20 Ways to Promote Your App
for Free
1. Start a blog
Connect it to your landing page. Interesting and useful content will attract users to your website. Giants like Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest,
LinkedIn, Uber, Slack and Spotify all have blogs, so why should you miss this promising opportunity of getting more user traction with the
help of engaging information?
2. Become a Guest blogger
It’s great to have a blog for your app but we also recommend you to go the extra mile and contribute to other blogs and websites and share
your expert opinion with them. In most cases, you’ll have a chance to put a backlink to your app in an article itself or in your bio.
3. Shoot a Video introduction of your App
Visual content is taking over the Internet, that’s for sure. A smartly made one-minute video presenting your app can help you promote it a lot.
Learn who your target audience are, and tell them a story they can relate to and associate you with.
4. Go to social media
Meet your audience in social networks and get closer to them than ever. Some think that copying and pasting a link is enough. In fact, much
more needs to be done. The task here is to engage your audience, stay interesting and intriguing. Create pages that are click-worthy and
share-worthy.
5. Reach out to technical blogs
Email your perfect pitch to representatives of trustworthy and widely known tech blogs. By no means stalk these people, because they
probably get tons of pitches every day. Funnel all energies into an initial pitch email instead to make it exciting and worth replying.
6. Ask for App Reviews
There is a great variety of app review sites, like iPhoneness.com and appolicious.com. Tons of other resources allow you to submit your
application for review and introduce it to a large audience. However, stay relevant and choose websites and categories that fit your product
best of all.
7. Ask an expert to write
about your App
Try to find influencers who care about your niche and inspire them to
write about your solution. You will achieve great results! People love to
get an expert opinion on new things before trying them themselves.
8. Help others to find responses to their questions
Try to find influencers who care about your niche and inspire them to write about your solution. You will achieve great results! People love to
get an expert opinion on new things before trying them themselves.
9. Start a podcast
Sure thing, you know a lot about your niche and stay on the crest of the wave in your industry. Why not share your knowledge and opinion
with the world in your original podcast? You can publish it on your website or use the iTunes service.
10. Upgrade your level of expertise and build trust
By contributing to online conversations and participating in discussions you will expand your online presence and gain credibility among
Internet users. And you can always insert a link to your app in your profile.
11. Increase your customer base
Ask for opinions, offer free newsletters and whitepapers, keep your website content up-to date and ask visitors to subscribe for updates. The
larger base of target customer you have, the better it will be for your business.
12. Organize competitions
Interacting with your audience using your website or social media is a free (or very cheap) way of engaging customers. You can create a
quiz, contest, challenge or a quest with prizes that will motivate the people who learn about it not only to join in, but also to share the
information about it (and your app) to their feeds.
13. Take care of your ASO
App Store Optimization is a must. There are over 2 million apps on Apple App Store and over 2.6 million on Google Play. Thus, it’s not
enough to create an awesome app, you should do your best for it to rank high in search. Anything past top ten results is usually left
unnoticed.
14. Join the “app of the day” competition
These types of contests are hosted by several app discovery services.
15. Create engaging materials
These can be posters, wallpapers, T-shirts and other promotional giveaway things that you can distribute among the devoted users of your
app. This will help to raise brand awareness, bring you closer to your audience and make the community around your app more united.
16. Be ready for the press
Prepare materials for a possible media interview. You should be able to
provide an extensive description of your application, the community
around it, screenshots, design samples and videos that will engage
even more users. Don’t wait till they notice you, reach out to the press
when you have the chance and convince them that your app is the story
they need.
17. Speak at events
You are an expert in your sphere and you’ve built an app, so why won’t you share your valuable experience with the others who need it?
There are so many events happening around the world, and a speaker like you might be very welcome. Apply to speak at various
conferences, meetups and seminars, and you’ll promote yourself and your app as well.
18. Resolve negative issues. All of them.
It is inevitable that someone will not like you and your app. Someone will leave a really bad review for it sooner or later. It is extremely
important that you react not only to the positive feedback, but manage the negative feedback that comes along as well. The sooner and
better you deal with it, the more successfully you will remove the threat to your reputation.
19. Integrate social networks into the app
Give users the possibility to log into your application with their social media accounts, share information about the app and their activities in it
to various social channels, and you will definitely see the downloads roll in. Without any extra efforts from your side, more people will learn
about your app through users’ friend networks.
20. Create a sense of
uniquenessMake your app exclusive by narrowing down your target audience and
offering them something that no other application can. Provide the
users with something they won’t get anywhere else, and make sure to
give it for free. You can always think of monetization later, but in the
beginning it’s the downloads you need.