[General Marketing & SEO] SammiSaysHello:
Hello folks!

I wrote this guide to help the many app developers out there who are looking for help with how to 'properly' market their apps to achieve their individual goals, be it maximising profits, awareness, market share and so on.

What's extremely important that needs to be realised is that marketing isn't only about advertising or promoting an app, but rather covers a whole range of aspects that may not seem very obvious at first. A brief description of these are listed below:

Product - The actual product that the consumer will have, in this case, your app

Pricing - The appropriate pricing strategy for your app

Promotion - How you will inform and persuade the consumer to download your app, either for free or for a price

Place - Also known as Distribution, this deals with how you get your app to your customer

What will be covered?

We will be covering both the pricing and promotion strategies of marketing your app. The reason we won't be talking about the product and place is because you've probably already got your app that you want to be marketed already developed and at hand, and the distribution channel will more likely than not be the Play store. The other reasons is that the success of your goals through marketing is largely dependent on the pricing and promotion of the app, especially in the mobile app market. I've seen plenty of apps that have so much potential, but are hindered and held back by the lack of appropriate pricing strategies or exposure to the consumer, thus hopefully I'll be able to help out a little in those two departments :)

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Pricing

Pricing largely consists of a base pricing method, and then fine turned with a pricing strategy.

Pricing Methods

Generally, there are 3 main pricing methods

Cost-based (mark-up) pricing - Simply putting a price that will cover the costs/effort of the development of the app and an additional amount that will provide a satisfactory profit margin. In our case, depending on how much time/effort/money you've spent on your app, you solely base the pricing on how much you think you deserve for your app. In all honesty, this wouldn't be the most smartest choice, especially for apps that have alternatives that are superior or free, or both. Even for apps that may one-of-a-kind or has a major differentiating factor that makes it stand out, a price tag alone may be enough to stop potential customers from downloading the app.

Market-based pricing - Putting a price on your app determined by the interaction between levels of supply and demand - whatever the market is prepared to pay. This may be quite hard to implement without proper market research, which will be expensive or time-consuming, so unless you are a big company, or are willing to fork out a bit of cash to conduct market research, this may not be a good starting point.

Competition-based pricing - This is probably the most common method of determining a price of an app. It's setting a price according to the prices of your competitors. However more likely than not, the most common price of your competitors is $0, and this is most likely the case for apps that have many similar alternatives on the market. However, this doesn't mean that you have to make your app free. Do a Play store search for 3rd party launchers, and you'll see lists of successful apps that are priced similarly and despite the price tag, still garner tens of thousands of downloads and purchases.

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Pricing Strategies

Depending on your source, there will be a varying number of pricing strategies, but the main ones are:

Price skimming - This occurs when you charge a very high price for your app. Generally, this is used as a way of conveying a 'prestigious' and 'high class' image of a product, and in the case of apps, truly does not work. In fact, such a strategy for an app may even result in an unfavourable image of the developer. As 'The Most Expensive Journal' puts it, "the practice should be considered digital begging.".

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Price penetration - Introducing an app for a low price (including free), building up market share and/or a customer base, and then hopefully introducing a paid/donate version. In all probability a more realistic approach that many developers take, it is probably the smartest and most appropriate pricing strategy that will not only get you that all-important customer base, but also a profit. Be extremely aware though, of having the appropriate balance of free/paid features - no one will buy an app if the free version is lacks the necessary room for testing and trialing, and having a trial app that basically does everything a paid version means that any profit will entirely be based on the goodwill of your customers.

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Loss leader - Unlike for businesses, there isn't really much difference between this and price penetration for apps, because they both essentially do the same thing in actuality, that is, introducing an app at a low price (including free), and then garnering as much market share and customer awareness as possible. The only theoretical difference between price penetration and being a loss leader is that the latter approach is taken in hopes that the customer will download or purchase your other apps. However as already mentioned, in reality these theoretical terms won't actually matter because they both do the same thing.

Price points - This applies to in-app purchaes, such as upgrades in games. It basically means setting key prices or price points for the 'upgrades' or purchases in your app/game, an example being having certain 'upgrades' costing $0.50, a higher tier for $1.00, an even higher tier for $1.50 and so on. This is good at 'luring' your customers to purchase more and more 'upgrades' in your game because you start off with a really low price point, and then consistently increase the subsequent price points. Be mindful however to not go overboard with it, such as $1, $150, $300 etc. but common sense would have probably ruled that out already.

