mobile-apps, advertisingI’ve got an app called “Pulse - fall asleep in 60 seconds” that currently costs about 1 dollar. Since my App Store ranking is getting worse because the paid applications are normally less downloaded than free ones, I’m thinking about reinvesting the money I already made(60$) into an online advertisement.
I think the catch phrase “Fall asleep in 60 seconds” is already pretty solid, now I’m just looking for where to spend my money.
Can you share your experiences on how I can increase my site traffic which consists of mostly potential customers? Is Facebook really the best choice?
Facebook is a good/cheap place to build awareness once you’ve established a small client base: throw in your client base in a list, and ask FB to advertise to users with similar profiles to get more of the same.
In your case a better bet for good traffic should be Google, in that any number of people out there are actively searching for a solution to their sleeping problems. But I’d gather it’ll be very expensive proposition for the same reason: your competition is cutting edge and they’ll have highly optimized landing pages.
Don’t miss affiliate marketing as yet another potential traffic venue: the App store actually has affiliate marketing facilities, and there’s no shortage of marketers out there that run well being websites who will accept to promote just about anything related to what they’re into.
Whichever option you take, be wary of not having too high expectations and be mindful of how committed your to avoid runaway losses: solutions for sleeping problems is a hugely competitive market, and your competitors include deep pocketed big pharma firms, well being practitioners, other tech upstarts, and many, many more. There’s a very high chance you won’t succeed. So set a budget aside ahead of time - something that you’re comfortable losing entirely - if you really feel like trying it, and don’t spend a penny more.
Look into guerrilla marketing, but ignore the wikipedia page on the topic. Guerrilla marketing suggests dozens of free or nearly-free ways to promote your product. Here is a list of 100 of their "marketing weapons" (which I prefer to call marketing tactics).
Also think about what will encourage people to share it with friends, or why strangers might see someone using your app and decide to download it themselves.
Many have been said but I would add a few.
Those plus others said can make a good combination. But as Denis said, you have to be careful on budget allocation.
Some more ideas for you
Create meaningful content about topic use your skills or hire someone from fiverr upwork or iwriter to write articles
Distribute them on blogging websites, social network
Cooperate with other app developers to cross promote your products
Find public / private organisation which potentially interested in your product and will offer to users / followers. Might be health organisations
Offer special discount codes for friends of friends
Ask your close network to help you promoute app agressively
Good luck!
Honestly with only $60 you’re not going to get very far with any sort of advertising. It would probably be best to continue development work on it and not worry about advertising until it accrues more revenue for you to work with.
If your product really is unique then I would take it to local Neurologists, Therapists, Psychologists, and Psychiatrists in your area and see what they think of it. Perhaps they will recommend it to some of their patience. If nothing else you might get some feedback to help on future development should you continue to work on it.
I would also look at some of the hundreds of blogs on the subject and contact every single one of them to see if they might add you to their existing, high ranking posts, or even try the app and do a review just for it
Another low cost option would be to get a few shirts and/or bumper stickers made. Make sure it says the app name and your slogan. And that typing it in to a search engine will lead them somewhere. Otherwise you also need to squeeze in “Available in the Android App Store” or whatever. Might be doable on the shirt, probably not on the bumper sticker.
In that case you won’t be targeting your exact market but you will be building a little bit of name recognition and a few people may actually look it up to see what it is and convert. It’s definitely not the best options but for $60 your options are quite limited. If you are or have any attractive and popular friends see if they’ll wear a shirt too.
I want to elaborate a bit more on why the online is a bad option for you so lets take Google Adwords.
Run through on a Keyword planner such as SpyFu (I find it easier than Google’s native keyword planner) some things people might search for. Here I did “Help Sleeping”:
https://www.spyfu.com/keyword/overview?query=help%20sleeping
And you can see the Cost Per Click (CPC) is a dollar. So your profit margin isn’t high enough. Even if 100% of people that click the ad buy your app you’re still not making any money since your profit and customer acquisition costs are the same. Really you’re losing money since you’re not paying yourself or looking at the time and equipment it took you to make the application. You either need to charge like $3 for the app or accept that most advertising streams won’t work.
In fact, charging more for the app is probably a good idea (assuming it works, has gotten good reviews from the 60 that have bought it, etc). $1 gives the impression that its cheap.
Let’s look at some of Clark.com 8 Top-Rated Apps to help you sleep
You really need to evaluate your offerings and if you really want to make it a business price it accordingly. This is why so many apps are free with add-ons costing. They grow their user base, show up higher in the stores, and are likely also utilizing the privacy info they collect to sell to others as an additional revenue stream.
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