Well, apologies for busting your bubble, but you’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle that’ll make your daydream a reality: marketing. Your mobile app isn’t just going to get up and sell itself; you need to have a strong mobile marketing plan in place. If you’re just starting out, you might want to check out these crucial app design tips to keep in mind to promote your product. However, if you already have an existing marketing strategy in place, you might be wondering what more you can do to market your app. This is where you might consider content syndication.

What is Content Syndication?

Simply put, content syndication can include repurposing content or creating content for the sole purpose of external publication. This is an important strategy to implement into your mobile marketing plan because you’ll be able to spread your content to a wider audience – an audience who might have never heard of your product otherwise. In this way, you’ll be able to increase engagement around your product as well as increase brand awareness. After all, the more content that is available, the more likely it is for your product to be found! Even though only 14% of companies use content syndication as a distribution method, it actually ranks third in effectiveness at 45%, following SEM and promoted posts.

So what exactly are the best ways to syndicate your content? Here are 10 tips that will help you market your mobile app:

1: Know Your Goal

Similar to creating your app, you have to have a clear, focused point of view and know what you want to accomplish. Are you trying to drive traffic through SEO? Increase your customer base? Just building product awareness? Discovering the answers to these questions should be the first step you take in establishing a syndication strategy. With content syndication, you can either syndicate full articles or just a headline, description, and a link back to the original piece of work. Just make sure you know exactly what your goal is so that you can determine for yourself which form of syndication may be best. Keep in mind that this may not depend on you though, as some websites have strict guidelines that they follow.

2: Choose Your Partners Carefully

Before you go out and ask others to publish your content, you have to do a little research. Again, the whole point is to capture more leads based off of their existing customer base. Make sure that your syndicated content will do more than just reach this new audience; make sure to intrigue and induce them to check out your product or site as well.

You might want to consider the following: Are these websites relevant to your industry? How do they distribute their content? Who is viewing their content? Know what type of content is posted and which receive the most engagement; the more relevant your content is to their audience, the better the opportunity for lead generation. Ideally, these other sites would have a higher authority than yours, affirming you as a credible author and thereby improving your website ranking. Just keep in mind that outcomes vary amongst different partner sites, no matter how high their authority may be.

3: Tailor Your Content for Your Target Audience

Image Source: Aumcore

You need to know your audience (and your partner site’s audience) in order to know what content to present to them. Are they technically savvy? Are they an older generation? Do they respond more to videos rather than articles? Whenever a range of age groups utilizes the same service, it’s best to optimize for each so that everyone can comfortably interact with it, increasing your chances of conversions. If creating graphic content, note that older generations prefer muted colors and larger text as opposed to younger generations who respond well to bright colors.

According to the digital marketing agency, Aumcore, “Part of knowing your audience involves analyzing the apps you’ll be competing with, both directly and indirectly.” You need to be aware of what’s relevant to your target audience, and when posting on a third-party site, be sure to keep their audiences in mind as well. Whatever you do, remember to tailor your content. You don’t want to waste your time publishing things that are irrelevant!

4: Syndicate Third-Party Content

With permission from a third-party website of your choice, you can feature their content on your blog. Although this may not be original, incorporating others’ relevant work will help diversify your content and keep ideas fresh. Not only that, but you may also be able to leverage their strengths in order to fill a possible content void in yours.

Similarly, you can have your content published onto another’s website as a guest post. The goal here is to “capitalize on their established audience,” as mentioned by Lead Forensics. In this case, your partner site asks you to tailor something that is more suitable for their site and audience. For instance, you may be asked to change the angle of your content to make it more relevant, or even just make smaller adjustments like tweaking the word count or headline.

5: Syndicate on Social Media

It’s no secret that social media platforms are some of the best ways to share your content. In the United States alone, 79% of people use Facebook, and 128 million have registered for accounts on LinkedIn. If you didn’t already know, posting an article on LinkedIn sends each of your connections a notification; this makes content distribution a breeze. If using Instagram, make sure you focus on the visual appeal of your content. Stay consistent with the images you post on your feed; a crisp and clean display of high-quality images on your Instagram account does wonder for your brand image, whereas the opposite could severely harm it. While sharing your content on sites like LinkedIn or Instagram can provide a free way to mass share your content, you can also opt to pay for services such as Taboola or Zemanta that can make your content available to a range of sites.  However, if you want to implement a low-cost content syndication strategy into your marketing plan, engaging regularly with your audiences through your social media accounts can result in high organic distribution through reposts.