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Promotion

There's a quite common misconception among many people - a misconception that promotion is the same thing as advertising. However in theory, promotion encompasses advertising to also include relationship marketing, sales promotion, and publicity and public relations.

Advertising

This is probably the aspect that many developers focus on nowadays - having as much flashy images as possible in order to raise awareness and achieve downloads.

Youtube - Youtube is a great way of advertising your app, its features, as well as creating a connection between you and the customer through dialogue. As DoubleP90 says, "watching a short video is way better than reading something, and as always if it's enjoyable it will be shared by people.". People are also more inclined to watching a short video that conveys information visually and aurally rather than reading paragraphs. Advertising in video form will also, more likely than not, provide more information about your app in the same time as a person reading your preamble and going through the help section and all that.

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Ads in online magazines and subscriptions - Try to find online magazines and subscriptions that have an audience you think will be interested in your app. The great thing about this method is that your app will be given access and exposureto an already established target audience. Contact online magazines and subscriptions to see if they're willing to put have a banner of your app somewhere in their medium, either for free or a price. For example, if you have a children tracking app, find an online magazine/subscription geared towards parents.

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Web ads on sites - Another way of providing exposure to your app, it'll be a good idea to find a website that has the same target audience as your app, just like the online magazines and subscriptions covered previously. There is not point in advertising your elementary spelling game on a website for the aurally impaired.

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Direct marketing - This is an approach where you directly approach potential customers offering information about your app. Again, be smart with your time and efforts when choosing potential customers of your target audience. Forums are a good place to start, but be aware that this may create an unfavourable image of you and your app for many people :p

Relationship Marketing

This is more important than many perceive it to be. In our case, this involves keeping your app users up to date with the latest happenings regarding your app such as future updates, invitations for testing and suggestions, and so forth. It's main focus is to develop a long term relationship with your users through customer satisfaction. It provides a win-win situation where your customers are happy with your app and are more inclined to purchase more of your apps, and you get those all important ratings and profits from the additional sales as a result of customer loyalty. I've known and come across apps that excel in this area, as well as those who leave their users in the ditch and run with the money. How would I know? By simply glancing at the app comments on the Play store. This is probably the most important medium of feedback for you developers, so make sure to regularly check up on it and respond to user concerns.

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Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is the use of activities or materials as direct inducements to customers, and aims to:

Entice new customers

Encourage trial download/purchase of your app

Increase sales to existing customers and repeat purchases

Sales promotion is primarily used in a complimentary way to increase the effectiveness of other marketing activities such as advertising. Examples include:

Discounts - Pretty obvious what this one is all about. If you have a paid app, you may want to consider having a promotional discount for a limited time to draw in customers to your app. Big companies do it all time with those $0.99 app sales in the Play store, and they do quite a good job at enticing customers to purchase your app, especially if they're going for pennies.

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Premiums - Basically giving customers something extra for their purchase. Usually running for a limited time, you may want to reward all your first-week sales customers with a free download of another paid app, or an extended subscription period for apps like Evernote.

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Refunds - Part of the purchase price is refunded back to the customer for a limited time. It's basically another method of discounting apps. Can be used in conjunction with coupons or vouchers.

Free download or trial - This is the most common way of promoting an app, and is used by small time developers and big corporate companies. It may be the best way of promoting an app, as potential users are more inclined to download an app that's free than purchasing a trial version, although this may not necessarily be the case for every app.

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Publicity and Public Relations

Theoretically, publicity is any free news story about your app and:

Enhances the image of your app

Raise awareness of your app

Highlight the app's favourable features

Thus from the list, it's quite an important aspect of marketing to gain as much publicity as possible. Usually bigger companies have more ease in this department than small-time developers as they already have a substantial exposure and market share (Eg. Do a youtube or google search on Google Keep and see for yourself). So what does this mean for you guys? Try to contact possible outlets that have the same target audience as your app. tlovidiu has a list of sites that review apps for free.

Public Relations are the activities aimed at creating and maintaining good relations between you the developer and your customers. This can be done by donating part of your proceeds to charity, such as what Swype is doing, or not having any ads in your app, or at least, not having air-push ads (trust me, they get on everyone's nerves). Regarding ads, make sure you don't cross the line separating reasonable ads in your app and ads that literally pop up every 10 seconds, because the latter will most likely result in an uninstall, a bad Play store rating, and a 1 kilometer virtual radius from all your apps.

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...aaaannd Bob's your uncle

Hopefully I helped out a bit. Any suggestions or fixes are welcome. If you would like to know a bit more, make sure to check out DoubleP90's "little guide to promoting your app"

Ciao! :)