20 Creative Ways To Promote Your App For Free

Updated in 2020

Do you know how to promote an app for free? Creating an app opens the door of a new world. It offers a totally unique experience for you. After developing it, you will witness how it grows day by day or how it is thrown away. The result depends on how effectively you use time and effort to do marketing your app. So the question is How to promote a mobile app? or How to promote an app?

Here is a list of creative ways to promote your app for free:

1. Optimize Your App – ASO

2. Make Your App Screenshots Great

3. Offer a Promotional Price

4. Respond To All App Review & Questions

5. Create an App Demo Video

6. Build a Microsite

7. Build a Blog

8. Use Social Channels

9. Find Influencers

10. Join Facebook/LinkedIn Groups

11. Reach Out To Press

12. Reach Out To Bloggers

13. Comment On Blogs

14. Get Featured On App Review Websites

15. Create Email Signature

16. Attend Events

17. Apply For Awards

18. Start a Contest

19. Search For Alternative App Stores

20. Update Your App Regularly

Do you like these mobile app marketing ideas? Let’s dive in and get your app to the summit!

1. Optimize Your App – ASO

The first answer to how to market an app is to optimize your app. ASO is the sum of strategies to rank higher in app stores. From app name to app pricing, it includes everything happening in it. Just like SEO, it analyzes keyword relevance. From the app perspective, it also focuses on review and ratings. If you optimize your app, people will download.

Click here to see how Paperclip, (a UK-based trading app that lets users buy, sell, and swap) quickly reached over 100,000 downloads with the help of App Samurai campaigns.

2. Make Your App Screenshots Great

The second answer about how to promote an app is to make screenshots great. Actually, it can be counted among the app store optimization process. However, I want to draw more attention to this point because it is one of the important mobile app promotion ideas. Generally, it is ignored how effective and persuasive they are. The users look over screenshots in order to see what is waiting for them. It would be useful to add captions and visual elements. By looking at the screenshots, user can fully understand the features offered within that app so your preview as screenshots are too important for app promotion. Take a Vine example. You can easily understand what the app offers by looking at screenshots.

3. Offer a Promotional Price

Another mobile app marketing idea is to offer a promotional price. Don’t forget that users don’t have enough idea about your app! So, you need to offer a competitive advantage to make your app reasonable. You can add several coupon codes or promotions for in-app purchases or download as well as you can add a free version of your app to attract more downloads.

4. Respond To All App Review & Questions

It is important to be there as soon as possible when users need to speak with you or ask something to you. Responding app reviews and questions is a sign that you give value to each user. If users don’t satisfied with you, they can pick the one among plenty of apps that give the same service with you.

5. Create an App Demo Video

How to promote an app for free? Create a demo video! Video is your dynamic showcase to introduce all aspects of your app. Things you should pay attention are;

Not to create more than 30 seconds



Give the points of “Why, How, What”

After finishing your video, share it on any platform to promote your app.

Learn More:

Do you want to explore how to create effective app store video for your app?

6. Build a Microsite

Another way to market your app is to build a microsite. Together with a demo video, it is important to leverage a website for your app or to add an exclusive part for your app to your existing website, if yes. It can be a one-page website or a pop-up. The important thing is here to add content explaining the features and benefits of your app and links going to your app rather than being a separate website or a part of an existing website.

If you haven’t launched your app yet, you can collect email addresses of people who want to get alerted when you launch your app.

7. Build a Blog

You can indicate how expert you are on the blog by sharing anything from articles to interviews, from research to news. Moreover, you share your app’s features, benefits, updates at times. Write your story to get users to understand your purpose behind the app and tell them how this app makes their lives easy.

8. Use Social Channels

Be active on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn channels, but especially be active on the channels where your potential customers are at most. Share any action; demo video, updates, sectoral news or trends.

Also, find the trending topics and share something valuable about them. Do you know that #howto hashtag is one of the top trending tags on Vine? You can also create a how-to series taking six seconds.