6: Choose Your Content Wisely

The content you choose to syndicate should be the very best you have to offer. According to Position², “unlike advertising, the purpose of syndication is not to get audiences to click through to buy, but to click through out of interest.” The goal is to have content that is so engaging that visitors want to learn or view more about your app. We’re not just talking about blogs or articles here either; think about all the other types of content out there! If the goal of your content syndication is to gain more customers, then you should really consider where your visitors might be in their research process. Perhaps they have already been comparing other products when they discovered your campaign. Maybe your content is the first that they see. Either way, you need to be strategic in choosing the content that you share so that it aligns to the audience’s needs as closely as possible.

7: Make a Promo Video

Nothing makes consumers more excited about a new release than an awesome teaser video. After all, videos get 4x more traction than articles or blog posts and generate 1200% more shares on social media. Facebook specifically is a great place to put promo videos because you can follow up with ads that convert people into actual consumers. Videos are a pretty powerful marketing medium because once you are able to effectively tap into the emotions of your audience, they are more likely to remember your brand because the story that your video depicted actually means something to them. Eliciting some type of reaction from your audience (e.g., making them think), making them laugh, or influencing them to take some sort of action will not only increase your chances of being remembered, but also your chances of going viral. Since 92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others, why not market your mobile app on a medium that most mobile users utilize?

8: Don’t just Republish…Repurpose

Don’t just think sharing the same link on every digital media outlet out there will help you gain a bigger following. Excessive sharing of the same thing is boring! I know you’re thinking, I already wrote a piece on digital marketing, what’s the point of putting the same content in a video? While repurposing your content into another form can be a little annoying, changing up your angle or media type can work in your favor. For instance, repurposing an article into a video or displaying statistics in an infographic are terrific ways to target various audiences. After all, not everyone uses Facebook, and not everyone has a LinkedIn or Pinterest account. So having a link posted on a platform such as Twitter that links to an infographic on Pinterest that links back to your site can immensely aid in increasing the likelihood of brand discovery. That’s three forms of content on three different forms of online media platforms. Imagine the possibilities! So definitely don’t solely rely on one form of content. Switch things up and get creative!

9: Monitor Your Leads

Don’t leave your leads unattended! New prospects aren’t guaranteed customers. They may have found your product on your site, yes, but conversions will definitely not be immediate. Be sure to nurture the relationship so that they end up as loyal customers. Monitoring the journey from start to finish will help you figure out what marketing strategy is most effective and will allow you to determine what works and what doesn’t.

10: Always Analyze and Adjust Your Strategy

As the idiom goes, you never know until you try. When it comes to figuring out the best way to engage and attract audiences, don’t be fearful of new strategies. What might have worked last year may not be as effective today. If you don’t constantly monitor and tweak your strategies, your business risks being surpassed by others, and your product will be forgotten. By analyzing your marketing plans regularly, you will be able to learn more about your customers and improve your offers. Always remember to measure your results, not matter how successful your syndicated content has become.

A Refresher

Syndicate your content if you’re looking for a different approach to drive traffic back to your site. Just note that you can’t solely rely on this method to market your products. Here’s a quick refresher of what we covered:

1. Know Your Goal
2. Choose Your Partners Carefully
3. Tailor Your Content for Your Target Audience
4. Syndicate Third-Party Content
5. Syndicate on Social Media
6. Choose Your Content Wisely
7. Make a Promo Video
8. Don’t Just Republish…Repurpose
9. Monitor Your Leads
10. Always Analyze and Adjust Your Strategy

So if you find yourself wanting to switch up your marketing strategy, give syndication a shot. However, you must remember to do more than just duplicate your content, but repurpose it in different forms to allow for an increased amount of user engagement. Really understanding the behaviors and needs of your users is vital in making sure that any marketing campaign you employ is successful. Once you’re able to establish meaningful connections with your audience, you’re one step closer to achieving your marketing goals!

The post 10 Content Syndication Tips to Help You Market Your Mobile App appeared first on Buildfire.

So let’s keep it simple – It would have been just a walk in the park a few years back when there were only just hundreds to compete with. Things have drastically changed today and it is no more a joke to grab the top position in the app list. The main reason for this is that with millions of apps out in the market only a few succeed to attract the visitors.

