It would be great if the keys to app success revolved around writing good code and having a nice interface, but now scenario is totally change because if your app doesn’t reach to its target audience then it’s not worth spending too much money and time on it.

The App Store currently has around 556.000+ applications, and surfacing your app in the vast ocean of apps is hard. To gauge the effectiveness of the spent, app marketers need to make sure they are using the most up-to-date marketing models. Some basic steps in App promotion / iOS marketing include:

  • iTunes App Store Marketing
  • Get Reviewed

iTunes App Store Marketing:

App store itself is a good & most effective source of app marketing strategy. But, you should consider some points before launching your app like:

Develop a Appealing & Bug-Free App

Getting your app downloaded becomes easier if your app gets attention. Try to greet your users right from first release so that you can get good initial reviews. So, some basic pre launch marketing steps include:

  • Have a unique idea or at least an appealing spin on a common theme.
  • Make sure you have done proper testing and releasing a bug free app.

Select a Catchy Name and write a Good Description for your App

  • App name should be catchy and description written should be keyword rich. Keyword rich does not mean that you are stuffing keywords just to promote your app and the stuffed keywords are unrelated to your app.
  • Catchy name implies that your title should be catchy and it should create anxiety in readers so that they get compelled in viewing your app. Title plays a vital role in converting visitor to customer.
  • Find competitor and compare: Once you have decided the title of your app. You can begin to research your competitors. With the amount of apps in the app stores today, you’ll likely find a variety of competitors whose products are similar to your own. Your competitor apps list must be prepared by following some tips like:
  1. Which apps rank high in the app store search results for your targeted keywords. What are their feature sets? What other keywords do they target?
  2. Take note of all your initial competitors without filtering any out.
  3. Analyze this long list of potential competitors and scale it down to the top 4 or 5 heavy contenders based on similarity to your app and the competitor’s success.
  4.   Remove 1-star app from your list, as they are not likely to be a real contender, but a 5-star app with thousands of reviews is a formidable competitor.

Once you have prepared the list of your competitor apps and have noted their pros and cons, you are done with this point.

Get Reviewed

Rating and reviews are really important part of Mobile app Marketing (ASO). Most challenging task is to increase ratings and reviews of our apps. After lot of analysis and experience, I got some points to share: even we are having average downloads why we are not getting ratings and reviews. It’s because people don’t get attracted towards the ratings/reviews section, while some of them forget to do. So for that I tried some tricks like:

  • We requested users in the app description like : Please add your precious comments/reviews to our app to motivate us for future developments.
  • Added review pop up box : Would you like to Rate this app ??. Remember pop up box should not be annoying while playing or using your app. To avoid this you can have “Rate this app” pop up box after some stages of game, for e.g. your game has 6 levels, you can have “Rate this app ” pop up box 2 times, one after 2 level as most of the user will reach 2nd level, and other after 5th level, as only few people will reach 5th level so it will not annoy them. But settings must be like if the user rate you app once, he/she must not get the pop up again.

Apart, from this always try to have awesome idea with correct implementation on that.  Correct implementation includes beautiful graphics, eye-catching icons, well-written description of the app as well as proper development. As a bug full app will hamper your brand name and user will not wish to use your other apps in future.

Hope, this will help marketers and mobile app developers discover what works with mobile app marketing.