How to promote a newly launched APP on iOS?

I've been so busy lately that I've been a little overwhelmed. I am collaborating with an old friend on an application project, something related to "emotion", and it is quite exciting. From time to time, I would become distracted and fully immerse myself in a certain role, trying to understand his/her emotions and psychological needs. It was really uncomfortable when I couldn't extricate myself.

In this process, there is a link that does require a certain level of control: on the one hand, you must try to fully enter the role to use the YY product and complete the target task; on the other hand, you must keep yourself in the position of an observer and consider and evaluate every motivation and emotional fluctuation of the role. Gradually, I found myself having to rely on The Simpsons and the 1990 edition of The Investiture of the Gods to restore a more normal state of mind. As I was writing this, the sky suddenly became cloudy and it started to rain heavily. I thought it would be better not to continue. The new translations I upload this time represent the aspects that I personally need to pay a little attention to recently. Of course, it would be best if they can also provide some value for everyone to read and refer to. If not, I sincerely hope that you don’t mind too much. After all, I am just sharing and communicating independently on my blog and Weibo, not giving lectures to a hundred or eighty people at some conference out of self-satisfaction. I will never be able to be a veteran in the underworld, so let’s just do our own thing. Let’s start with the main text.

1. Have clear core values

Undoubtedly, this is the most basic and important point. If your app doesn’t have a clear core value and use case, and doesn’t help people solve specific problems, you’d better rethink before submitting this so-called “product” to the AppStore.

With the help of certain marketing strategies, you may be able to make such an app achieve a little success in the market, but the whole thing can be said to be futile or even counterproductive, because you cannot seek sustainable development in the wrong product. Faced with this situation, it is best to look back in time, spend more time and energy to rethink, and carefully design truly valuable application products.

2. Test and promote the core value of the product

Mike Lee once talked about the idea of ​​creating a marketing video for your product as early as possible, even before the app enters the development stage. In fact, this method is more like a test and consideration. Mike believes that if you cannot clearly state the core value of the product to the target users within 45 seconds, then either there is a problem with your promotion ability or the value direction of the product itself is inappropriate.

If I could spend some time planning a product video before the actual design and coding, or in other words, think about how to express Fluent's selling points in the most concise and powerful way, then I would be able to achieve two breakthroughs: one is to discover potential problems in the product concept and core value in the early stage, and the other is to plan and prepare for the promotion work before and after the product is launched.

3. Icon design

In the application list interface of the AppStore, not much information is presented to users about a product. In total, there is only the application name, price, icon, rating, company name and update time. Among all this information, the icon is the one that has the ability to attract users' attention in the shortest time. It's like a miniature billboard, and your goal is to present your app in the right way on that billboard.

I wish I could tell you that a well-designed icon will definitely lead to more installs for your app, but it’s not that simple. Some of my friends have spent a lot of time doing experiments in this area, and their conclusion is that beautiful icons do not necessarily mean better sales. So why do we even bother with icons?

There are many factors that ultimately determine the acceptance of an app, including its core value, experience model, etc., but the icon is the face of the app, through which users will form their first impression of your app. This is somewhat similar to books. Consumers can judge the product's temperament, positioning and quality through the "cover" in a very short time, and then decide whether to understand it more deeply. The content expressed by a high-quality icon should be related to the core functions of the application itself, and its visual expression should also be consistent with the UI style within the application. Here are a few tips for reference:

●Put the icon in a screenshot of the AppStore application list interface to see if it still has good enough performance in the real environment surrounded by other icons.

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

●Try to use the most iconic UI elements and styles of your app in your icon.

4. Application name and keywords

In iTunes Connect, you can use keywords with a total of no more than 100 characters to describe your app. These keywords will be associated with user searches in the App Store. However, for search results, the matching weight of the application name seems to be higher. This is why many apps are named in the form of “brand name + additional keywords”.

We cannot master the details of the algorithm in the AppStore search system, but there are still some practical tips for our reference:

●It is not necessary to fill in the name of the application among the keywords.

