Home > Articles > Business & Management

Eleven Low-Cost or No-Cost Ways to Promote Your iPhone/iPad and Android Apps

Developers of iPhone and Android apps must also consider how they will approach marketing their app when released. Jeff Hughes shares 11 low-cost or no-cost ways to promote your apps. If you are consistent in your marketing efforts you will be successful selling your app.
Like this article? We recommend

It seems that everyone has a Top 10 list, so I will break tradition and provide you with a Top 11 list with ways to promote your iPhone or Android app that are either free or low cost. All promotions require the cost of your time to develop programs and to reach your target audience, of course.

Marketing your app by simply posting it to the App Store or Android Market is not enough[md]you need to spend some time promoting it. Consider the following activities when you launch your app.

Seek Reviews from Any Site that Appears to Be a Fit for Your Type of App

Search on Google and Yahoo for online magazines and other publications that might have an interest in giving your app a review. These sites don't have to be app review sites. If you have developed a gardening app, look for publications that are focused on gardening and might be interested in giving your app a writeup.

Publications often look for new stories to write for their magazines, and writing about an app is a new thing for many of them. Don't just submit your app to app review sites.

With that said, you should also submit your app for review in as many app review sites as you can. Try to submit to at least 30-50 sites as soon as your app is launched on the App Store or Android Market. Keep an ongoing list of sites and the dates you submitted your review requests. This way, you can track who you've sent requests to and when.

It is difficult to get the attention of review sites because so many developers are requesting reviews, but you should still submit to them. It's a numbers game; the more you submit your app to reviewers, the more likely you'll get someone to review it. You will get some reviews; you just have to be persistent.

Word of Mouth

Good old-fashioned word of mouth can help you get the word out about your app. Tell everyone about your new app, including co-workers, friends, and relatives. You should send an email out to all those people in your personal address book announcing your new app.

If you attend any events such as luncheons, seminars, forums, or app meetups, be sure to talk about your app to all who will listen. Hand out a "datasheet" or "information sheet" to those whom you meet so they will remember your app.

Create an App Walkthrough

Create and upload a SlideShare.net presentation that includes a slide show walkthrough with screenshots of your app and a description of features and benefits. Supported upload formats include PowerPoint, OpenOffice, Apple Keynote, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, iWork Pages, and PDFs.

Share publicly and optimize text content (title, description, etc.) within your posting to optimize search engine placement. An app walkthrough will help your audience understand what your app does and its key benefits.

Promote from Ads Within Your Apps

Promote your app in interactive ads contained within other smartphone apps. Ads offer very high levels of engagement, including click-to-call, click-to-video, and click-to-buy. A growing number of ad networks provide in-app advertising options with audience targeting that includes age, gender, geography, category, carrier, device, and handset.

Pricing models for iPhone/iPad and Android include "bid per click" and "per engagement." Conversion tracking and reporting are standard offerings. Check out the following vendors: Medialets, Quattro Wireless, AdMob, and VideoEgg.

Share by Using AddThis

Wherever you promote your app online, increase your traffic and page rank by using an AddThis button. It's easy to install on your blog or website pages, and it makes it easy for your visitors to share your content with their friends and colleagues who use Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, TypePad, Blogger, WordPress, etc.

YouTube Promotions

Create a YouTube video about your new app. Set up an account for free. In your video, highlight the ease of use, features, and benefits. Your YouTube Channel can include a collection of your own videos and memorable URLs as well. Tag each of your videos and your channel with highly targeted terms that match your app's type. YouTube provides analytics insight regarding the number of views, visitors by demographics, and popularity.

Visitors can choose to become friends and subscribers. You can choose to display visitor comments and attach your existing blog. Promote your YouTube app video with your own sponsored ad within YouTube. Ads appear in the search results along the right side of the page. This is managed through a standard Google AdWords account.

LinkedIn promotion

On LinkedIn, join up to 50 of the 300,000+ groups that meet your target audience criteria. Within those groups, click the News tab and post a link to your press release or blog about your new app. Within your LinkedIn profile "Websites" section, link to your website, showcasing your app. By choosing "Other" as the website type, you can customize the name you use to identify your app. LinkedIn is a powerful mechanism to help you get the word out about your app.

Blog Promotion

Post an announcement about your new app to your blog. Create a blog if you don't already have one. WordPress or Blogger are good choices and they're free! The analytical reporting provided reveals your referring traffic sources and an indication as to which of your blog posts are most popular. Be sure to integrate your blog into LinkedIn (click Applications) and Facebook.

You can also reach out to bloggers who are knowledgeable about your app's type by doing a Google or Yahoo search. If you are selling a dating app, search on "dating bloggers" to find influential bloggers with whom you can contact to talk about your app.

Facebook Fan Page

Set up a Facebook Fan page to showcase your new app. It's free and easy, and your page can be found publicly in the search engines. When people join your Fan page, it's published in their news feed for all their friends to read. It's a great viral marketing tool!

Also post your Facebook link to your product home page so that you can be found on Facebook.

Write an Article about Your App and Do a Digg Promotion

Write an article about your app and do a Digg promotion. Submit your app article or video online at Digg.com. Your submission will immediately appear in "Upcoming Stories," where other members can find it and, if they like it, they'll Digg it.

Once a submission has earned a critical mass of Diggs, it becomes "popular" and jumps to the homepage in its category.

Collaboration

Find businesses that target similar markets to yours, but are not considered to be competitors. Reach out to influencers that specialize in the field that relates to your app.

For example, public speakers, book authors, and other thought leaders are wonderful allies for collaboration. How can you get them talking about your app to their captive audiences? What can you offer them in exchange? Don't forget about the media.

Some developers are teaming up together to create a consortium and a brand. If you are a small independent developer with limited time to create multiple apps, you can look into finding other developers who are interested in building a brand.

iPhone/iPad meetups are great places to locate other developers who are interested in co-branding and co-marketing their apps.

Use this Top 11 list to help you formulate your pre-launch and post-launch marketing activities for your iPhone/iPad and Android apps. These activities are some of the most important marketing activities you can perform to get your app off to a solid start when it's posted to the App Store or Android Market.

As you develop your marketing plan, group your activities into pre-launch, post-launch, and ongoing marketing activities. Many of these recommended activities are free or inexpensive, costing you only the time to develop them. Remember that marketing is an ongoing effort and requires consistency.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020