Here's my list of the top ways I can think of to market your Android
app. If you have any suggestions to add please leave them in the
comments or email me at p...@bowen.fm. I've tried to order the list in
terms of risk vs effort vs reward to order in terms of which strategy
will have the most effect in getting more people to use your app.
1. Make it free(mium): So this isn't a way to promote your app but
it's a marketing strategy. Making your app free will ensure that every
one of the rest of the suggestions below is more effective by 10x or
more, releasing a paid app, especially on Android, will only bring you
pain. If you want some reasons why you should make your app freemium
go here:
2. App stores: Submitting your app to several app stores is an easy
free way to ensure you're more visible. The first stop should be
Google Market. You could leave it at at but it's free to submit to
Getjar and Amazon Android Market place so you might as well. Google
Market + Amazon take a revenue share of the money you make from either
selling your app or from any in app purchases (IAP) that are made
through their billing solutions which is the trade-off for exposure.
Getjar only accepts free apps and allows you to implement your own
billing solutions if you use IAP. App stores are effectively risk free
as a revenue share is given to the app store owner.
2.1 On market presence: you’d be surprised at the install
rate at which apps are installed / clicked through etc based on their
icon. It’s CRUCIAL, and it’s free for you to optimise. Trial a couple
and see what works best. App name is also REALLY important. Make it
easy to find, both in the app store but using Google. I know so many
companies who’ve used an obscure name, or hyphenated name, and
suffered from it.
2.2 Begging app store curators: This section is all about
getting free promotion and putting your product in front of the people
who curate the editorial sections of an app store is a great way to
get yourself some free exposure. Find out who looks after the
editorial sections of Google, Amazon, Getjar in your country, email
them and tell them why your app offers such good value to the end
user.
Providers include: Google Android Market, Getjar, Amazon Appstore for
Android
3. Mobile Affiliate networks: When reducing risk mobile affiliate
networks are another good way to buy traffic for your application,
they're middlemen who bring together publishers / affiliates (normally
application developers or mobile website owners) who want to monetise
their traffic and advertisers who want an audience for their traffic
through technology. Affiliate networks revenue model is normally on an
override of 30% of the revenue you pay out to an affiliate, so if you
had a $1 app and gave $0.50 commission to an affiliate for providing
that sale, then you'd pay $0.15 commission to the affiliate network.
The same can work with IAP for free apps. The issue here is volume,
there are very few affiliate networks that can provide any sort of
scalability with this model because of the poor conversions from the
traffic they monetise and there are normally set up fees.
Providers include: Mobpartner, Commission Junction, Tradedoubler,
Linkshare, Offermobi, Sponsormob, Moolah Media, Mobilclix
4. Pay per install providers: When you pay per install for an
application you're normally paying for the user to download and open
an application. If the application is paid for, and you're paying
less for the install than you are to the provider then you're ROI
positive. This isn't normally the case though and there are only
scalable options for Pay Per Install when you have a free app and are
making money on an in app transaction.
Providers include: Getjar, Everbadge, Appbrain
5. Incentivised Pay per install: The end user who downloads your app
still has to install your app but they got some sort of incentive for
doing so (normally virtual currency in a game they were playing). In
terms of volume this is the single biggest paid source of installs on
Android but the fact that the incentivised installs are further up the
conversion path means quality can suffer.
Providers include: Tapjoy (disclaimer, I work for them), Flurry, mdotm
6. Incentivised Pay per action / acquisition: still using the
incentivised model but incentivising the user to engage with an app
rather than just download and open it.
Providers include: At the moment Tapjoy are they only company to offer
this.
7. Social SDK's: are mobile social network for gamers. This allows
gamers to discover new apps through what their friends are doing and
what's popular.
Providers include: Openfeint, Scoreloop, Papaya, HeyZap
8. Adnetworks: Although adnetworks have massive scale, the metric an
adnetwork will normally bill an advertiser on is CPC (cost per click),
this can mean it's very difficult to see how your campaign is
converting and if you can track this with their SDK it will often be
higher than you'd like to pay. To run a campaign on an adnetwork you
need to manage very tightly.
Providers include: Admob, Millenial Media, Jumptap, Smaato, Adfonic,
9. Recommendation sites: There are plenty out there and the CAN be
effective but it's a shot in the dark to know which one will work the
best for any particular app. There are app stores / social networks,
pure fanboy sites, recommendation engines etc etc
Providers include: androidcentral.com, androidpitt.com,
androidpolice.com, appESP,
Appolicious, Chomp, AppBrain, Appboy, AppAware
10. Referral system: Implement a referral system to reward people who
refer your app to their friends. You can incentivise people to email
their friends, reward them by having X number of friends within the
app. Your biggest advocates are your current customers.
11. Youtube video Make a couple of youtube videos showing how the app
can help / entertain people. Make the video irreverant, amusing and
worth sharing.
12. Social Media: Twitter, Facebook and any other social site you can
get your name out on
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