●Use commas as separators for multiple keywords instead of spaces or other characters.

●Use tools such as Google Keywords to do relevant research.

●Only change the app name or keywords when releasing a new version.

●Observe in the AppStore and see how your app’s weighting in search results works for important terms.

5. Release strategy

The product is ready, can we submit the app to the AppStore right away? not necessarily. The success of your app also depends, to a certain extent, on whether you have a well-planned app release strategy. Consider in advance the marketing channels associated with your app, including mobile app news sites, social networking sites, mailing lists, friends and family, etc., to see what resources you can use to preheat and promote the release of your product.

You need to identify those channels among these resources that are most likely to cover your target user group, such as mobile app review sites. In addition, influential personal blogs and technology blogs are also good choices.

6. Promote reporting and publicity

After the app is released, I usually use different methods to promote coverage and publicity for different types of online channels. For those relatively small app review sites, I will send invitations in a relatively plain way, such as "Please review this app :)". They will usually be happy to accept this type of request, as long as your communication is sincere and personal enough. For sites whose user groups overlap greatly with your product's target user groups, you can spend more time writing more specific and descriptive product introductions, emphasizing the value your product can bring to users.

For those personal blogs, you need to think from a different perspective and think more about what you can bring to the bloggers, whether your application can help them solve certain problems; if they help you promote your products in their blogs, what kind of benefits they can get. No matter which channel you use to promote your app, you must remember one principle: show the app's value to the corresponding user groups and let them know that this product can help them solve certain problems.

7. Quickly accumulate positive reviews in the AppStore

When an app is first released, it often takes some time to gain valuable reviews. Try to invite your friends to download and use it, and encourage them to make positive reviews based on their real experiences. This will give your product a good start.

You can also prompt users to rate and comment on the AppStore directly in your app. Usually, such a prompt will be triggered to pop up after the user has used the product several times to ensure that the user has basic knowledge and understanding of it. Do not give users this kind of prompts too early or too frequently, otherwise it will cause users to have negative feelings. If you receive malicious, abusive, or blank reviews in the AppStore, report them to Apple as soon as possible. Once confirmed, Apple will directly delete the negative information.

8. Improve attractiveness through benefits

After the app is launched, you can distribute a certain number of benefits to attract users. Apple allows you to create 50 one-time promotional codes for each new version of an app, which you can distribute to allow a certain number of users to download your paid app for free or at a reduced price.

Whenever a website writes about your product, you can also offer a portion of your promotional codes to their readers. When AppAdvice reported the launch of the Commit app, it announced that it would randomly give a user who posted a comment a promotional code to download Commit for $0.99. As a result, this report attracted 96 comments. One dollar is insignificant, but this method enables both the application product party and the promotion channel party to obtain their respective benefits.

9. Use promotional links

You can put the promotional link on your own website or app. After other users make purchases through these links, you can earn commissions through Apple's distribution alliance. This approach can bring you several benefits:

●If you have an app that costs a relatively high price, such as $199, then if a user purchases your app through the promotional link, you can get an extra $10.

●Users purchasing other apps through promotional links can also bring you additional income. Although the identification code in the web link may be manually replaced or deleted, if the user base is large, a certain success rate can still be guaranteed.

●You can also use the statistics of your account in the distribution alliance and the click report of Google Analytics to calculate the approximate ratio between clicks and purchases.

10. Boost your rankings with limited-time free offers

Limited free promotion is also a method worth considering. As long as the price changes, it will be easily captured by limited free websites and APP crawlers, and the APP will get the opportunity to be exposed. Users get high-quality free products through the free-for-all website, and the app gets promoted a lot. This win-win approach is more effective than hard banner advertising.

Of course, you need to take the initiative to contact some free sites, because good products are more likely to be recommended by editors. But remember to use this method frequently.

Final Thoughts

Different application products have their own actual situations, and the various internal and external influencing factors are even more complicated. The above ten suggestions cannot 100% guarantee that your application will be successful in the market. But if you can work hard in these areas, they can at least help you go further and smoother on the road ahead.