App Marketing and App Store Optimization
App Marketing is a cornerstone in any effort to make your app successful. It starts long before you build your app, and continues long after. What are effective marketing strategies you can use to increase app downloads?
A common mistake app developers make is beginning marketing their app too late. You build the app, publish it, and think: “How can I increase the amount of downloads for my app?” It’s better to focus on that question continually, and from the start of your app project.
Improving your app’s download rate is a continuous process, and it starts at the very beginning: your app idea. Even when you validate your business, you’re using app marketing strategies to pitch your idea to people, and you use marketing tools to measure their responses.
The typical app marketing approach involves App Store Optimization (ASO), a strategy very similar to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites – but then for apps. You do keyword research, and try to improve the “ranking” of your app for certain App Store search keywords. App Store Optimization uses your app’s reviews, its landing page, app screenshots, localizations, and many more components, to improve the App Store ranking.
In addition to App Store Optimization, an effective marketing strategy can include content marketing, paid advertising, email marketing, partnerships, social media, app reviews, growth hacking, guerrilla marketing – it never stops!
You can check out one of the many articles on app marketing, below.
- How Viral Apps Spread
The best app ideas have virality built into them. What is it about your idea that makes people tell other people about it? Let's dive in.
Learn more... - Good Products Don't Need Marketing
Developers often claim that good products don't need marketing. In this article I'll show you how to overcome that assumption.
Learn more... - How To: Market Research For Your App Idea
Market research is crucial for the success of your app. In this article, I show you exactly how I researched app ideas for my new iOS app Crest. Let's dive in!
Learn more... - The Basics of App Store Optimization: Title, Screenshots and Keywords
You can use App Store Optimization (ASO) to improve your app's ranking in the App Store. In this article, you'll dive into the 3 most important factors for App Store ranking: app title, keywords, and screenshots.
Learn more... - How To Choose A Profitable App Business Model
Your app's business model greatly affects how much money you make with your indie app. Which app business model fits your app best? Let's find out!
Learn more... - Great Customer Service for Indie App Developers
Do you know Zappos, the online shoe retailer? It's famous for "The Zappos Model" for customer service. In this article, we're going to apply that same model to apps, and tweak it so it can be used by one single app developer instead of a whole team.
Learn more... - App Store Improvements: 50 Character Limit, Quality Control, and no App Rot
Last week Apple announced to app developers worldwide a set of very exciting changes. They'll start removing apps from the App Store that are no longer maintained. And from now on, app titles cannot be longer than 50 characters... What does this mean for app developers?
Learn more... - The 33-Point Ultimate Post-Launch App Checklist
OH YEAH! You just published your app in the App Store. Weeks of preparation. You poured blood, sweat and tears over your latest creation. You've worked so hard to get this far, but the road is far from over. What are next steps you can take to make your app a success?
Learn more... - How To Launch A Subscription-Based App Store Business
Subscriptions are awesome. Especially because they give your app that sought-after monthly recurring revenue and turn your customers into assets worth looking after. Apple recently introduced a change in the iOS App Store emphasizing the app subscription business. In this article, we're going to look at how to build such a subscription powerhouse.
Learn more... - 3 Reasons Your App Idea Shouldn't Be Unique
Unique app ideas are BS! Your app ideas don't need to be unique, and here are 3 reasons why. Fact is – you might need that competition! Read on...
Learn more... - App Success: How Linkpack Got to the Front Page of Hacker News
Stelios and Petros, app makers from Greece, tell the incredible story of how Linkpack came to be. Since starting out the app has reached the front page of Hacker News, got a ton of upvotes on Product Hunt and was featured by several major media outlets. Read on to find out what motivates the founders of Evil Window Dog to do what they do.
Learn more... - The Story Of Bob And Alice: How Great Ideas Fail And How To Avoid It
Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about Bob and Alice, both entrepreneurs and startup founders. Both Bob and Alice decide to launch an App Store business, two companies based on two separate smartphone apps. Bob uses a different launch strategy than Alice, and they measure their results after the launch. Who has the most successful launch?
