Please let’s have a crowdsourced brainstorming session. I need ideas on how to get the word out about your app. Tried and true ideas as well as new and novel ones are welcome. No idea is bad. Please chime in.
Yeah I’m interested too, especially with very little or no cash
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SEO is the major way.
The problem we have is that we want to create our own market rather than milk the current market.
Users already have keywords they search for (keywords not games), all you should do as an app builder is to build towards those markets.
Check the keyword strength and use it to your advantage in both title and descriptions.
If you create a game and name it: Fast Surfer Dude or Clash of the Birds, your download numbers would shock you.
The key is to know what you want to create and for whom. Don’t create an app just because you feel like it.
There are lots of free and premium web apps that could help you for the research.
You could try this also: searchman.com
But please, stay away from Facebook/Nairaland Ads for promoting your app 
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Well I have met lots of Entrepreneurs who promoted their apps without spending a dime.
Marketing your app should ideally start before its birth. Do not rely solely on your development skill during the building phase; identify honest peeps who have similar interests as far as your app goes.
You have to put your people skills to the test and forge a healthy business relationship with them. Once they let their guard down, let them know about your app’s current status and value every ounce of feedback they hurl at you. They may very well act as the brand ambassador of your app once it’s launched.
Also; remember! Your Customers are your ‘Press’. 
I can’t vouch for its effectiveness, but you can try @Uduak’s shareapps.net
But please, stay away from Facebook/Nairaland Ads for promoting your app smile
Umm, Facebook has a very high conversion rate for Application Install Ads
I totally agree with your points, but am at a loss on your verdict on Facebook ads… A bit of clarity would be nice…
I haven’t had much success using it - I prefer the old fashion way of growing but please share your experience if you have had success using Facebook for App installs.
SEO is a great way of getting the word out for an app continuously without spending huge resources - why would you want to spend XX amount on something that will have < XX in ROI on the short to medium term. It will amaze you that some of the highest grossing apps in the stores didn’t start out with ads.
Even in Nigeria, the top ecommerce stores didn’t acquire app users via ads. They acquired them with vouchers and exclusive deals. Check Dealdey on the play store, Google “konga deals on app”. I remember Dealdey offering 90% discounts on fantastic gadgets just to get users to download the app. The problem with acquiring app users that way is that you have to continue offering such deals for them to engage with your app.
Now, they have downloaded it but they aren’t coming back. Its synonymous with a blogger who wants to imitiate LIB. He creates the blog, posts content, goes on Facebook with an a deceptive headline and sends users to his site. His hits would be high but so also his bounce rate. His ranking would never go up unless he continues doing that for a period of time which he won’t be able to sustain and then he falls back to the ground. Back to square 1.
I don’t think there is any surefire way of doing anything. We can only speak based on what worked for us or didn’t work.
Hope this helps
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I have first hand experience with Facebooks ads. DO NOT TARGET EGYPT! In fact there is an article that has a blacklist of countries you should not be targeting. Lots of fake likes are generated from those countries and while the boost to your page likes might be nice, there will be zero return on investment. I’m not sure how many users from Nigeria that liked my page are real, but the stats don’t look so great. I would be very cautious if going through this route.
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I did a lot of research on mobile app promotions in 2012. It was super intensive.
I even did a facebook and google advertising audit where I put up a youtube vid, made a facebook ad. I wanted to confirm that If I see 100clicks on facebook, then i should see a 100views on the youtube video. That was the audit part of my research.
And with having to pay as high as $0.5(N100) - $0.9(N180) per click on google search ad and facebook ad, I had to find a cheaper and more effective way. That was why I developed shareAd which we have just published at www.shareapps.net for other mobile app developers to build on.
Its basic. Every time people install your app, pull up their phone books and ask them to invite their friends.
If they oblige, you send a customized message with the app download link to their friends. You only pay the bulk sms cost which is NGN1.30 - NGN2.00
Being able to start promotions with $10, and being able to track everybody who is sharing the app and the recipients is great. I am still on the road for a better mobile app promotion infrastructures.
