Suggestions on promoting mobile applications

It's a bit dramtically to be busy lately. An application project with an old friend, an "emotional" aspect of something that's quite exciting. Every now and then the fine points, wholeheartedly into a role, experience TA's emotional and psychological needs, difficult to extricate themselves when the heart is really very uncomfortable ...

In this process, there is a link does need a certain ability to grasp: on the one hand, try to fully enter the role to use yy out of the product, to achieve the goal of the task; On the other hand, keep yourself in the position of an observer and consider and evaluate every motivation and perception of the character. Slowly, I found that I had to use the Simpsons House and the 90 edition of the list to restore a more normal state of mind.

Writing here suddenly clouded the rain, I think it is better not to pull it down. This new translation represents my personal recent need to pay a little attention to the aspect, of course, it is best to bring you some reading and reference value; if not, I sincerely hope that you do not mind too much, after all, I just in my own blog and micro-blog to do the independent sharing and exchange, It's not the ego that feels good. Give lectures to the following Be at any general meeting. I can not do all my life, I play their own. The text goes up.

1. Have a clear core value

No doubt, this is the most basic and important point. If your application doesn't have clear core values and demand-use cases that can't help people solve specific problems, you'd better think again before submitting this so-called "product" to the App store.

With some marketing strategies, you might be able to achieve a little performance in the marketplace, but the whole thing can be said to be futile or even diametrically opposed, because you cannot seek sustainable development in the wrong product. In the face of this situation, it is best to go back in time, spend more time and energy to rethink, step-by-step design really valuable application products.

Related reading: Killer application products-designed for the context of an application

2. Inspection and promotion of the core value of the product

Mike Lee once talked about the idea of making marketing videos for your product as early as possible and even trying to do so before the app goes into the development phase. In fact, this way is more like some kind of examination and consideration; Mike thinks that if you can't make the core value of a product clear to the target user within 45 seconds, it's either a problem with your promotional skills or a defect in the value orientation of your product.

I had this problem when I was making a fluent application. This is a card application that helps you memorize words, which I posted to the App Store in October 2011. Fluent can manage your word memory process, and when you learn new words, the frequency of words is often low, and when you need to do more practical exercises for a particular vocabulary, they appear more frequently. Although fluent is a very useful application for me, I find that I cannot effectively communicate with others about the value of this product.

Fluent sold 30 copies on the day of the line, much worse than I expected. It has a simple interface design, no bugs, in my opinion is so easy to use ... The reason I can think of the failure is that I have not been able to articulate the core value of this application clearly and effectively.

Now, if I can spend some time planning a product video before actually designing and coding, or, considering how to express the selling point of fluent in the most concise and powerful way, then I can get two breakthroughs: first of all, we discovered the potential problems of product concept and core value in the early stage, Second, the product on the line before and after the promotion of the work done a plan and preparation.

3. Icon Design

In the App Store application list interface, a product is not a lot of information presented to the user, only to apply the name, price, icon, rating, company name and update time.

Among these messages, the ability to attract users ' attention in the shortest possible time is the icon. It's the equivalent of a miniature billboard, and your goal is to present your application in the right way in this billboard.

I hope I can tell you that the design of a good icon will be able to bring more installation of the application, but it is not so simple. Some of my friends spent a lot of time doing experiments on this, and they concluded that pretty icons don't mean better sales. Then why do we bother with the icons?

There are a number of factors that ultimately determine the level of application acceptance, including its core values, experience patterns, and so on, but icons are the façade of the application, through which users will have a first impression of your application. This is similar to the book, consumers can in a very short period of time through the "cover" of the product's own temperament, positioning and quality judgments, and then decide whether to have a deeper understanding of it.

The content expressed by the high quality icon should be related to the core function of the application itself, while the visual representation should be consistent with the internal UI style of the application. Here are a few tips for your reference:

Put the icon in a screenshot of the App Store app list screen to see if it's still good enough for the real environment surrounded by other icons.

Use appropriate metaphors and symbols in the icons to make them easier to understand.

Try to use the most iconic UI elements and styles within your application in the icon.

