When you’re developing your first mobile app, it can be incredibly exciting and even exhilarating. You’re likely so focused on the details of the app itself, however, that you’re not necessarily thinking about marketing it.

With the tremendous competition in the app marketplace, it’s often the marketing plan that differentiates successful apps from ones that don’t do as well. After all, marketing is essential these days if you want an app to even be discovered by the general public. However, this isn’t easy to do! Many seek comfort in the app monetization platform, where they can combat various marketing tasks in one place and make as much revenue from the app as possible.

The following are some realistic mobile app marketing tips that even small businesses can put in place leading up to their launch.

Ask For Opinions

If you want to know more about what people think about your app, which can, in turn, help you more effectively target your audience during marketing, go directly to the source. There are plenty of people out there willing to test an app.

You can go to social media and find people who are interested in or part of the industry that your app is in. Get their interest and ask for their unbiased opinion. You’ll be surprised how much this outside feedback can help you as you’re developing a more concrete app marketing plan.

Research Your Competitors

You may have already done some pretty significant market research when you were in the early stages of app development, but don’t leave out competitor research.

Competitor research is so important because it will allow you to see not just what other apps offer, but what they don’t offer.

Being able to fill a need that your competitors can’t is something that can shape a successful marketing campaign. If your marketing is all focused on what you offer that your competitors also do, it’s not nearly as effective as narrowing down your marketing to what you do differently.

Build a Community Outside Your App Store Page

Optimizing your app store page is no doubt extremely important, but it’s not the only thing to think about when developing an app marketing plan.

You will need to have a community and buzz happening outside of the App Store as well.

A good place to start is to reach out to people who are relevant within your industry. This can include journalists, bloggers, and social media influencers. Once you start talking to them and they’re sharing your app with their audience, they can also point you in more specific directions for other aspects of your marketing plan.

For example, they may be able to show you the forums where your likely users most frequently spend time, or the social media pages they’re most interested in.

From there, you can move onto your social media strategy.

Create A Press Kit

Finally, plan on creating a press kit. Your press kit needs to aesthetically look great, provide information, and make you appear polished and professional.

Most app press kits include a release date, screenshots from the app store, a website, and a promo video. You may want to do your press kit first so that you have something to send to bloggers and influencers when you get to that stage.

Above all else, however, what happens during development is the best thing you have in your marketing arsenal. If you have a great product that’s going to generate positive user reviews, this is a big portion of the PR taken care of for you.