What are the best ways to promote an app?

[FrankGrimes]

I'm looking to see if any one has any suggestions on how to promote my app. I found a website, wp7 app review, that let me write my own description of the app and send it to them with pictures and they posted it, and that seems to be helping.

Are there any other venues anyone knows about where I can get some promotion for my app and help more people know about it?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Dave Blake]

There are a bunch of ways you My personal favorite is you could post your app in our Applications Spotlight or Games Spotlight forums that's what they are there for. Also do a search on our blog one of the writers did an article about this very topic. Let me know if you can't find it I will search it for you later. You could also tip our writers by using the contact link above it would give them a chance to review your app they might write an article about it.

 

[thed]

This page has some good tips:

AdDuplex Blog: 25 Ways To Promote Your Windows Phone App for Free

 

[Greg#WP]

Hi Frank,
Mobango is an app store which distributes/promotes mobile applications for free. I've downloaded a few things from there over the years. It seems to be a fairly prolific place. Check it out -

Hope this helps

 

[theefman]

Dont forget sites like this very one, wmpoweruser (try and ignore the ads), 1800pocketpc, mobiletechworld. Mentions from these sites will get seen on twitter and retweeted, in WP-related RSS feeds and web searches.

 

[user1357908642]

I think you should also create a website that specifically discusses your app, includes detailed instructions and support, has a contact link for feedback, and also a link to Marketplace for the download. From a user-perspective, the Marketplace search experience (and descriptions) can be pretty vague. As a user searching for apps, I often check google if what I am looking for does not pop up immediately in Marketplace (which can be often).

By the way, does anybody have ideas on how to communicate a needed app to the WP development community (and MS)? Marketplace seems to lack a Timeslips (Sage Software) compatible app. There is a gigantic number of Timeslips time and billing application users out there --- lawyers, accountants, consultants, contractors.... anyone who needs to track their time. The "old" WinMo OS had Time to Time by Tom Thumb Software, and the iPhone has iSlips (Brainfreeze Software) and even the Palm had it. Yet, I don't see anything in Marketplace for WP -- seems like a huge hole that will kill the WP device adoption for a large segment of potential users.

 

[Stiv]

I would also suggest posting a demo of your app running to YouTube. It can be handy to be able to point people to what it looks like running because screenshots will only tell you so much.

Microsoft Expression Encoder is free and I found it really easy to use capture my games running in the emulator.

Expression Encoder 4 Overview | Microsoft? Expression?

Hope this helps

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

thanks Stiv, will definitely use that for showing off an application I am creating! Saves me messing around on my titan trying to get it to record the titan's screen.

 

[wsoftvn]

This post is from my experience. Others have suggested quite many ways to promote an app. Definitely, I agree with them, I however would like to give some extra information. From my experience writing announcements and reviews then have them on some news page is one of the most efficient way. Here are two examples:
- Wpcentral: having your announcement/review on the homepage can make the download number sky-rocketed. Once our app was in that situation, I got few thounsands download/day. Unfortunately I honestly do not know how to have my app reviewed on this site The only way I can do is to improve and to make my app as attractive as possible, as unique as possible, as good as possible....hoping that it will attract some attention from reviewers of this site. Give a big thanks to all the reviewers!
- Wmpoweruser: it is much easier to have your annoucement and review on this site since you can actively submit your writing. The editor will review and decide whether your writing is allowed depending on the quality of the information. The effect is not as strong as Wpcentral but it is still really good. You may got hundreds to thousands of downloads depending on your app's quality, uniqueness.

Anyone has experience with other sites? I really want to know that

 

[RogueCode]

The biggest jump in sales/downloads I have seen with my applications is when FFFFound got featured on WPC.

Besides that, what I have noticed in the marketplace is that people don't download paid applications nearly as much as free. So what I did was to have a free game called "Relaxify" which links to the paid version. I got quite a massive jump in sales when I added that link, because Relaxify gets a few thousand users per day.
I have since removed the link, but will add it again soon.

Another other place I have marketed my stuff is by contacting @UserCommunity on twitter, and then they put it in their Facebook showcase - but I don't know if that helped at all.

And finally, I tried AdDuplex paid ad's for a short while. On their website they claim a certain click through % and I got higher than that, but in the end it just wasn't worth the price of the adverts.

