An effective mobile app marketing strategy can no longer rely solely on listing your App on the App Store page and hoping for the best. Your app is just one of more than a million apps currently available in the App Store and each one is straining for attention across all categories.

Creating a fantastic new app will never be enough to make it hit the top spot immediately, so you want to make sure you build your app on solid foundations using the best marketing and distribution techniques you can afford to help give it some long-lasting appeal and sustainability in the marketplace.

How to make your app discoverable

You need to let people know about your App on the web by working on building your App’s online presence. You need to concentrate on building a community around your App. This means building a website, and probably a blog also, and being present on the social media sites where your prospective customers are most likely to be found.

With a website and blog built around your App that you can link directly back to your page on the App Store you will be building some inbound marketing links that can be pushed through your social media platforms when sharing useful information. If you have already developed your App you may be wondering when you should launch your website? The answer of course is – right now!

It makes sense to have a website for your App anyway because you will need one to support your branding and logo to help you become more recognised online. Even if you only have time to build a basic page before you launch your App, it will help to support your efforts and make yourself look more professional. It will give your customers a place to go to get their questions answered. Start with a basic landing page and add in a subscription form, a blog, a download link etc. then as you gather feedback and testimonials, you can add these to your site to keep on building your brand.

How to acquire users and retain them

You can attract new users and improve their engagement with push notifications. Push notifications are a great tool for keeping your users up to date with your latest news and get them to come back to your App. So each time you create new content or run a special offer or cross promotion, you can notify your users and keep them engaged, especially if they don’t check out your app very often.

Services such as Urban Airship, PushWoosh, Parse or similar services allow you to integrate and push your data at the right time to capture your target audience, and these services often run special offers that you can take advantage of to help keep your costs down – especially when you are working from a tight budget during your launch and while you are building your presence.

Mobile App Data Analytics and which tools to use

Keeping tabs on your App performance is critical to ensure your marketing approach is working, or may need tweaking for improvement. There are dozens of analytical tools available for you to choose from, and you can utilize a combination of several of them to give you a well-rounded picture of your overall performance.

Some of the best analytical tools on the market at the moment are:

Google Analytics : Offering free mobile analytical tools that help you find out which phone brands are the most popular with your users, their OS, where they were referred from, new or returning users and a whole lot more.

Flurry : Again, a free to use tool that provides app analytics for iOS and Android, as well as Windows and Blackberry devices and mobile website analytics. You can track your customer demographics, your number of active users, their average session lengths, how frequently they use your app and retention statistics.

AppSee : Not free, but priced according to the number of apps and sessions it is tracking. Compatible with iOS and Android devices, and focuses more on your app’s user experience than conventional tools.

App Store Optimisation Techniques

Simply relying on your App Store page to bring you downloads can be a bit of a folly, so optimising your page to give you as much visibility as possible can encourage more visitors to convert into users. App Store Optimization is just common sense, so make sure you focus on the following areas to make the best use of your page:

• Choose a good app name and the right keywords
• Craft an eye-catching icon
• Select your best screenshots to showcase on your page and add text captions
• Write a compelling app description
• Include iOS 6 Screenshots

iOS versus Android

In iOS vs. Android, does market share really matter? During major holiday shopping seasons, iOS users outspend others, but overall Android has a larger market share than iOS, and this looks set to continue. However, taking the wallets, app sales and other sales into account, the average revenue per user starts to be more important than sheer number of devices. In this case iOS customers appear to be more valuable to the app market, so it is up to you to choose your own winner.

Pre-launch marketing strategy

You can gain some pre-launch feedback from third-party sites. Pre-launch platforms have been created to help developers to get valuable user feedback to help test their app, work out any potential bugs and to help get their apps into users hands before their official launch.

What these websites help to do is to generate awareness and some interest from users about new apps that are soon to be published. This will encourage new followers on your social media platforms as well as new sign-ups for your related newsletter or mailing list.

Pre-launch platforms are great for users who want to be the first to hear about new apps before they become available to the general public. Just like how some people want to be the first to buy and complete new games on the market, or buy the latest model of phone or games console.

Preapps is a perfect example here, and help you to build a following for your app way before you have even launched it!  LaunchSky works in much the same way, so it is worth checking both out to see which you prefer.