The app market has provided something of a gold rush for a while now. By providing millions of users with a way to quickly and easily download any piece of software, iTunes and the Google Play Store have created huge opportunities for programmers and marketers and this has led to an influx of games, productivity apps and more which have made a lot of people very wealthy. 
But while there is still a lot of money to be made here, unfortunately it has become increasingly difficult to actually make that money due to an increasing amount of competition. These days it is a challenge to stand out from the crowd and so it has become necessary to try applying some more conventional forms of marketing and advertising in order to turn an app into a verified hit. Here we will look at some of the unique ways you can promote and app and turn it into a hit.
Price Drops
There are many sites online that exist entirely to inform buyers of recent sales and price drops for popular apps. These sites work by scanning the various app stores automatically and highlighting the biggest price drops, and that means that you can easily get noticed by simply having a big sale. This can then lead to a huge increase in downloads for a short while as people will rush to your product and more will be made aware of it. Of course you’ll earn less per-sale, but normally this still results in an increase in profits for a while at least.
Team-Ups
Another way to promote your application is to somehow team up with a blogger or YouTube channel which has access to a large audience. This way you can offer their viewers an exclusive discount for example, or you can offer to promote their channel through your app in exchange for them doing the same for you. 
The problem of course is getting those people with a big platform to respond to your unsolicited e-mails rather than just deleting them. The solution though is a simple matter of carefully choosing the right person to contact in the first place. Specifically, you should be contacting people who have a large platform, but who are still at a similar level to you in terms of success – or ideally even lower. What you need to do, is to find someone new and preferably young, who will still be excited to be contacted by a big ‘app developer’. They will be enthusiastic and their site will benefit from the deal, but at the same time they’ll also have the large audience that can help you increase downloads.
Better yet, by approaching smaller outlets first, you can actually end up gaining coverage on larger sites/in larger magazines. That’s because these often look to smaller outlets in order to get breaking news, and once they’ve seen it covered well once, they’ll be more likely to take an interest than if you approached them directly.
Advertising 
While many people don’t consider advertising for mobile apps, this can still actually be a highly successful way to get more downloads and especially if you do it right. Even if those ads don’t lead directly to downloads, they can increase awareness which can boost exposure and help you to get more users. There are many great ways to advertise for an app. Advertising on internet TV for instance can work well as it allows your ad to be seen by people who are online and able to immediately follow a link to a download. Likewise you can advertise through Facebook with highly targeted ads, or through Google AdWords. Another option though is to go the ‘old fashioned’ route and try advertising through more traditional mediums – such as magazine or television. Here you face less competition and that can make your app more memorable. Better yet, if you should get a review or advert in a magazine that specialises in your niche (a writing app in a writing magazine for instance), then you will have a direct ‘route to market’ that will lead to lots of new downloads.