After reading many many posts on this board for the past few months I think I get the message that traditional advertising is generally, in ROI terms, is a waste of money.
I've seen various posts regarding iSpreadNews.com - and this seems that this would be, if nothing else, a great time saver and would reach far greater than anything I would do personally.
So my question is this really, with xmas coming around fast and with many companies upping the anti on their marketing pushes, would it make sense to wait until the new year when things have calmed down a little, or try and grab some traction for the xmas period?
I realise that there is no guarantee on any results, but would love to hear your thoughts/experiences on this.
I tried all the PR release companies and can say a complete waste of time and money. The people who own review sites get swamped with PR releases daily from all the different distribution websites. I am still looking for the best marketing solution but PR releases i will not be doing again.
As for ispreadnews they found there little niche by distributing to non english speaking review sites etc but for this service you pay $150+ if i remember right. Honestly if some guy running an app review site in slovenia does a review on your app who cares.
As for ispreadnews they found there little niche by distributing to non english speaking review sites etc but for this service you pay $150+ if i remember right. Honestly if some guy running an app review site in slovenia does a review on your app who cares.
Hey Rodgo and thanks for your reply.
I do agree in most but I thought a few international backlinks can't hurt.
This is always the issue us indie's face when trying to promote our apps. All of the advice given is that no promotion works unless you have a huge budget to play with. This leaves us no other options...
Sure, social marketing can help a little but I've never seen any great benefit with this personally. I've found updates / improvements of the app is by far the best way to generate a sales spike and interest, but what then?
I to search the web and forums for answers and around and around in circles I go. The knock on effect and natural results you get when an app finds a high chart position is priceless. I just managed to get top spot for education and ranked 8 overall in India app store. The download numbers and sales for what I consider a small market are huge. The app seems to be holding top spot as my theory is people search by looking at the charts so the download numbers are consistently high so my app keeps its high chart position.
Having small download numbers across many stores does not achieve much. To be top say 20 in a decent app store the natural effect and results you gain are priceless. This is why the same apps appear in the charts all the the time and seem to be impossible to knock off no matter how good your app is. Crap apps somehow find a way to get a high chart position then they hold that position from natural download results. How to buy your way to that I don't know but it sure ain't through press releases.
I am going to start looking at a good cross promotion campaign between my apps and see what sort of results I get. There are also heaps of marketing services available for apps but I personally don't trust any of them. If they where that good they should put there money where there mouth is and do a revenue share with app developers and become rich rather then rip off desperate naive developers trying to get there app exposure.
My apps are all children's educational apps and although they might not be the next angry birds with exposure they should generate a nice income. Getting that exposure though is what every developer is looking for.
I search the web and forums for answers and around and around in circles I go.
I couldn't agree more and congratulations on your results, that's great news!
My app has been holding around the 10-20 spot in the Lifestyle Category in the UK and around top 50 in about a dozen other stores, top 100 in the US. It does indeed seem to be that high chart rankings are self propelling and the app promotes itself in a way.
The problem I find is maintaining position once the app starts to slip. It seems all you can do is watch the inevitable decline unless some external event increases sales. We Got featured on appadvice.com and did notice that said spike and I'm certain that it helped to retain position for a little while longer. But to pay the higher end websites for reviews or banners will certainly never see your ROI realised, period. What longer term benefits by being on these sites and being searchable is also debatable.
Updates will almost certainly spike sales but is usually short lived and due to the long review times will probably be too little too late. Cross promotion between apps is looking like the growing trend and common sense tells from an ecommerce background that to cross sell your products is just natural. That said, what happens when you just have one or even two low performing apps? I'm thinking this again, in real terms, will have little influence on anything.
It's an incredibly frustrating challenge for developers and the more I search, the more I read that don't ever pay for advertising.
I like to see the revenue share model, it would certainly be interesting, but somehow can't see how it would work. Besides, if these marketing companies were so in the know, why on earth wouldn't they just develop some apps and get themselves at the top of the charts?
It seems by asking the question I already knew the answer but the feeling of desperation sinks in every now and then!
I completely agree with you. Couldn't have said it better myself.
I've been in the business for a year and a half, I've tried every kind of paid advertising, PR, etc out there, and none of it provides a good long term ROI (or any kind for that matter).
At most you can get a temporary spike in sales, that eventually wears off and that's it.
So basically you can only hope you make a hit that will go viral, then all the media start talking about it etc
That is basically a 1/50 000 chance.
The other way you can succeed is by hiring a group of 10 2D, 3D artists, coders/programmers and work on a full 3D game like that call of duty, zombie-something-killing and similar games.
But that takes time, money, patience, strong will... and in the end it's still not a bulletproof strategy.
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Promotion Thoughts - Before Xmas or After
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