25 "Empty-handed" APP promotion methods, you deserve it

Due to various reasons, our company is not like most companies that spend money lavishly to attract users. From the beginning to now, we have broken even and have a slight surplus for almost 3 years, and the money spent on promotion is almost zero. Our promotion method has always adhered to the basic principle of "getting something for nothing", so my experience is limited to free promotion . Regarding paid promotion , I believe that if a company gave me a large sum of money to use for promotion now, I would 100% be confused. I would also like to invite students with experience to give me some advice.

The following methods are basically free methods. Some are effective, and some are ineffective. I have listed all the ones I have tried. I didn't make any distinction and didn't specifically mark whether they were effective or not, because I think some methods are not useful for my products, but may be useful for other people's products. If you have more methods, please let me know, it will definitely help me in my work.

1. First you need to give your product a unique name , preferably one that stands out from the crowd of competitors.

2. Design an attractive enough icon for your APP . The icon should be easy to recognize and conspicuous enough, especially when the user's mobile phone screen is full of batches of APPs. It would be best if your APP icon can be recognized at a glance.

3. Do a good job in ASO and find the most suitable keywords for your product to describe the product on your App Store. I don't need to say much here, everyone knows the importance of ASO. There are a lot of information and experience sharing about ASO on the Internet, you can Google it yourself. Regarding tools , I often use app annie and mobile action.

4. APP size . You must control the size of your APP installation package, especially the APK size of your APP listed on Google Play. It is best to allow users to download it safely even on 3G networks (less than 20M). According to a survey, 95% of users will consider whether to download an app based on the size of the installation package.

5. Strive for good user reviews . User reviews and star ratings are one of the most important factors affecting an app’s ranking in app stores . You'd better ensure that the user rating of each version of your APP remains above 4 stars, and try to invite users to make real evaluations and ratings. After each version is launched, promptly invite friends, relatives and users to evaluate. If you need to buy or exchange reviews, please reject junk reviews and junk IDs.

If you are unlucky and receive multiple one-star reviews from users for the same version, please apply to Apple for an emergency review immediately for iOS and overwrite the reviews and star ratings of the old version with the new version; if it is Google Play, please reply to users in the management background immediately, ask them to change their reviews, and invite more other users to give you good reviews. At the same time, you need to immediately determine whether there is really a problem with your product. If your competitor is giving you malicious negative reviews, report it immediately, collect evidence quickly, and report it to the app store!

6. Try not to use the paid download strategy . Regardless of how much money they have, most users prefer to download free apps. Of course, you can also add a paid version, XXX Pro, which can not only bring you some extra income, but also gain more keyword traffic for you in the app store. Similarly, if your app must be paid to download, you can also release a Free version.

7. Use the invitation code . There are many successful examples of using invitation codes to let users spread the word by themselves. Studying any one of them can bring you a lot of inspiration, so I won’t go into details here. It is worth mentioning that Google Play has recently launched a new feature called Promo Code. Each application can create 500 Promo Codes per quarter to help developers acquire new users. Friends in need can read it on the official website.

8. Submit the APP to different application markets . Unlike the various application markets in China, the main application markets abroad have always been App Store and Google Play . As long as developers do well in these two markets, I believe they can obtain most of the traffic. However, there are also some small application markets abroad that occupy a certain market share, such as the Amazon Store, Samsung Store, and some other third-party application recommendation and distribution markets such as 1mobile, app olocious, etc.

9. Use Facebook Page promotion . The social giant Facebook has always been a battleground for APP developers to promote their products. Please treat your Facebook APP Page carefully.

10. Like Facebook, Twitter is also an important battlefield for app promotion .

11. Use YouTube for promotion : Create a YouTube page, collect some videos on topics related to your product, and make a series of related videos. You will get unexpected results. Regarding the important role of YouTube video promotion and dissemination in overseas market operations , you can take a look at Cheetah Mobile’s experience summary of relevant analysis.

12. App review website : Submit your product to various review websites. If it is discovered by an editor and helps with the review, it will bring a lot of traffic. However, from my experience, since there are so many apps on the market and everyone wants to be discovered and reviewed, I guess the editors' mailboxes of various review agencies are probably full every day, so it is definitely not easy to be discovered. So, if you find that your assessment application emails are all ignored, please don’t be discouraged and keep sending them!

13. PR: Perhaps it is because of the particularity of the product’s target user group. From the beginning to now, the most effective method we have used to promote our products has always been PR articles. As for the importance of PR and how to do it, Google also has tons of websites for everyone to learn, so I won’t teach you how to do it.

14. KOL operation : Find an opinion leader in the target user group and ask him to recommend your APP. This method is very useful in China, and almost all domestic products are using it. The method is also very simple. As long as the money is in place, most KOLs can be dealt with. But it is different abroad. I have come into contact with many KOLs, and they are not willing to charge for helping manufacturers promote apps, because they feel that if the products they help recommend are not useful, it will damage their reputation. So if you want to be recommended by a KOL, please make your product suitable for him (taking "Gangnam Style" as an example). The above situation mainly applies to big Vs on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Relatively speaking, KOLs on Instagram and YouTube are much easier to deal with.

15. Participate in various forums : Whether online or offline, as long as you find forums and conferences related to your product, take your product to the forums. This is an effective way to obtain high-quality target users.

16. Advertising . The advantage of advertising promotion is that it can quickly acquire users, increase downloads, and impact the rankings; but the disadvantage is that the quality of users is difficult to guarantee and the cost is high. My family has never had the budget for this (crying~~), so I don’t have much say.

17. Use third-party application recommendation websites and app promotion : such as app of the day, appgraist, appallstar, etc.

18. Advertise in product-related blogs . This is actually similar to PR.

19. Marketing and promotion of relevant hot events : This is a big topic. I am not very knowledgeable and cannot give too many opinions. I have tried marketing of hot events several times, but did not achieve good results. So if there are experts willing to give me some advice, I would be very grateful.

20. Online affiliate marketing : Regarding online affiliate marketing, many people on the Internet talk about it in a miraculous way and praise its superiority. However, from my actual experience, this effect is not good for mobile app promotion. We have developed our own Affiliate system and also cooperated with other Affiliate websites, but the results have not met our expectations.

21. Make sure users can find sharing and app store review portals in your app, and frequently invite your core users to share with their friends and family.

22. Regarding ASO, the screenshots of your APP in the app store must be attractive enough and able to highlight the selling points and features of your product. In addition, you should replace the corresponding screenshots in a timely manner according to the version update iteration. We have made many attempts and efforts in this area for our own APP, and the download conversion rate will increase after each update.

23. Answer relevant questions on various Q&A websites (such as Quora, LinkedIn Answer, Yahoo Answer, etc.) to make your product appear more frequently in places where your target users appear.

24. Email marketing : Email marketing is a very effective operation method for existing users (whether it is to attract activity or promote conversion). Foreign users rely on emails much more than domestic users, so if you want your app conversion rate and activity to be maintained at a high level for a long time, please do a good job of email marketing.

25. Strive for official recommendation from the App Store : This method is undoubtedly what every developer dreams of, but everyone also knows how difficult it is. We have contacted the App Store many times, either through its official channels or privately through internal staff we know, but we have never received any favor~~Sad.