Related reading: The user experience differentiation strategy for iOS applications

4. Application name and keywords (Keywords)

In itunes Connect, you can use a keyword of not more than 100 characters to describe your application, which will be associated with the user's search in the App Store. But for search results, the matching weights for the application names seem to be higher. This is why many applications use "brand name + additional keyword" form to name the reason,

We can't grasp the details of the algorithms in the App Store search system, but there are still some real-life tips for us to refer to:

It is not necessary to fill in the name of the application in the keyword.

Use English commas as delimiters for multiple keywords, not spaces or other.

Use the tools of Google keywords to do relevant research.

Modify the application name or keyword only when a new version is released.

Watch in the app Store to see how your application's weight in search results is for those important entries.

5. Published strategy

Product ready, can we submit apps to App Store right away? not necessarily.

The success of the application will depend in part on whether you have a well-planned application publishing strategy. Consider the marketing channels associated with your application, including mobile application sites, social networking sites, mailing lists, friends and family, and see what resources you can use to preheat the release of your product.

You need to identify those resources that are most likely to cover your target audience, such as those for mobile applications, and the influential individual blogs and tech blogs are good choices.

6. Promotion of reporting

After the application is released, I usually use different ways to promote the reporting campaign for different types of online channels. For the relatively small application metrics site, I will send out invitations in a relatively modest way, such as "Please review this app:". They are usually receptive to such requests as long as your communication is sincere and personal enough.

For those sites that have a lot of overlap with your product target audience in terms of user groups, you can spend more time writing more specific, descriptive product introductions, highlighting what value your products can bring to your users.

For those personal blogs, think more about what you can bring to the blogger, whether your application will help them solve some of the problems, and what kind of benefits he can get if he helps you promote the product in his blog.

Regardless of the channel to promote, remember a principle: to the appropriate user groups to show the value of the application, so that they understand this product can help them solve a problem.

7. Quickly accumulate positive comments in the App Store

When an application has just been released online, it often takes time to get valuable comments. Try inviting your friends to download and encourage them to make the most positive comments based on real experience, which will give you a good start in your product.

You can also direct users to the app store for ratings and comments. Typically, such hints are triggered when a user uses the product several times, to ensure that the user has a basic understanding of it. Do not prematurely, too frequent to the user to make such a prompt, otherwise it will cause users to have negative feelings.

Here is a code base (Appirater) for developers to refer to, it can be based on certain rules to determine whether the current user is a "quality user", and based on the results of the appropriate time to the user output rating invitations, to try to obtain a real and positive evaluation.

8. Reporting on malicious or ineffective comments

If you receive malicious abuse or blank comments in the App Store, report to Apple as soon as possible. Once confirmed, Apple deletes these negative messages directly.

9. Promoting attractiveness through welfare

After the application is posted online, you can spread a certain amount of benefits to attract users. Apple allows you to create 50 one-time promotional codes for each new version of your application, and you can spread them out to allow some users to download your paid apps for free or at a discounted price.

Whenever there is a website to cover your product, you can also provide a part of the promotional code to their readers. APP advice, when reporting a commit application on the line, announced that it would randomly give a comment to a user to send a promotional code of 0.99 dollars to download a commit, resulting in the report attracted 96 reviews. 1 dollars is trivial, but this way the application products and promotion channels have benefited from each other.

10. Use Promotional links

You can put the promotion link to your own website or application, after other users through these links to generate consumption, you can through the Apple's Distribution alliance to obtain a 5% commission.

This approach can bring you several benefits:

First of all, if you have a relatively high price of the application, such as 199 U.S. dollars, then if the user through the promotional link to buy your application, you can get an additional 10 dollars.

Second, users through the promotion link to purchase other applications can also bring you additional benefits, although the page links in the identification code may be manually replaced or deleted, but if the user base is large, still can guarantee a certain success rate.

Finally, you can calculate the approximate ratio between the clicks and the purchase behavior by using your account's statistics in the distribution union and with Google Analytics's click Report.

Written in the last

Different application products have their own actual situation, internal and external factors are more complex, the above 10 recommendations and not 100% to ensure that your application in the market to achieve success. But if you can work on these things, they can at least help you go farther and smoother along the way.