Strategies for Success: Building Your Fan Base
Tony Morelan
Sr. Technical Evangelist, Samsung Developers
The key to successful marketing is building your brand and creating a loyal customer base that returns to your store to purchase again. You want consumers to recognize your brand, trust the quality, and anticipate new releases. Building your brand takes time and effort. From designing compelling consumer marketing assets to expanding your customer reach, in this blog series, I offer suggestions to help grow your customer base and ultimately reach your marketing goals.
PLEASE NOTE: This article links to a number of products, services, and online groups. The links are for the readers' convenience, but do not represent an endorsement of the products, services, or online groups.
Build a Fan Base
The number one common factor for all successful app developers is building a fan base. This is the best way for consumers to discover your app collection, learn about your latest releases, take advantage of your marketing promotions, and to stay up-to-date with your brand.
One easy way to start building your fan base is to collect email addresses to be used in marketing campaigns or newsletters. There are many ways you can encourage your customers to share their email.
Coupons
A great way to reward your fans and promote your apps is with coupons. However, you should limit the use of coupons so that your paid apps maintain value. If you offer large quantities of coupons, your customer base will not be as likely to purchase your apps. Downloads from coupons should be less than 15% of your total downloads.
A few ways to leverage the power of coupons:
- Buy One, Get One Free. Create a marketing campaign for current customers to post a review of the app they purchased. Email a screenshot as proof and get a free coupon for another app from your collection.
- Share on Social Media. Customers post a photo/video of their purchased app on social media and tag your brand handle. You’ll receive a tagged notification and can send the customer a message with their coupon code.
- Ask subscribers of your YouTube channel to post comments on your videos. Award a lucky subscriber with a free coupon.
Shoot Videos or Take Photos?
The answer to that question is, both. Photos are needed for marketing your apps on Galaxy Store and can easily be posted to your website and social sites. If you need help creating photos for watch apps, check out Asset Creator and Lifestyle Photos. These free templates will help you quickly create great photos for use in marketing.
Photos are great for a quick view and can get you a fast like. However, with video sharing sites becoming extremely popular, studies have shown that users are more likely to post comments on videos than photos. This type of engagement helps boost your posts to the top of the algorithm and can raise your ranking within search results.
Videos are also a fantastic way to show your apps in action, giving consumers confidence before deciding to purchase. Videos give you the ability to not only show the features of your app but also set the mood to help inspire customers to purchase.
Rather than simply animate a series of screenshots, filming an actual device can make videos more compelling. However, if you do not have access to a device, here are a few alternatives that can help:
- Purchase a video template that you can edit in a program like Adobe Premiere. One popular site for templates is Video Hive.
- Download a 3D device and animate using a program like Adobe After Effects. 3D objects of Samsung devices can be purchased at Hum3D.
Watch face designer Urarity creates promotional videos that highlight their work.
Website
Give your brand a home by creating a website. With services like Wix, Squarespace, and Divi for WordPress, building an engaging website can be smooth and simple. Having a website gives your brand credibility and builds trust with consumers. Your website can include your complete library of apps, the latest news, and make it easy for consumers to contact you.
Newsletters
One of the most critical tools for success is offering a newsletter that consumers can subscribe to. Delivering a newsletter is the quickest and most direct way to reach consumers. Services like Mailchimp and Constant Contact offer email marketing solutions for distributing newsletters. Instant messaging services like Telegram, WeChat, and WhatsApp also offer a way for you to build a community and reach your fans.
Facebook Groups
Finding like-minded Samsung fans is easy on Facebook. A few groups you can join are WATCH FACE SAMSUNG, Samsung Galaxy Watch Group, Themes for Samsung, and Samsung Themes. Groups like these allow you to not only discover what other designers are creating but provide you a platform for showcasing your work and receiving feedback from members.
YouTube Subscribers
Being one of the largest media platforms, YouTube is an extremely important channel for you to market on. Posting videos of your apps not only help to be discovered by an extremely large global audience but YouTube's simple subscribe and notify feature makes it easy for you to build a strong fanbase.
Social Media Platforms
There are many social media platforms to leverage. Truthfully, the more platforms you are on will increase the visibility of your content, helping to boost traffic on search engines like Google.
Reddit, Twitter & Medium – Social news, discussion, and micro-blogging websites. Follow developers and designers, join groups, post about your latest apps, and start a dialogue with people having similar interests.
Instagram, TikTok, Dribbble & Pinterest – All can be used by designers for self-promotion and social networking. Post your latest photos and videos, search to discover what other designers are creating, excite your audience, or become inspired yourself.
Galaxy Store Badges
The best way to point consumers to your apps and track activity is with Galaxy Store Badges. Just one click and consumers can access your marketplace. Creating a badge generates a link to your app detail page or brand page. Use badges to promote your apps on websites, videos, social media, and more.
Badges are also a great way to determine the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Read how to get started with Galaxy Store Badges here.
Marketing Info and Resources
Additional Reads: Strategies for Success
Look for new releases of my blog series, Strategies for Success, where I continue to deep-dive into the many areas that can influence your market growth. Additional topics to include:
Samsung Galaxy Store: Tips For Marketing Your Apps
Check out my video, Samsung Galaxy Store: Tips For Marketing Your Apps to learn more about creating brands, designing marketing graphics, social media tips, badges, and banner promotions.
Marketing Resources
Looking for even more info about promoting your apps? Our Marketing Resources page contains helpful information on promoting your apps. You can view lists of relevant hashtags to use on social media, learn more about discounts and coupons, as well as download guidelines and kits to help you get started.
Developer Forums
Post questions, search for answers, or just see what are the latest topics for discussion. Visiting our developer forum is an excellent way to stay up-to-date on all things related to the Galaxy ecosystem. To see the latest marketing topics, be sure to view the Marketing thread.
