During software development, marketing is a significant line of expenses in the project. There’s no doubt that paid marketing methods are effective. Digital marketing campaigns, attracting influencers, and targeted ads bring a lot of users to your app. However, if you’re on a tight budget, these options may be too expensive for your project.
So, how to conduct a successful marketing campaign at no cost? Follow this article to get some tips and tricks about promoting an app for free.
Free Promotional Methods
Basically, the list of advertising methods is very long. We’ve highlighted the best ones that will conquer most of the audience.
Product Hunt
Product Hunt is a digital platform that gathers tech enthusiasts, business people, developers, and others under one roof. Product Hunt helps you to promote your app idea and gather initial feedback.
Why is it so beneficial for your project? This platform is full of investors that monitor creative ideas and sponsor app developers to get revenue. Even if investors don’t contact you, there are many ordinary people who may be interested in your product, test it, and give you the feedback.
Use social media to promote your app
When you hear Social Media Marketing, you probably think about targeted ads. However, social media is a dynamic engine that allows you to promote your product for free.
Create accounts in different social networks and start groups related to your product. There, you can post interesting content about your app and attract users. Besides, you can write posts for large third-party groups and add links to your group or directly to an app store page. Even though this strategy is free, it requires you to share quality content. That’s why, before posting an article, read some guides on copywriting.
Participation
Conduct research about local events and meetings related to software development or business applications. Visit these meetings and tell the audience about your product. What innovations does it bring, how it can help your users, and so on.
Take care of the size
When it comes to app development, the size matters. The smaller your app is, the more likely that users will download it. If you’re not building large open-world mobile games, the optimal app size lies in the range of 50 – 70 megabytes.
If your app is bigger, users can skip it because they usually don’t want to wait for long when downloading a mobile app. Try to browse through your features. Maybe some of them won’t make the user experience better but occupy a lot of space. If so, it’s better to get rid of them for the sake of the app size.
Dive into writing
One of the best promotional strategies that can be performed with minimal expenses is blogging.
You’ll definitely need a website where you will make announcements about your app updates and post fresh news about the software. That’s the best place where you can start your blog. However, to create engaging blog content, you have to be keen on writing.
First, you have to read other blogs to get a concept of writing about mobile applications. Analyze other writers’ styles and tricks. When you feel like you have a basic understanding, get to your first article. Try to make your posts straightforward, witty, and informative. No one likes to read loads of formal text.
Besides, you can ask tech reviewers and journalists to publish a review of your product. The chances are they will refuse you until you have a breakthrough app, or you’ll pay them. And even if they agree to post you, you’ll have to write the text by yourself. No one will write it for free.
Search Engine Optimization
It’s not enough to write interesting and catchy content. Without SEO, your blog is worth nothing. To optimize your blog, you have to understand your target audience clearly. With the help of special keywords arranged in your text and an optimized website, you can get to the top rankings of search engines and get more viewers.
The majority of users use Google, so this search engine is your top priority. Google has a lot of requirements for website optimization. For example, to be listed higher, your website should be responsive, load the content fast, and so on. It should also be mentioned by popular, trusted resources. SEO has a lot of intricacies and peculiarities. It’s hard to create a well-optimized blog with engaging content on your own, but it’s still worth trying if you’re on a tight budget.
Search for alternative platforms
The majority of startups usually aim at Google Play and App Store. However, you should give other platforms a chance. Among the app stores that are worth your attention, we can highlight Amazon Appstore, Huawei AppGallery, Tencent MyApp, and others. These platforms allow you to gain new users from distant regions.
Create a landing page
A landing page may be an alternative to your website and serve as your app’s business card. Here are the essential components of a successful landing page:
A landing page is much easier to build than a full-fledged website, so you can manage it on your own. However, with the help of professional developers, you can integrate analytics to see how many users visit your page, how do they navigate through the page, how much time they spend there, and so on. Even though it raises the cost to develop an app, these stats will significantly improve the understanding of your target audience.
Besides, you can engage in a conversation with your customer. Developers can create a bot that will write a greetings message when the user enters the landing page. If the user answers the message, you can continue the conversation personally.
Wrapping Up
As you understand, there’s a lot of strategies to promote your app for free. Even if you’re on a tight budget, you can still make hype around your product and attract the attention of investors and ordinary users. However, if you’re developing a complicated software and expecting it to conquer the market, you have to think about marketing expenses beforehand.
About the Author
Vitaly Kuprenko is a writer for Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company with headquarters in Ukraine. He enjoys writing about technology and digital marketing.
