisions.
Always Target Your Ads
Almost all ad networks will allow you to target your ads based on demographic. Always take advantage of this feature when trafficking your ad. This will, of course, mean that you will need a good idea of who your audience is for your app.
For ad opportunities, like Facebook, this will not only mean the basics like country, gender, age group and education level but also includes interests, martial status and workplace/occupation.
At launch, the choices you make for your demographic will most likely be based on stereotypes, commonsense and experience. But as your app matures in the marketplace and through the various marketing and ad campaigns your run you should be looking to the data available to you to refine your target.
Testing Ads is the Key To Ad Success
Testing your ads is an important tactic to ensure that you are maximizing your budget. Its extremely common to traffic one or two campaigns that have minor changes between the two to understand what works and doesn’t work. This method is called split-testing and should become a common practice to exercise when purchasing an ad campaign.
When split-testing ads you will want to keep on top of the metrics your ad provider has available for you in order to make decisions on what is working and what needs to change. Split-testing works by taking a single ad campaign and running multiple versions of that ad with minor changes. The easiest and usually the most effective change is through the ad image you decide to run with your message.
Before making any decision on the ads you are testing, let them run for a while. A couple of days is usually all you need to see what response you are getting from the ads you have running. Look at the click through rate (CTR) as the key metric for success with your ads. Compare this interaction between ads and keep those that work and kill those that are not maximizing your budget.
Social Media has become the holy grail for marketers and it’s no wonder as if done properly a brand can see tremendous success for significantly less money than traditional marketing and advertising.
Where social media saves you in money, it makes up in its need of significant time and effort. If you choose to use these as part of your marketing strategy for your app, make sure you are invested to keep your networks active.
Social networks need constant and consistent attention if they are to grow and be a successful part of your marketing strategy.
Facebook Page
The first thing that comes to anyone’s mind when you mention social media is Facebook.
The effectiveness of Facebook comes from its social reach. Interactions with your product Facebook page by one person has a ripple effect with their entire network, meaning you only need to convert one to instantly communicate to many.
Facebook’s made it pretty easy for brands to market their products through Pages. Your first step is to create a Facebook page for your app. If you already have a page for your brand, update it to market your app.
Some key marketing opportunities to take advantage on this page:
Your Facebook page will only be effective if you have traffic and fans so you will need to include plans to grow this page as part of your marketing. Running Facebook ads is one way to do this. But also be sure to include mention of your Facebook page in all of your marketing collateral including your website.
As you gain fans to your page, you are going to want to interact with them. Some effective ways to keep them engaged are:
Facebook’s “insight” reporting is extremely useful and, beyond the social reach factor, is the other reason marketers and brands gravitate towards using it. Be sure to review your Facebook reports often to get a good understanding of your demographic and use this information to better your marketing and your product.
The key to Twitter is to see it more as a broadcast tool than a community builder. You still have an opportunity to grow a following and interact with your audience using this social network, but it is less personal compared to Facebook.
Be sure to update your profile on Twitter with your app logo. Use the 160 characters they give you to state what your app is about and include the download URL. You can also take advantage of the background and new cover photo which are available visual assets on this page to market your product.
Once you are up and running start following to get followed. Follow people and brands that align well with your offering. The secret to growing your Twitter community is to follow others. When someone follows you, follow them back.
You can increase the discovery of your Twitter page through the use of Twitter directories but avoid opportunities to pay for followers as Twitter heavily frowns on this and could suspend your account.
Like Facebook, you are going to want to keep your Twitter feed active. And also like Facebook, you aren’t going to do well by hard selling your audience. Make sure you treat your tweets like micro-blog posts – something meaningful to you, your brand and what your app is all about.
It’s best to construct your tweets even shorter than the 140 characters Twitter gives you to set them up for re-tweeting. Re-tweeting is basically re-posting somebody’s tweet in your Twitter feed as is as commonly done as creating new Tweets. Your feed should be a good mixture of Tweets you write and re-Tweets from your followers.
You will also want to make sure that you are using hashtags in your Tweets. Hashtags are used by Twitter to organize Tweets. This makes it easy for users to search and find Tweets related to a certain topic or subject matter. Become familiar with the hashtags your followers use and incorporate them into your own posts. The use of hashtags will help introduce your Tweets to an audience outside of your following providing an opportunity for you to gain more followers.
YouTube
If a picture is worth a thousand words than a video is worth a million. YouTube is undeniably the powerhouse of online video that is why it is a fantastic marketing opportunity for your app.
Create a YouTube Channel for your app making sure that your app brand/icon; description and download links are in your profile.
Next, shoot and upload your videos.
You are definitely going to want to create a demo video for your app. These are becoming exceedingly common and can be leveraged in some app store product pages as well as your other social networks and your website.
For any video you upload, take some time to write a description that will convince users to view but is also packed with keywords to help your video show up in the search results.
YouTube also equips you with the ability to embed links in your video through the use of annotations. This is especially effective in your app videos to help drive users to download the app right from the video.