You Have Spent Countless Hours Building Your App
It’s beautiful, it works, it’s your baby……WHY ISN’T THE WHOLE WORLD ON IT RIGHT NOW?! Trust me I feel you when I was first starting out I had the same feelings of frustration when my apps didn’t take off. I’m going to give you a few tips on how to help generate traffic to your new start up
1) Set Up Your Social Presence
This may seem obvious but the first thing you need to do after you create your application is to create social media accounts for it; Specifically speaking Twitter/Instagram/Facebook. Afterwards you must consistently be active because you have lost time and followers to make up for. If you don’t have the time you might look into outsourcing your brand management to someone on sites like Upwork or write your own automated solutions here is an example for Twitter here.
Social media directly translates to how much social capital your start up has and in the beginning especially social capital is more important that financial capital. Social capital is defined as: The collective value of all social networks (who people know), and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other (norms of reciprocity). In order to build a brand and get people to trust and believe in your brand you must first build social capital.
2) Reach Out To Local Media
Find the local media outlets in your city and send them emails/phone calls letting them know about your app and what it does. You would be surprised how many would be interested in doing a story on you. The worst that can be said to you is no, the cost-benefit analysis says it’s silly to not even try. Just head over to the contact sections on their websites and start contacting them!
However don’t just contact them, you need to have a pitch preferably 500 words or less to send in that initial email or phone conversation. I’m not going to cover what a good pitch is in this article I am saving that for its own piece just know that your pitch 90% of the time will make or break your request for an interview. Lastly you always have the option of purchasing an ad (although your money probably be better spent on Facebook/Twitter ads).
3) Iterate Often
Just because you have finished your MVP for your app doesn’t mean you can sit back and wait. In fact if you want are serious you will be iterating often! This does two things:
- It helps with retention if the users who decided to take a chance on you see that you are continuing to make the experience better they will be more apt to return back to the application.
- When new users come to your site and see the evidence of updates they feel safer trying your app for the first time.
In addition to those when you iterate often and took the time to implement SEO/AEO in your app then the engines will pick that up to your benefit. In my humble opinion it is always better to get a product out as quickly as possible then make changes frequently.
Is That It?
No of course not, so much of app marketing depends on your niche, industry sector, yadda yadda. These three tips are only the tip of the iceberg and these tips are pretty general no matter what kind of app you are doing. If you are interested in a more in depth analysis on how to market your app feel free to send me an email inquiries@jyroneparker.com. If you enjoyed this content please like and share on your social media channels!