Saturday, 8 December 2012

Android App Marketing

One big surprise with Android App development is how much time is required to market an app, in fact more effort has been spent marketing my app than actual development. Its a crowded market place out there, but I've found a few ways to  make headway.


Social Media

Most Android forums and blogs suggest using social media to promote your app without actually saying how. I'm not a big fan of Twitter or Facebook, pretty clueless to be honest, but this is what I have done.


  1. Create Twitter, Facebook business page, Facebook user page, Google+ and Blogger pages
  2. Posts links on your pages so that they are all cross referenced
  3. On your Facebook user page, pester your friends to like your business page
  4. Put links to your app on your pages
  5. Tweet links to your app
  6. Google for Android Forums or Android Blogs. On each blog or forum, follow (twitter), like (facebook), +1 (google+) all of them
  7. Post any news about your app, such as new releases on all your sites
  8. Promote the sites within your app, I use an About activity.
Early days yet for me, but I've gained 6 new followers on Twitter who represent major android websites. My Facebook business page still only has 8 likes, these are all from my friends. More importantly these pages show up on Google searches.

When tweeting about your app remember to hash-tag relevant keywords in the tweet, for example #crossword, hash-tags are are similar to keywords for search engines. Only use 1 or 2 hash tags per tweet.

My next step is to create a youtube video of  the app in action.


Forums

Forums are a great way to share ideas with fellow developers and to announce your app to the world for free. One forum that I really like is AndroidPit, there is a thread about promoting Android Apps. A few of us have asked each other to download and review each others app.



App Store Optimization

CleverDic ranked a lowly 28th on the list of apps when I searched for Crossword Solver. So I changed the title of my app to CleverDic Crossword Solver, my ranking jumped to 8th place. I then added a keywords section at the end of the description and my ranking moved up to 6th place. I've read that google does not condone using keywords, alas it seems most folk do use them.

Downloads have jumped 4 fold from around 10 per day to 40 per day. Still small fry in the Android world, but I'm hoping for more improvements to come.

I've also added a feature banner, promo image and text. These items appear on the desktop view of the google market place app page. Not sure what effect they have but the page looks more attractive and all the more successful apps employ these features. I've also posted these images on all my social media sites.

Finally

If all else fails badger your friends and family to download your app. If you see any one with an Android phone in the pub or at work, ask them politely if they mind downloading your app. More seriously though take a look at this very informative blog for further info on marketing android apps and making money:

http://droid-blog.net


Good luck marketing your app, let me know how you get on or any ideas you have
Pig Dog Bay





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