Congratulations! You have officially launched your company’s new app. But now what? How do you share the excitement with current customers and prospective users? How can you give your app immediate exposure in order to quickly expand user growth and maintain momentum?
As a fast growing tech company ourselves, below are some of the tried and true methods we use to promote our company, and we’ve seen others implement successfully as well. We’ll let you in on the secret of our top 6 favorite ways to promote a company’s new app:
- Use email signature marketing
Employees send an average of 10,000 emails a year, or about 28 a day. Simultaneously, marketing teams allocate significant time and budget on creating new content. An effective way of increasing prospect engagement is injecting marketing CTAs into the employee email signature. This allows marketers to gain millions of brand impressions on their content on every 1:1 email sent. Worried about how you might control that signature? Check out a free trial of Sigstr.
- Create a demo video
You know that one of the most effective ways to gain ambassadors for your brand and to truly explain what your product does and who it benefits is to give a demo of your product. But giving demos to everyone that requests them may not scale with the infrastructure you have in place, and probably isn’t a great use of time for your sales reps if not all of the leads coming in are qualified.
While conducting 1:1 demos is great for promising prospects, you need a better way to expand your reach. A great way to circumvent this issue is to record a demo video of your product or app and use Vimeo or YouTube as a way to share the video and create a viral approach. With YouTube, you can use a link to prompt the viewer to learn more information about your company or app, and can also add tags so those searching for similar products or keywords will find your video.
- Apply for awards or lists
Every city, state, and geo has awards for “best new tech” or “startup of the year”, not to mention lists and awards like Inc., Fast Company, TechCrunch, and Entrepreneur host each year. There are literally thousands of awards that your company or app could be eligible for, and oftentimes submitting these applications is either free or just a minimal charge (up to $250/application).
Not to mention, applying for awards and learning how to pitch your company or app in just a few short paragraphs (or sentences), can be very beneficial for fine-tuning your company’s overall messaging.
- Join groups and communities on social media
Engage, engage, engage. Join groups on LinkedIn, follow topics on Medium and other publications. Start discussions about the industry as a whole, about the need you are solving for with your product or app, ask questions of the audience, and get a sense of what is being discussed – without trying to sell your product.
Use those discussions as starting points for your own blogs, customer dialogues, and even demo scripts. Getting “real life” information about the problems that exist and how technology can solve them is as genuine as it gets.
- Pursue co-marketing opportunities
Do you have any partners, influencers, or friends in the industry that have a large reach of their own? Most importantly, who do you know (or should you know) that reaches the same audience that you’re pursuing? If your product is geared towards sales, what about SalesHacker? If your product is geared for marketing, what about HubSpot or LeadPages? The goal is to form relationships with others that are solving a different problem than you, but that are working to gain attention of the same audience.
Try forming co-marketing opportunities with these companies where you each gain something in return. Post blogs on each other’s site and share those posts via social media giving the other company or person a shoutout. Do a joint webinar with the other company that explains how together, you can add benefits. Or, do a case study if you’re a user of the other technology.
- Launch on Product Hunt
Have you heard of Product Hunt? If you just built an app, chances are yes. There are a multitude of checklists and ideas for how to make your submission super successful, so we won’t cover those here (check out this resource for more information).
But consider launching on Product Hunt in conjunction with your press release or announcement. Product Hunt on its own can create a ton of great buzz and immediate feedback, but amplified by a launch when more people are attuned to what you are sharing (finding your link, following you on social, commenting on your LinkedIn announcement), you will get a lot more out of your Product Hunt submission.
Congrats again on your new product or app! We hope this quick checklist gets you started down the right path of maximizing exposure and building long-term relationships.
What other ways have you found to be helpful when launching a new product or app? We’d love to hear them! Send us your ideas at: [email protected].
