App Marketing

[ahan.tm]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows about some simple iPhone app marketing techniques? I was wondering about advertising. Any comments are welcome!!

Thanks!!

[firewood]

Note that with marketing there is usually a big difference between simple and effective.

Press releases and shotgunning review copies to blogs is a very simple (but also very often ignored) marketing technique. Buying ads someplace is another simple, but possibly more-expensive-than-its-worth technique.

[ArtOfWarfare]

I haven't had much success on the iOS app store as far as marketing. On the Mac App Store, however, I've found that my downloads come from these sources:

10-20% of my downloads come from people clicking on my signature on MacRumors. So managing to get either an up voted post or one that's highly visible because it's on the first page of comments works well for me.

20-30% of my downloads come from Softpedia's entry on Battery Status. I have no idea why it's there (I didn't put it there,) but I don't mind the free promotion.

The remaining 50-70%, I have no idea how they find out about my app. Maybe my Facebook page is having a bigger impact than I think. Maybe it's the google site I set up for battery status. Maybe I just made an app that people search for on the app store.

Edit: I have sent free review copies of my apps to numerous review sites. I have never once had an app reviewed.

[dejo]

Originally Posted by ArtOfWarfare

I haven't had much success on the iOS app store as far as marketing.

What kind of marketing have you done for your iOS app, other than having it listed on the App Store?

Originally Posted by ArtOfWarfare

On the Mac App Store... 10-20% of my downloads come from people clicking on my signature on MacRumors.

Given this, I'm curious why you don't also list your iOS app in your signature.

[MattInOz]

Well in most other industries Happy Customers are your best marketing.
So who are your target customers?
Will they be using your app around other target customers?
What sort of blogs do your target customers read?
Who are the "cool" people, and or the early adopters?

Lots of people use iPhones and iPads these days if your target customers don't tend to go to tech sites, or the regular app review sites then your throwing your money away there. You need to go where they are.

Still it all depends on who your customers are?
Even things like games, you might be better finding young relatives and giving them codes to hand out at school than trying to get a write up on a blog. You need to have a good idea of your target to decide if Viral is going to work better than media marketing.

[ArtOfWarfare]

Originally Posted by dejo

What kind of marketing have you done for your iOS app, other than having it listed on the App Store?

Handing out free promo codes (and codes for free IAP to my free app).
Sending requests for reviews.
Putting them in my signature.

Given this, I'm curious why you don't also list your iOS app in your signature.

I have. Whenever I release a new app, I advertise it in my signature. When my iOS apps were newest, they were in my signature. Now that Battery Status is newest, it's in my signature. I try to actually say a little about the app rather than just list off all the apps I have. Maybe I could replace the Facebook link with a link to a portfolio with the rest of my apps.

[dejo]

Originally Posted by ArtOfWarfare

I have. Whenever I release a new app, I advertise it in my signature. When my iOS apps were newest, they were in my signature. Now that Battery Status is newest, it's in my signature.

Why not list both?

[Agjef]

I did a press release for our first app and that seemed to work initially (we got our analytics from prMac). We were charging a 1.99 so although we had 300 clicks of interested users, no one downloaded until we made it free and we got a surge for a couple of days. Now we are down to zero downloads per day. I refused to waste money on any more app marketing because no one pays attention to ads; I think alot of people go by word of mouth. PPC/CPC, CPM, Google adwords and banner advertising doesn't work at all. It would be nice to get more ideas on how to advertise, though.

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I did a press release for our first app and that seemed to work initially (we got our analytics from prMac). We were charging a 1.99 so although we had 300 clicks of interested users, no one downloaded until we made it free and we got a surge for a couple of days. Now we are down to zero downloads per day. I refused to waste money on any more app marketing because the advertising apps is difficult; I think alot of people go by word of mouth. PPC/CPC, CPM, Google adwords and banner advertising doesn't work at all. It would be nice to get more ideas on how to advertising.

[firewood]

I have zero idea exactly how a few of my apps sell. They randomly get bursts of sales between bouts of nothing. I do zero advertising, nothing on my farcebook page or chirping feed. Still sales start appearing on the trend reports. I google/bing around to see if there are any forums, blog posts or review sites that freshly mention these apps. Nada. I check in the App store for new reviews and rating. Also nothing. It's also not my mom, I've seen her iTunes account.

Best I can assume is:

1) Word of mouth. A happy customer tells a roomful of buddys who have iPhones, and a bunch of them buy.

2) Random search. Some people are searching for something (who knows what), and the gnomes at Apple on that day rank my app before other apps for my search keywords.

3) In some really tiny country where just 1 random sale can put an app on the top 200 lists, that somehow causes people in larger countries to notice it also.

4) Someone randomly ends up on (a get lucky button or something) and actually follows the links on my nearly invisible support web pages for my apps.

Any other possibilites I missed?