9. Find Influencers

In today’s world, marketing is changing its shape according to trends. Together with social media, “phenomenons” were born. And now, they are a significant part of marketing. You should take your share! Find any influencer being suitable to introduce your app and send them an email stating your intent obviously. Developing honest, authentic, and mutually beneficial relationships with so-called social media phenomenons will be a long term investment to promote your app. For example, Maisie Williams (aka Arya Stark in Game of Thrones) is building and promoting her own app called Daisie and promoting it as an influencer on Instagram and Twitter.

Would you like to learn how to take advantage of social media influencers for the success of your mobile app? Follow me.

10. Join Facebook/LinkedIn Groups

You can build great relationships by joining developers and entrepreneurs groups on Facebook and LinkedIn especially. It lets you discuss any bug, feature, update or value. Moreover, you can share your app with them and offer them a promo code to try your app.

Ask for their feedback on your app. This not only increases your visibility but also you can develop your app even better. Increase your visibility on social media groups & communities to increase your brand visibility and to promote your mobile app.

11. Reach Out To Press

To reach more people, get your story published. Before reaching journalists, be sure that you have everything a journalist will need. They are;

Your app summary guide which includes what your app is, how beneficial it is and why you developed it.

Screenshots which include app screenshots and lifestyle pictures as much as possible. As your media kit will reach many journalists, it would be boring for people to see the same images everywhere.

Design portfolio which includes all logo sizes, icon sizes, banners as much as possible.

Learn More:

Do you want to explore the best practices for getting press coverage?

12. Reach Out To Bloggers

This strategy is like influencers with an exception that you don’t need to find the blogs reaching the masses. Just find the blogs within your respected industry. Give them coupons or something else that let them use your app and share their own views. Or you can even try to buy backlinks from bloggers that mention your product and link to your own website.

13. Comment On Blogs

Another useful method to promote an app is leaving a comment on blogs. Be careful the users’ profile on the blog you will comment match up with your target customers. Add your app or website link to your profile to boost awareness. Organic growth using comments is a great way to increase your native customers and increase brand visibility.

14. Get Featured On App Review Websites

By optimizing your app, you are doing app marketing basically, because you can reach out app review websites to convince them to feature your app on their site. To get reviewed by them, it is important to have beautiful graphic design, unique content, no crashes or bugs. Review your app and then apply. Buildfire created a rich source to show websites to submit your app. You can view it.

15. Create Email Signature

Like commenting on blogs, the aim is boosting awareness. According to a study by Exact Target, 91% of people check their email daily. Think about the number that will see your app name. So, make it habit to add your app name in your signature.

16. Attend Events

Attending events, conferences or meetups is the best way to grow your network and tell people your app. Have an initial conversation with the people at the event. You can give them your business card, ask for checking your app and getting touch with you for any feedback.

17. Apply For Awards

Attending in-app awards is a great way to recruit new users. You can obtain plenty of downloads, reviews and links. Success depends on your app idea. There are lots of app awards sites:

18. Start a Contest

Another answer for how to promote an app is to start a contest! Together with attending contests, you can hold a contest. It lets you light the rivalry spark! A contest incentivizes users to download your app. Getting points can be in various ways; sharing the app, having their friends sign up. Customers should also know when they should tune in for updates.

19. Search For Alternative App Stores

It is okay to occur the App Store & Google Play as an app store into your mind. But they are not the only ones. There are many alternative app stores such as GetJar, Amazon Appstore and AppBrain. According to One Platform Foundation, adding your app to less popular app stores results in 200% more downloads compared to Google Play.

20. Update Your App Regularly

Rolling out new updates means caring customers for them. If you don’t try to offer the best experience, your app would be thrown away. So, keep your app fresh and plan to offer more for customers.

Use App Samurai platform to increase your app installs via creating effective mobile advertising campaigns without dealing with any ad network. Click here to start for free.

Final Thoughts

I hope we managed to answer the questions: how to market an app or what are mobile app marketing ideas. There would be some points we have missed but we briefly covered ideas about how to advertise an app. If you realize any missed points, feel free to share it with us. Can you tell us your magical weapon if it is not a top-secret? :)) And contact us if you need anything about app promotion services or have a question about how to promote your mobile app. You can also check our amazing resource about best practices to increase your mobile app engagement below!