Crucial Mobile App Pre-launch Steps

Launching a mobile application is not like launching a website in the mid 90 s because we are ′much more educated about the internet now than back then. It is a shame if you are not leveraging the digital space to market your mobile app prior to launch because there are many channels a mobile app developer can take to gain some much needed early visibility.

Mobile app marketing is a lot like marketing any business online. You need to approach your app like a business which means you need to put measures in place before the application actually launches. Get some traffic to some sort of landing page, develop a voice and start build a brand before it hits the streets.

Here are 3 crucial steps to take before launching your app:

Start building some sort of brand

Your app should be brand-able right from the beginning. This is something that can be started during early stages of development. Launching a coming soon or some landing page for your brand and creating some pre-launch PR is a nice way to get things rolling and getting eyeballs to land on your landing page. We understand building a brand can take quite a bit of time but that

does not mean you can’t start the process right out of the gates. Start listing your application in mobile app directories and app review sites and anywhere else you can list your mobile application.

Launch a website

Launching a website is crucial. You might say to yourself ”I don’t want people to come to the site, I want app store downloads!” Guess what? Launching a website is part of the process to getting more downloads. You need to have a central hub to build your brand and let people learn more about your mobile application.

Sure your app will have a page in the iPhone app store and also in the Android Market but you need more than that. You need something you have control over and something you can update with a blog, newsletter sign ups and a variety of other features to get users to feel like they are part of a community.

Here is an mobile app marketing article written by Inc. Magazine writer, Christina DesMarais :

“There are more than a million apps you can download to your mobile device. That’s good news for consumers, but not so great for developers. There’s so much competition in this noisy space that becoming the next Angry Birds or Pinterest is no simple feat.”

Get people to use it before launch

Get people to really use your app before you bring it to market. You might think your mobile app is the cat’s bag because you built it but that doesn’t mean the masses will feel the same way. Get a group of individuals to use your mobile app and get some good market research under your belt so you know what others think of your mobile app. This is important especially if you are charging for your app.