Learn more... - [MEGA POST] Best of Quora: Building Better, More Profitable Apps With Swift, App Store Optimization & Growth Hacking
"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever." Make sure you're no one's fool by learning from the questions of others in this MEGA Best of Quora blog post.
Learn more... - How-To: 9 Quick Tips To Build Your First Killer App
Learning how to build your own apps can be intimidating at first, but once you get started it's incredibly easy. In this blog post I've set out 9 tips and best practices for building your first killer app. It's a step-by-step framework for getting from idea to app!
Learn more... - App Store Publishing Worksheet
Keep this resource handy! It'll help you with publishing your app in the App Store. How? We've outlined the most important App Store fields for you, and gave neat tips for each single one of them. Fill out the fields, share them with your team, and before you know it you've got a shiny App Store page up and running.
Learn more... - Onboarding: Effective Strategies To Get Users On Board
An effective onboarding strategy makes sure your users get the maximum benefit from your product: it ensures no one trips and falls, and keeps arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. How does that apply to your app?
Learn more... - Case Study: Building A Compelling App Landing Page
You’ve made your first app, it’s in the App Store and you’ve built an app landing page for it. Business isn’t booming just yet, but you’ve made a compelling roadmap for the coming months: features that will wow your users. Right?
Learn more... - Best Of Quora: App Monetization, Startup Coverage, And Becoming A Genius Programmer (Week 33)
This week’s edition, topics include app monetization, signing up in an app, becoming a genius programmer, video guides and a pretty cool list of tech startup coverage.
Learn more... - AppTentive: Guide On App Marketing, App Store Ratings And The Future Of App Publishing
Recently, AppTentive published a new guide: The Mobile Marketers Guide To App Store Ratings And Reviews. I had the honor of writing a guest column for them, and would like to give you a brief summary of the points presented in the guide.
Learn more... - App Analytics: What Is It And How Does It Change The Playing Field?
Recently, Apple launched its beta campaign for iTunes Connect App Store Analytics. It’s Apple’s new proprietary tool for measuring conversions on an apps page in the App Store and tracking user behaviour and engagement within the app. How does this influence the app analytics playing field?
Learn more... - Using In-App Deeplinking To Promote Native App Content
In a sense, the app industry is still in its nineties. The Apple App Store is a rich-media example of that first web directory from Yahoo!’s Jerry and David: it’s a huge list of apps. Apart from text, images and catalog-style links there’s not much contextual information available. Each day about 300 apps get published in the iOS App Store alone, but most of them never even get close to the Top 100 list. Many perfectly good apps go by largely unnoticed, due to the nature of the app stores.
Learn more... - How should designers make the final graphics of a website or mobile application?
Great question! What requirements or rules should be followed when delivering the final graphics file, to be used as the foundation of a website or mobile app.
Learn more... - Ultimate Guide To Building & Publishing Your First iPhone App
Are you considering making your own app? This is what you need to know. Learn about the app ecosystem, programming languages, toolsets, and time and effort involved. Let’s not tell you what you should know, but rather explain how you can actually get started today to get an app published in the App Store.
Learn more... - Creating App Install Opportunities With Deeplinking
For any app developer or app publishing company getting new customers to install their apps is paramount. Gaining traction, growing a customer base and making sales is key to any business, but for an app publisher it all starts no sooner than their app is installed on a user’s phone. One way a publisher can increase their install-rate, is to use a system called deeplinking.
Learn more... - How Does One Effectively Market An iPhone App?
Effectively marketing an iPhone app has nothing to do with the uniqueness of your idea, your marketing efforts or budget, the likeability and popularity of your brand, or even with how much 5-star reviews you have in the App Store. But how does one effectively market an iPhone app?
Learn more...

Hi, I'm Reinder.
I help developers play with code.
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