How to Market and Promote your Games and Apps, Part 3/4

3) Effectively Using Cross Promotion

We’ve talked about cross promoting apps in previous parts of the series. Let’s take things even further now and get some feedback from our survey respondents as well as tips on being successful when cross promoting your products.

Over half of all respondents said they cross promote their apps. This is a very healthy number, and makes sense considering it’s a low cost technique with high degrees of success.

“Yes, I heavily cross promote. All my apps have an alert view that’s shown upon launch. It downloads the alert message from a server, and the alert has 2 buttons (‘Close’ and ‘Sure!’). If you press Sure, it automatically opens a URL that I choose (the URL is also downloaded from my server, so I can easily change the popups). I have this popup system in all my games, and it’s worked out amazing.” – Anonymous

Cross promotion is an excellent tool, whether it’s for your own apps or another developer’s apps.

How do you cross promote? There are dozens of different ways you can cross promote, not only from within your app but via your website or social pages as well. Here’s some ideas on how to do this:

• Blog post or RSS feed
• Twitter
• Facebook
• From within your apps via pop ups, news feeds, etc.
• Via other developer’s websites or apps
• Through exchange of ad space on websites or apps
• Emails and Newsletters

Cross Promotion of Math Ninja in Wild Fables

Cross Promotion of Math Ninja in Wild Fables

Let’s start by discussing cross promoting in your own apps. Note this isn’t the same as adding ads – cross promotion is all about adding an easy way for users to see your other apps, in an attractive and appealing way.

To do this, you should add a button somewhere in your app that transitions to a screen that shows your other apps. You should take care to make these screens as beautiful and attractive as possible, to invite easy and fun browsing by your customers.

You might want to consider storing this information on a web server so it’s easy to update the cross promotion pages in your apps when thing change.

The nice thing about cross promotion is there’s no extra cost to doing this, other than a few extra days of development. It becomes more and more effective the more apps you have in the App Store, and the more popular they are.

If a customer likes one of your apps, chances are they will like your other apps as well, so make it as easy as possible for the users to find out about the others. Many times, I’ve missed great apps by the same developer because I never looked up their iTunes page.

Don’t assume that just because your apps are on the App Store, everyone will find them!

“We cross promoted by having a “News” feature in an existing app announce the new app. It worked very well. For a professional app, we had to make sure it was easy to see, but did not interfere with the workings of the app in any way.” – Survey Respondent

Alternatively, you can cross promote apps or products not belonging to you. If you know developers you can get in touch with and “negotiate” promoting each other’s products, by all means do so.

For example, if I have a very popular recipes app and developer ABC has a very robust website with user-submitted recipes. How about using their recipes on your app with a mention and link to their site? In return you get more recipes and an existing user base that will make your app seem active and popular from the get go.

Better yet, how about doing something like what Mass Effect 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning did recently. Whichever demo you downloaded and played would let you unlock exclusive goodies for the other game.

I certainly knew about Mass Effect 3 but I’d never heard of Kingdoms of Amalur. This just shows you how important and useful cross promotion can be.

Now imagine how many of these people downloaded the Kingdoms of Amalur demo just to unlock something in Mass Effect 3, ended up enjoying the demo and purchased the game as a result. Instant win, instant increase in sales and instant “coolness” effect via a rarely used (yet truly creative) cross promotion tool.

4) Websites, Twitter, and Facebook, Oh My!

Earlier in our series we mentioned how important it is to have a website. Guess what – it’s just as important to have a Facebook page and Twitter account as well!

“I have all 3 (Facebook, Twitter, and website). Facebook is by FAR the most effective. I’ve got over 70K people now, and it’s so easy to interact with fans. It’s much easier than twitter because you can write more, and you can also easily embed pictures and videos. More people have Facebook too.” -Anonymous

Each of these avenues provides a different “feel” and benefits:

• Facebook works really well for apps because pretty much everyone is on it. It takes very little effort for someone to “like” an app, and if they do they will see updates on your page in their news feed. It’s a great way to share news and easily interact with your customers.
• Twitter has a nice 1-on-1 feel to it with @ messages, and works particularly well for a tech-savvy audience. If you do use Twitter, be sure not to spam. Provide relevant content in your tweets that people will find interesting, so you don’t lose their attention.
• A website is great because it’s often the first thing people find when they search for your app. Make sure it has a good demo of your app, is attractive, and has a prominent and easy button they can click to find your app in the App Store.

“I have a web page and blog and it’s one of those small things that result in a handful of new customers each month.” – Matthijs Hollemans

Handy Link: If you want to make a really professional looking website don’t have the expertise to do so, checkout Square Space. It’s a cool and unique web hosting serve that helps you create a very robust, professional looking website in no time!

Whichever social tool you choose be sure to remain active and up to date. It’s very frustrating as a customer to visit a Facebook or Twitter page of a product I’m looking into, only to find that it hasn’t been updated in six months. People will notice and it’s little things like these that detract from new/return customers.