Cross-Promotion: One Application Sells Another

I’m going to assume that you want to have great success as a developer, so you will be developing more than just one best-selling application. This next method of marketing is cross-promotion, and it is essentially giving the user the opportunity to acquire another application of yours by offering him or her a selection of other applications.

Earlier I discussed how you can create a window that will allow a user to easily rate your application. You can also arrange it so you can start your application with a quick ad showing some more of your applications. Figure 5-4 shows an example from Tic-Tac-Toe Free from Optime. On the first menu, you are offered a choice of “more games.”

Figure 5-4. Optime believes that its users want to play more than just Tic-Tac-Toe, which is why it offers them the chance to get more games on its startup menu.

When “more games” is selected, you can see an example of cross-promotion below with a screen that offers other applications. Touching one will send the Android user on a trip to the market, where the application of choice can be downloaded. You should note that Optime appears above each selection like a banner, which promotes the developer even more.

This comes in handy when you are offering a free version of your application, as the opening screen can offer a premium (or paid) version of your application for your users to purchase right then and there. I will have more to say on that subject in the next chapter. I will also cover Admob, which allows you to run house ads, which are ads for your own applications. It is also possible to run only your own house ads, but of course you won’t get any compensation if users click them.

If you use cross-promotion, you should definitely consider putting applications together that are in the same category. However, you should also think about the user’s needs—ask yourself if the user would be open to buying something similar to your application, and then place it on your personal application market.

For example, when I worked in retail, I was encouraged to do cross-merchandising. It worked by putting two similar items on a display together. So, if you have a fishing pole on sale, it makes sense to add a tackle box, even if the latter is not on sale. The customer might only be interested in a just a fishing pole or just a tackle box, but both work well together. In the end, it is just more convenient for shoppers to buy their things in the same area.

Try to market your applications with the idea of, “If you like this application, then you’ll like that one.” Back to the example of Optime, note that it offers simple puzzle-like games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Checkers. If the company has action-oriented, racing, or sports games, it doesn’t feel the need to offer them here.

In the same way, you want to put applications of the same category together on the splash screen. Granted, this sort of blocks the user from getting where he or she wants to go (the actual application itself), but studies have shown that this will sell more applications.

If you don’t have enough applications to make your own market, you can work with other developers to put your applications on their sites. You could even work with these developers to put their personal application markets on your site! You will definitely need to develop some sort of deal with the other business there and put applications together that go together. Think of it as a symbiotic relationship among Android developers.