The SDK is available for android, blackberry, ios and windows, so you should try it.
$0.5(N100) - $0.9(N180) per click
No one should ever pay that amount on Facebook. You should rip them off not the other way around =)
What was your relevance score? If the ads are not relevant to the target audience, you will incur more money which is why I said promotion of mobile ads are better done with SEO and not ads.
I pay $0.01 per click for my ads though. I aim for a maximum of 6,000 audience. The lower the better 
I think Shareapps has a very interesting proposition. Nice one
Okay your research on Mobile App seems resourceful. Still SEO will yield more.
I once did a practical comparison between Facebook and AdWords and the difference was clear.
Reading through our comments, I noticed we are all focused on promotion of mainly Mobile Apps. What’s up with Web Apps, Native Apps and an all-in-one app access?
Do we think an effective way of promoting a mobile app applies to the rest?
Exactly @MrASulaiman I also noticed most ideas are digital. Aren’t there more outside the box ideas? I read about how Marc Ecko got hugely popular when he was starting out. He made some very good, highly customised sweat tops for some MCs and DeeJays back in the day. These people were so impressed by his shirts that they announced, in the clubs and on the radio how much they loved his work and encouraged everyone to go check him out. The rest is history.
Aren’t there more novel ideas like this? I’m sure there more ways to draw attention to your apps/products beyond the regular social media/SEO.
What do you think?
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These novel ideas are specific to the product you are marketing. Maybe if you state what the app is all about, we can come up with interesting ideas.
Here is my experience and how I got 8000 app download for my mobile app without paying a dime on advert, all from Google and still growing everyday (150 - 200 download per day from PlayStore)
Don’t just build an app, have a clear pre-launch strategy (at least 6 months). Before I launched my app, I started a mobile phone blog which up till now receives 6 -7 k visit per day via search traffic. At the end of each post, you will see a small banners that points to my app store - This is one kobo secret to attract traffic to your app page.
If you want to take advantage of my blog, you will find my no on the contact page.
The idea is to create a discussion community around your niche and drop your app link That’s all
The tendency to focus primarily on web promotions - isn’t a bad thing – but by forgetting to promote your app offline you can potentially miss out on a huge audience that may never know your app exists!
If your app is connected to a local community and you plan to make it a part of the neighborhood, host a local event and gather the local audience.
Yes, writing a blog post or setting up a promo add online is less stressful than organizing a live event, but events come in all shapes and at all prices. Find out where your local community meets the most and host the promo event there. I remember when Vir2o gave a pitch at Open City Africa in Port Harcourt.
If, for example, you decide to host an event at your local bar, announce the new app and add a little extra something – like a free drink for everyone who downloads the app at that event. This could be a cool trigger for your new users to talk about your app and share it with their friends!
Using the Press, T-Shirts and Fliers also work.
I have developed around 4 android apps that have crossed 300,000K downloads each in the Google Play with no cost in advertising. I focus on App store optimization (SEO). When I uploaded my first app, it was not getting enough download. I created backlinks to my app and I started implementing SEO by rewriting my app title, description several times until I hit the jackpot and the download started rushing.
My second to last app is Complete Biology which reached 100K downloads in four months without any form of promotion except pasting the information in Nairaland and few websites for free.
My suggestion will always be to target different keywords related to your app and find out which one rank better with maximum downloads.
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They do have a high conversion rate but they are too expensive; Creating a App website SPA and promoting that would be more cost effective.
Promoting it how? It can’t be more cost effective. It cannot. Because you’re increasing steps to conversion by a LOT. Ad >Your website>download button> app store> app download. As opposed to just sending the user to the app store. You’ll see a very high bounce rate on your website’s landing page.
The only way a website is more cost efficient is if you’re acquiring traffic via Search Engine Optimisation.