Promotion of mobile apps in the app store is described in the first part of the article: Promoting mobile app: how it was (a real story).
Promotion out of the Store
Promotion out of the store is necessary, but you shouldn’t expect the stunning results. According to the MobileDevHQ research made in 2014, only about 2% of smartphone users search for apps out of the store.
But it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to promote the app out of the store at all. Links to your app store page impact the app position in the store, according to Google store managers. But the links should be correct – with an anchor containing a keyword and not just “you can download the app here”.
One more important thing for promotion out of the store is the necessity to connect to Google Analytics (https://developers.google.com/analytics/) or any other similar service to track visitors from the external sources (referrals) in order to be able to estimate efficiency of your effort. To make Google Analytics display statistics from external references, the links should include definite parameters, otherwise they will be deemed direct/none.
This tool will help you generate the correct links:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/android/v4/campaigns#google-play-url-builder
So, now we are ready to track our campaigns. Let’s start the promotion.
Reviews
At the moment there are hundreds of web resources related to Android and everything that is related to it (devices, accessories, apps, widgets, etc.). There are many bloggers who write about Android OS. It seems it’s quite easy to be mentioned on such resources. But it’s not like that. Number of the published apps grows critically and every developer wants to his app be mentioned about. Journalists and editors drown in the stream of review requests. It is necessary to take much effort to attract attention to the app, especially if you want to get a free review. Here is a piece of advice on how to write a review request:
1. It should be personal. Address to the journalist, so your email won’t look like spam. You may refer to the author’s articles devoted to similar apps or themes. Say that s/he is a real expert and his opinion is very important and interesting to you (everyone likes good words).
2. Mention not only your application and how helpful it may be for users, but also say how helpful the review can be for journalist/blogger (interesting theme, will bring more subscribers and followers, quality content, etc.).
3. Don’t insert description of your app that is published in the store. No one would read a 2-page email. It would be good to explain what your app does in a couple of sentences, how it differs from the competing apps + a link to the store + a brief list of main features.
4. Limit your email to 1000 characters – in this way you will increase a chance to get your email read up to the end.
5. Thank your reader for taking his/her time to read your request.
Our app got just few free publications:
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/mobi-db-manage-your-mobile-data-with-a-database/
http://ru.appszoom.com/android-app/mobidb-database-designer-lite-kfbxy.html
http://www.chriscampisi.com/2014/11/24/five-affordable-apps-for-managing-software-licenses/
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/5-applications-pour-gerer-les-licences-de-maniere-securisee-39816360.htm
Result of the first was quite noticable:
But it was quite short-term. Considering all reposts of this article, there were not so many new users as a result.
There is a possibility to publish paid reviews. The price is from 30 to 150 USD depending on the rank and how famous the web resource is. Based on our experience, we can say for sure that none of them will be justified, not speaking of profit from such publications.
We ordered a paid text review (http://www.androidheadlines.com/2014/04/sponsored-app-review-mobi-db.html) and a video review (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef7OFCIUd34). The text review cost was 100 USD. Taking into account how hyped the resource is, the effect was miserable.
Video review of one of the first app version was 150 USD. For 1 year the video got about 2000 views.
That was the result:
Not very considerable short-term increase of installs. There was no immediate commercial effect.
To get any noticeable increase of installs, it is necessary to keep them published constantly, because an article of your app will leave home page of the website in a couple of days and the number of visitors will reduce to 3-4 accidental visits. There are two problems preventing from achieving this aim: not enough money to publish paid reviews and inability to arrange publications in time (constant delays and arrangements).
Summary: don’t consider review publications as means of immediate earnings (long-term increase of traffic), qualify it as link building for your app store page. And spend money for it in the corresponding way.
Paid installs
There is such a practice to pay to services (such as AppBrain), and the service will recommend your application to its users and the latter install your app. We worked with this resource, but not too long.
Here are the results of such promotion: number of installs significantly increases, i.e. it seems this way of promotion works.
