You can spend all the time you want configuring the perfect app, but if you don’t understand app marketing, your app is only going to be downloaded by your friends and family. And no offense to anyone’s friends or parents, but that’s not much of a user base.

So, in order to ensure that your app makes it to the widest possible audience, there are a few things to consider when it comes to app marketing. Apps are extremely hot, and downloads are increasing by the day, but existing apps are slowly becoming harder to displace. For that reason, a bit of app marketing is almost always necessary to help your app earn downloads.

Paid or Free?

This is the first choice you make when it comes to marketing your app, and it’s an easy one. Just go free. Paid apps only account for a very small percentage of downloads. The rest of us need to give our apps away and find ways to make them pay after the fact through in-app purchases or other means. For small businesses, this is no problem. A business’s app can generate value in so many ways that it actually becomes hard to list them all out (direct sales, increased revenue from promotions in push notifications, social referrals, etc.).

Don’t try to publish a paid app for your small business. Even if a person is a fan of yours, he or she will probably still skip it if it costs money. The idea that an app download should be free has taken a very powerful hold on the market, and at this point, it just doesn’t pay to fight it.

Browsing behavior

Next, you need to understand how users are going to find your app. Some will search the Web. Others will search in an app store. And still other users will browse categories in the app stores. Optimize for each audience.

You can check out our post on optimization here, but the highlights are:

1. Titles. Titles should be researched, in order to find what the most common keywords are in your niche. Then, the title you choose should be obvious and descriptive, as opposed to a made up word that’s unrelated to your app’s purpose. The result is that a lot more users will find your app.

2. Logos. It’s worth it to hire a professional designer to create a nice logo/icon for your app. The process should not involve MS Paint.

3. Keywords. Use them (only applies to the App Store).

4. Descriptions. Make them clear, brief, and engaging. Get users interested quickly, and don’t overload them with information.

Advertising your app

Social platforms are the most natural, cost-effective way to promote your business’s app. Hit them all. Connect with your followers and friends, and offer incentives (e.g. a contest) so that people are excited to download your app and you earn new connections. You can also advertise your app online through paid search engine links, emails, mobile ads, and more, but there are so many free promotional channels (YouTube, your own blog, etc.) that turning to these methods is by no means mandatory.

Demonstrating value

Marketing an app comes down to showing users what value they’ll get out of using your app. Make your core offering and use case very clear, and make sure that you’re honest with yourself about whether you would use your app, if you were a stranger. If you wouldn’t, you might need to re-tool until you can find the key feature that will make your app download-worthy.

If you nail the reason for downloading your app, promote it effectively, and optimize listings for the app stores and the Web, it’ll have a fighting chance to reach a reasonable audience and become a well-used app.