 

[Dave Blake]

This post is from my experience. Others have suggested quite many ways to promote an app. Definitely, I agree with them, I however would like to give some extra information. From my experience writing announcements and reviews then have them on some news page is one of the most efficient way. Here are two examples:
- Wpcentral: having your announcement/review on the homepage can make the download number sky-rocketed. Once our app was in that situation, I got few thounsands download/day. Unfortunately I honestly do not know how to have my app reviewed on this site The only way I can do is to improve and to make my app as attractive as possible, as unique as possible, as good as possible....hoping that it will attract some attention from reviewers of this site. Give a big thanks to all the reviewers!
- Wmpoweruser: it is much easier to have your annoucement and review on this site since you can actively submit your writing. The editor will review and decide whether your writing is allowed depending on the quality of the information. The effect is not as strong as Wpcentral but it is still really good. You may got hundreds to thousands of downloads depending on your app's quality, uniqueness.

Anyone has experience with other sites? I really want to know that

Up in the header bar where it says contact is the link you use to tip the WPC writers. If you want your app reviewed on this site just let them know.

 

[Aravind-S]

Very true

 

[Genfrenco]

Hello Frank,

I would like to share what i have been through.
I create an app that was too low in downloads, then I came across AdShufflr.

This network logic is simply awesome, it works along with Pubcenter. When Pubcenter fails to provide ad, it fills my ad
In this way I was promoting my app, without paying and without impacting my revenues

Complete working sample are provided.

Nice explanation:
Why you should choose AdShufflr?
:smile:
If any query ping those guys (are too supportive).

 

[pdelvo]

The best way to promote an app is to write a great app. Windows phone has, in my opinion, the best store in terms of promoting great new apps. Paying for ads to promote yet another flashlight app won't give you anything. So I would recommend to first invest in development before investing in marketing

 

[djgreedo]

Does anyone have any more tips?

My current game badly needs some publicity. I've tried paying for ads (ineffective). I've sent press releases to all the WP and Win8 sites (the game is universal), but go no response from all but one. The game is (in my opinion) high quality (for a hobbyist), and has been featured in the Windows Phone store several times in several countries, so it must be reasonably good. Ratings are almost entirely 5*, though only a handful of people have rated it.

Clowntraptions
Grogan Software
Clowntraptions | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

The game is currently being displayed in the Spotlight app, which hopefully generates a few downloads.

I've considered App Deals, which is a great idea, but it is far too expensive for my hobbyist budget.

The main problem is that only ~1% of people who download any app end up upgrading to the paid version, and this seems to be standard across the industry, meaning you need thousands and thousands of downloads just to make a small amount of income.

My next step is to update the game with a little more free content that players will have to unlock by rating the game and a few other things. Hopefully that will lead to more ratings and maybe a few more sales.

I'm currently scouring the Internet for marketing ideas.

I don't use in-game ads because the style of the game doesn't suit that (finite number of levels, no space on the screen for ads).

 

[Mohammed Al Maktoom]

Hi,
I spent several months to find best solution to make my own WP apps more popular. Now I have about 40 apps that are downloaded about 8 million times per month. To achieve such excellent results I was forced to develop my own cross-promotion network ?PromoMe?. How I promote my apps in 5 minutes and 2 lines of code. Recently I decided to share my network with other developers.

Using ?PromoMe? is very simple. Just download ?PromoMeSDK? form Nuget and add two lines of code in your app. That?s it.

Short videos with description how to use PromoMe and how it works:
Advertising Windows Phone apps - YouTube
Cross promote Windows Phone apps using PromoMeSDK. - YouTube

 

[vmnoodle71]

I think the way promo me overrides handles back button press , can get app banned by microsoft !!! Apart from that it hampers user experience since the user is directly taken to the marketplace without his consent !!!

And also your stats sound fishy .

Hi,
I spent several months to find best solution to make my own WP apps more popular. Now I have about 40 apps that are downloaded about 8 million times per month. To achieve such excellent results I was forced to develop my own cross-promotion network “PromoMe”. How I promote my apps in 5 minutes and 2 lines of code. Recently I decided to share my network with other developers.

Using “PromoMe” is very simple. Just download “PromoMeSDK” form Nuget and add two lines of code in your app. That’s it.

Short videos with description how to use PromoMe and how it works:
Advertising Windows Phone apps - YouTube
Cross promote Windows Phone apps using PromoMeSDK. - YouTube

 

[anon(5338685)]

I would suggest using Adduplex as some sort of promotion tool. Create a banner ad for your app and use their SDK. You would display banner ads for other apps in your app's ad slot while the other apps would display yours! As long as your banner ad is good and informative, you will get clicks and conversions. I have tried that in my app and would rate it as a moderate success.

 

[BriarcliffStudios]

I would also recommend using Adduplex. It's easy to setup, and so far I've been really happy with it. If you combine it with an Ad Rotator, you can make an easy switch from cross-promotion ads to paid ads.

 

[KM-Games]

Very helpful, thanks!