How to Market and Promote your Games and Apps, Part 2/4

8) Using Giveaways for Promotion

Giveaways are something that can cost you nothing at all but can dramatically improve awareness of your app. A giveaway can be a promo code, gift certificate, clothing or apparel, free apps or software, exclusive content, discount on your apps or games, etc.

“I ran promotional code giveaways on AppAdvice.com and they were incredibly successful. From what I could tell it was one of their most active giveaways at the time.” – David McGraw

There are plenty of websites, such as AppAdvice, that are constantly monitoring for price drops and informing users of sales. I get daily deals and rebates on Flipboard via AppAdvice and the Apps feed. I’ve found some very good offers I might have otherwise missed and it’s allowed me to find good content for a low price (or even free).

Use your imagination when it comes to giveaways. As mentioned before, you can use promo codes on Twitter or Facebook but don’t just stop there. Try cross promotion with other developers and offer to exchange promo codes. This is a fantastic way to build a good network of connections and to help fellow indie/small developers.

Lowering the price of your game or application is also something to be aware of, it’s another form of a giveaway and can help boost sales and popularity of your app.

You can do this randomly, on holidays, important dates for you and your company, or depending on how your sales are doing.

Giveaways and price drops are a fantastic opportunity for you to take control of decreasing sales and keep momentum going. This is where using analytics and monitoring your sales on iTunes Connect can be a lot of help.

“We discounted our app as part of the App Friday promotion for Moms With Apps. It significantly helped get the word out early on.” – Survey Respondent

Remember to always focus on your target audience. Go to forums and websites that belong in your app’s category and announce your price drop or hand out promo codes there.

Another great form of giveaways are contests. From simple trivias to drawing contests, they’re all very cool and can bring your user base together. If you are making an awesome game then perhaps the best wallpaper wins a free copy of the game, or a signed T-Shirt with the main character’s image.

Whatever you decide to do as a giveaway or contest be sure to do it often. Sometimes, especially when working as a solo developer, we are so eager to release our product that once it’s on the app store we forget about it all together.

Your product has a longer life than that. Constant updates will refresh your user reviews and give your app a boost on the recently released iTunes charts. Showing your users that you care about your product is another way to gain popularity and increase your sales.

Look at Firemint, they’ve continually updated Real Racing, Real Racing 2, Spy mouse, and Flight Control way beyond what anyone expected. Ton’s of free content, new tracks and maps, using new features of iOS and updating for the latest devices. This on itself is a giveaway, users getting more content and an improved experience for no extra money!

9) What About Advertising?

Advertising is a tricky one, especially for indie developers. It’s a world of its own and there are companies dedicated solely to this. Just to give an example, even large companies with lots of internal resources, talented people and money, choose to hire an advertising agency for their products and brand.

If you are an established developer or studio then you probably have a division or agency handling your PR and advertising. If you are an indie though, here are some tips and suggestions in order to get the most out of advertising.

The general consensus among the survey respondents was very few people are actually spending money advertising their apps, and those that are had a lot of troubles getting enough value for their money.

“We spent around $800 on one burst of Fusion advertising. In short: it sucked. We got around 70 visitors to the site per day while it was running. It didn’t even come close to breaking even, and failed to drive any interest for the app. I wouldn’t recommend it at all.” –Carter Allen

“Banner ads aren’t very effective unless you want to spend BIG ($10,000+), but incentivized installs (TapJoy and Flurry AppCircle, etc.) can be most cost effective. Depends on what your goals are. Cheaper to be able to get cross-promotion inside popular apps.” – Anonymous

If you do want to proceed with advertising though, you’re going to need a good budget, and the willingness to do a lot of experimentation. Here are some tips that might be helpful:

Always remember your target audience, especially when advertising. Depending on who you’ve made the app for will determine the type of advertising you will do.

If you want to hire an advertising expert or agency, do some scouting. Look at their clients, portfolio, experience and compare rates. Bargaining is definitely something you can do here because there aren’t always fixed rates.

Advertising on TV, newspapers or radio is something we barely see with apps. Internet is the way to go for our products.

Determine the best places to advertise for your audience. If it’s kids then you might wanna target online websites like Club Penguin or Cartoon Network. If it’s a cooking app you will probably want food.com or blogs/recipe related websites.

Facebook or Twitter could also be a great way of advertising. I’ve used Facebook before and it lets you set a budget, target your audience by gender, age, country etc. the great thing is that we know plenty of people are on Facebook so exposure will not be an issue. Being able to establish a set amount of money is also great. Which leads us to our next point.

Establish a budget! This is one of the most important things you can do here. Even if you don’t hire an agency or a person to handle your advertising, you should be able to acquire stats from the site you’re trying to advertise on. Ask for info like visits per month, unique hits per month, clicks per banner/ad, prices, etc. This will allow you to compare against other websites and determine where you are getting the best deal.

Design a eye-catching, unique banner. Just like your app icon, if your banner doesn’t look good there’s a big chance people will not even bother clicking it or learning about your app. Use some of that advertising money and hire a designer to make two or three awesome banners you can use and be proud of.

After buying some ads on a website or doing advertising on Facebook, be sure to acquire stats and info on how everything is doing. Save these stats and analyze them – the A/B testing technique is useful here. Learning from our mistakes is the best way to succeed!

Sites like Free App a Day are also ways to advertise your app. Keep in mind they charge you a hefty fee to be included in this site, but it can result in a lot of people downloading and trying your app, which can lead to good word of mouth. The verdict is out for this – some people have found it worth the money, and some have not.

Keep in mind that it is mathematically possible to get your app in the top 100 list of an app store just through advertising. It may be worthwhile to spend a good bit of money advertising your app to get it into the top 100 list, for the exposure and continued benefits of being in the top 100. However, you need to be confident that your app has enough staying power to stay in that list once your advertising list ends.

In the end, for us independent developers, it’s all about getting the best bang for our buck. We don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on advertising nor can we afford the luxury of wasting 1 or 2 grand.

Because of this (and because it’s difficult to get enough sales from advertising to justify the cost), many indies prefer to go with free marketing techniques instead of ads.

If you have any good tips or suggestions about advertising techniques that have worked for you, please join the forum discussion below!