I wrote this article because I saw various applications that have not been touched by users for years, maybe the quality of the application is not good or because of the lack of marketing techniques. I leave the application quality section and will only discuss from the marketing technique side.
This article is a continuation of the previous article, Reasons for choosing Mysql storage over Firebase. So long story short, after publishing a new application on the Play Store, it turned out to be quite difficult to introduce new applications to users to download and use them.
Don’t assume after the application is complete, your journey is complete, again you are wrong, the journey has just begun.
Applications that have been made should be made a trial version or even free, because users will want to try it first before using or buying the application.
Making users download is the first difficulty, after users download our application, the second difficulty is whether they will use our application continuously? They will of course do some testing first, whether it suits their needs or expectations, if they like it they will continue to use it, or if they don’t like it immediately, it will be immediately uninstalled.
The following is an example of a real user report who downloads and uninstalls the Citizenship Contribution application, this report can be opened on Google Play Developer, and select a range per year. If you look at the graph for September 2021 for the first month after publishing, the download number is very small, only 2 downloads, and increases over time. Currently the number of downloads has reached around 1,290.
Oh, the download numbers will be listed in our application information starting from 1+, 5+, 10+, 50+, 100+, 500+, 1000+, etc. This information will automatically be updated according to the total number of downloads, I noticed that updates to the application information do not occur directly and take a while and sometimes even weeks, but eventually the download information will be updated as well. The number of app downloads is an indicator of the status of your app.
For those of you who have the budget / funds can promote by advertising your mobile application, advertising promotions can be installed in various media such as: Google Admob Campaign, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
Here’s an example of an ad targeting the inventory keyword on the Play Store
2. Manual promotion
Another way is to manually promote like I did.
Here are the ways I promote mobile apps:
a. Create a website
If you don’t have the budget to create a website, you can create a free website like blogspot.com / blogger.com / google business site
If you have a budget, you can create a website with your own domain, here are the costs:
buy domain 200k+
buy hosting 500k+-
rent a developer to make a website 500k+
In my opinion, a website is very important for media promotion, because with a website you can attract all people from various locations who search through search engines, especially Google, here is a search report with Google’s Webmaster Tool (for those who are not clear, you can read the article What is SEO – Search Engine Optimization and tools) that run to my website.
From organic search, users who download applications per day are usually around 5-10-15 downloads without doing anything, just sit back and wait for users to download and test using your application. This is the main advantage of the website.
b. Share on social media
Create a special account to promote your app on all social media like facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. Do manual promotions such as sharing applications in groups with quite a lot of members (make sure the group rules allow for posting promotional text / links, if not allowed, then you can be permanently banned from the group), write comments in the social media column. In the beginning, after publishing the application, I did this, but some time after the website took on the role of capturing users, I rarely used the method of writing comments anymore, except for sharing in groups.
Attention: make sure you don’t post/add friends/add groups exceeding the allowed daily quota limit, otherwise your account may be considered spam and may be temporarily banned or even permanently banned (if the violation is repeated after receiving warnings).
c. Make video tutorials on youtube
Make as many tutorial videos on YouTube as you can in order to educate users on the use of the application. Teach the features of your application, sometimes ordinary users do not know the features of your application, so they think the application does not meet expectations.
d. Promote apps from your own app users
Your application is made a feature to share applications with other users, so that active users of your application who feel the application is useful can indirectly promote your application to their friends, the promotion forms such as the Share button and the Invite feature. In addition, it can include a reference to our application in every report generated from the mobile application.
Finally for all those who are promoting your app, there’s a video tip from Jack Ma.
