We’ve put together some invaluable marketing and advertising tips for your iPhone/iPad application.
Create a Twitter account for your publishing name or applications. There are many different tools you can use to help you with this, see twitter tools. (n.b. recent stats show Twitter gets around 18 billion searches a month, there must be some of those people with iPhones, right?!)
You must BE ACTIVE on Twitter, communicate with your fans and you will see your followers grow and grow.
Create a Facebook fanpage and get your friends to join. Update your fan page with screenshots of your apps and post updates/competitions on your feed/wall.
Create a small marketing website/blog for your application, make sure you submit the URL for the website in with your App Store submission. You could use wordpress.com for this (free) or tumblr.com (also free)
Spread the word on iPhone/iPad related forums. This takes time but it’s free!
Post videos of your app in use on YouTube. It’s a great way to give your reviews a visual experience of your application and has an insane amount of traffic (approx. 200 million videos watched per day).
Put your application on a beta tester website (such as iBetaTest.com), release the application to a small group of beta testers to generate some interest in your app. The testers just might tell their friends or kindly post a link on their Twitter/Facebook feed.
Many sites will review your application for free, try a google search for “iPhone Review” and try a few of them. You could even offer them a promo code.
Pay for your app to be featured on high traffic websites such as http://www.iphonedevsdk.com, it’s usually quite inexpensive to get featured on these websites.
Offer a lite (free) version of your app with limited functionality (restrict the levels/information/usage) and advertise the benefits of upgrading throughout your application.
Create competitions with prizes (iTunes vouchers etc) and advertise within your Applications (it could be posting a video on YouTube using your app, signing up to your newsletter or achieving a high score).
Get your friends to submit reviews for your application. Ask them nicely/bribe with beer to post a link to your website/app store page on their Twitter/Facebook feed.
Make your application free for a day or maybe for the weekend. The app might just get people talking! It might be a good idea to contact blog owners/review websites and ask nicely for a review, while the app is free.
Make your app icon as attractive/eyecatching as possible. This is the ONLY visual you will get when potential customers are scrolling through the app store on their iPhone/iPod Touch.
Use the best visuals you can on you app store description page (remember to upload the worst ones first and leave the best ones until last – for some reason the order they appear on the app store after uploading is reversed).
Offer promotion codes to review websites in exchange for a review (this will only work on US accounts). You can create promotion codes using iTunes Connect.
Be sure to tag your app with useful keywords and list the unique selling points of your application in the app store description.
Review your competitors apps and get a feel for the price range to sell your app at. Traditionally, posting your app at a £0.59 starting price was a decent tactic but due to the number of apps within the App Store, the chances of getting spotted are minimum. Don’t be afraid to sell your app for more than your competitors, your description should list all of the unique features to add weight to your app.
The maximum size of an application that can be downloaded through a 3G connection is currently 20mb (this may change in OS 4.0). If you try to keep your application under 20mb (could be difficult, depending on your app) you will have a larger target audience. If you app is over 10mb and the user only has a 3G connection, they will see a message asking them to buy the app later when on a Wifi connection.
Make your app compatible with OS 2.0 if possible. Recent reports show they many iPhones in the wild are STILL using version 2 of the iPhone OS.
