How to Market Your iphone App

Let’s take a look at how to market your iPhone app

There are a few things you need to know before you release your iPhone app into the world. So we learned from Pinger and you can, too. Pinger is a website where you can make some incredible applications for iPhone, iPad, and iPods.

The engineers at Pinger have created some of the best apps for iPhone such as Textfree with Voice, Textfree Unlimited, Doodle Buddy, and Stickwars. Their apps have been in the top 100 best apps for over a year. Just one of their applications, Textfree Unlimited, has been in the top 20 downloadable apps for the iPhone for over 14 months. They can teach you a lot about building and iphone app marketing for Apple devices.

Here are the 7 top tips they teach about marketing an iPhone app

1. How to build a great app
2. How to create a lite and paid version of the app
3. How to advertise on the iPhone ad network
4. How to get free publicity
5. How to test and track the app
6. How to learn from feedback
7. How to go globally

Marketing Tip #1 – How to Build a Great App

Getting to the top 100 app is not easy. At Pinger, their first app, Pinger Phone, which was an okay application; however, it was only in the top 100 for 15 days. The Textfree Lite app, which is a terrific application, was in the top 100 free apps for a year. It’s now replaced by Textfree with Voice, and it’s still a great app for the iPhone.

Why did this app get the top 100 downloadable apps? They had consistent feedback from users! (3 stars for the lite version and 4 stars for the paid version) It was something people needed and it was easy to use.

Marketing Tip #2 – How to Create a Lite and Paid Version of the App

When you create an application, always create a free version and a paid version. If they like the free or lite version, they will buy the paid version. It allows users to try an app out before they spend money on it.  It doesn’t matter if it only cost $5.99. It’s the free that gets them pulled in. It helps drive sales to the paid version.

Marketing Tip #3 – How to Advertise on the iPhone Ad Network

If you want to sell your application for iPhone, then you have to spend money on advertising. It’s the fastest way for getting exposure for your app. The ads will go to every person’s iPhone. That’s over 1 million iPhones and counting. You can’t get better marketing. It doesn’t do to advertising on Google Adwords, or Yahoo mobile, they don’t use an iPhone. Advertize where the application is going to be used.

Run a test with $250 to $500 on Admob. Use the targeting market by country or device. Create several ads to see which one will work. Track the users and downloads.  Learn and listen to the feedback. Try again with another ad.  Rinse and repeat. Your goal by advertising is:

1. Enough organic downloads to put your app in the top 100
2. Enough downloads to build a user database for your paid app

Note: It doesn’t work with every application, that why you test your ad.  Even free apps can have zero downloads.

Marketing Tip #4 – How to Get Free Publicity

Don’t go in debt trying to get exposure – use free publicity

Contact sites such as App Review sits, YouTube, and bloggers whose focus is the Apple platform.  Offer them (the site) a free, paid version to review. Plus, don’t give them the lite version. Remember, there are over a million apps for the Apple devices. You have to find the niche where your app works best.

Marketing Tip #5 – How to test the app

Test and track every app, ad, and review for your application. You will not only learn what users’ think of your app, but you will also see what ads work the best. You won’t get help from the App Store because they don’t track anything, but there are other ways to track the use of your application.

Track

• Downloads vs rank
• Downloads/rank vs releases
• Downloads/rank vs mobile ad spend
• Downloads/rank vs reviews going live

When you hit the perfect combination that works and your app is in the top 100, keep doing the same on all your apps. Remember, to keep testing and tracking your applications.

Marketing Tip #6 – How to learn from feedback

Read the feedback from users and make the changes they want to your app. listening to the users tells you what your app lacks for them to be satisfied using it. This is one of the most important aspects of building apps for Apple platform. It also helps when you create another app. The users will know you’ll make changes and download your app more often. Remember, satisfying the user is what your aim should be.  After all, they are the ones using it, and they pay you to use it.

Marketing Tip #7 – Going Globally

Be sure the world knows you have an iPhone app. You may test the market in an area or region, but once you have all the data, and then go for the world. You can localize your ads, the descriptions, and the app to bring you the highest returns on your application.