BUT! The users are not targeted at all, and correspondingly they don’t convert to purchases.
We definitely got some benefits from such campaign: installs and reviews in the store increased, and these values are very important for app positions in the store. What app would you as a user install: an app with more than 100 000 installs and 4000 reviews, or an app with 500 installs and 10 reviews? The choice is obvious. The app store search will also position an app with greater installs and ratings closer to the top of a page. AppBrain campaign is good, because it can help to overcome the critical threshold of at least 1000 installs for a shorter period. This is quite an affordable variant for just 0.26 USD per install. It is also possible to get quality leads from AppBrain, but it will cost about 1 USD.
Summary: Good for improving position in the store, but no commercial results are expected.
Paid reviews
User reviews in the store are very important. At first, the apps in the search results are show according to the rating (if other values are equal): the greater the rating – the higher on the page the app is shown. Secondly, which one of you will install the app that has rating a bit higher than tree stars? This is possible, of course, but if you don’t have any other options.
That is why there are many services that offer to drive up user review numbers, but we decided not to use them, because it contradicts to the store policy and will definitely result in 100% removal of the app from the store, once it is detected.
But I can give an advice on how to increase number of the positive reviews in the store in a legal way. Ask your user to rate your app (when they leave it or at any other moment). We show the following dialog to the users when go out of the app:
«I like it!» button leads to the store where a user will most likely give 4 or 5 to your app. «Needs improvement!» button opens email client and a new email with the pre-set theme, support email, some useful information about the device and Android version and an offer to send us the comments on what’s missing or works incorrectly in the app. I.e. a user goes not to the store where he can publicly share his uncomplimentary opinion of the app, or, which is worse, just give one star without any explanations. He will write an email and in most cases he will inform you of any issues, and you will have an opportunity to communicate with your user and offer a solution or even make some useful changes in your app.
Thus, you will increase total number of reviews in the store and reduce negative feedback.
It really works. Thanks to the guys from the custom development team who shared this solution with us.
AdMob
Google’s advertising network. Shows ads in mobile apps and websites, YouTube and in Google’s search network on mobile devices. We pay for clicks on ads. Our campaign lasted about 2 months.
I would like to notice that we already had experience of creation and maintenance of the successful Adwords.
I will just specify some figures: more than 1 600 000 views, more than 4000 clicks (very low CTR), 39 conversions (installs), each of them cost about 2 USD. So, the matter is not in lack of experience of work with such networks. The app has more specific target audience.
Summary: this way of promotion wasn’t very efficient. If your app is designed for entertainment or education – this way may, probably, work.
Social networks
Accelerated promotion in social networks is reasonable for games, entertainment and, probably, for educational apps. This is because people like to communicate and have some fun in social networks. Please bear in mind that such campaigns require much time for creation of the community and an extensive list of followers, since only in this case social network promotion makes sense.
We already had a community of followers on Facebook and twitter and we just continued posting there news of new version and special offers (don’t forget about the hashtags). We didn’t spend much time for this activity, because we understood that there would be little effect. But we continuously get new likes and followers. This is enough taking into consideration time we spend for this.
Summary: cheap, if you already have followers in social networks.
As a conclusion:
The most important thing is app store optimization because most mobile devices users search for the necessary apps directly in the store. Make experiments until you get in top of search results.
Promotion out of the store should be made as well, but you shouldn’t expect immediate and long-term increase of installs and sales. Qualify it as a way to gain critical mass for your app in the store. After 5000 installs with a sufficient number of reviews and good average rating the app will work for itself – quantity of daily installs will consistently increase.
If you have a marketing budget, it’s just wonderful. After reading this article you might, probably, understand how to spend in the most efficient manner and what results are to be expected. Free promotion delivers results, but usually it takes more time.
In any case you need to remember that the article describes promotion of the business app and not all options were tried. Go on! May be your app will make a break and get to the top best sellers in the first days after publication.