So, all you have to do is to make your pre-launch successful by avoiding certain pitfalls and get all the attention before the app hits the market.

1. Failing To Invest in Market Research

You can get some of the valuable insights by researching the important aspects about the category of your app. These insights will help you know what your target audience expects from you. What are the names of other apps? Are they easy to memorize? What are the categories you plan to target? Proper analysis will help you present your target audience with the right app.

To begin with, you can make a list of the important features on the excel sheet about your app as well as from your competitors. You can mention the things like categories, price, device compatibility, and features.

With this analysis, you will get a rough idea about the features you have and what you have missed compared to your competitors.

Another important yet neglected thing is customer reviews. You can get a clear idea about the competitor’s app by getting the good and bad customer reviews. This will help you know what the users like about the app as well as what issues they face while using it.

2. Absence of A Feedback Loop

Your development team spend hours on the app to come up with amazing features. The next thing you do is send the app to everyone on your team and ask them to provide you with a feedback, right? But, are they the real users of your app? No, right? Then it is time you go for beta testing to get some unbiased reviews from your target audience.

Look out for your target customers. Once you have them get some as your beta testers. Now make use of every opportunity to engage with them and know what they think about your app. Make sure you reward your beta testers as well as put them on the top of the sign-up list so that they are the first to know about the app release.

iOS apps can be tested on TestFlight before they are released on the Apple Store. You can invite as many numbers of beta testers you want for the task.

3. Not Marketing The App Sooner

Completing the development process and then releasing it is definitely an important thing. But then, on the other hand, you need to make sure that the app gets noticed by your target audience too. Most of the app development companies neglect this crucial step when they start with the development process.

Then there are others who opt for marketing strategies at the later stage of app development. Now, this can turn out to be a blunder as your marketing team is supposed to come up with the right strategies to launch the app in the market at the right time.

4. Not Using The Pre-Launch Marketing Strategies

As said above you can start the mobile marketing strategies at the earliest. There is no need to wait for the completion of the development process for the same. You can invest a good amount of your time to build some pre-launch marketing strategies like promoting your app on social media or opting for email marketing.

5. Not Making Your App A Star Before It Becomes One

Developing an app and then submitting it to the app store is not everything. Simply thinking that you will have better downloads as other apps on the app store is doing well does not make sense.

You will fail to get noticed if you fail to market well. One of the best ways to do it is by creating a landing page for your app on the website and promoting your app there. You can even do the same on other marketing sites.

6. Failing To Invest in ASO

For your users to find and download your app they need to find the app on the app store search. So something that is equally important for a successful app launch is opting for App Store Optimization as a part of mobile marketing for your app. Most of the successful apps out there in the app store had a dedicated budget spend on ASO. Some of the key elements that you need to optimise are:

App Name: You can either use a branded name or go for common search terms to name your app. You can even use the combination of the both for the same.

Keywords: First of all look for all the words that relate with your app. Now start choosing the ones that are specific as well as unique to the app. Don’t hesitate to choose the long-tail keywords too. Once you have them start doing the keyword research regularly.

Description: For any app description, the first three lines are very important. So make sure you use them rightly and mention all your key features therein using the right keywords.

As most of the apps get traffic from organic search, keyword optimization can definitely help to achieve that on search results.

7. Failing To Set The App Release Date in Prior

We all want the app to be released on the day the last line of code is written but, something more important is to plan the app release in advance and come up with a release date. This will help you get a better press coverage.

Moreover, when you plan an app release date just make sure that it does not coincide with any major release in the tech world as it will take away all the limelight. Moreover, Sunday is the best day for app launch according to TechCrunch. Even if you plan to release your app on any other date there is no issue. Just make sure having a fixed release date will help you build anticipation among the users before the release. You can even ask the experts to preview the app before it hits the market.

8. Ignoring The App Store Creativity

When it comes to app development, you take even the smallest thing into consideration, right? You invest good time and efforts on the app icon before you make the launch. You spend hours deciding the icon colour, design, colour combinations and test them from time and again. So when you do so, take some time off your schedule and invest them for some app store creativity too. No doubt, attractive screenshots and appealing videos previews will create the anticipation among the users and help go a long way to increasing conversion rates.

9. Ignoring To Get Maximum Through Web Presence

Like any other app developing company, you have put in some efforts and money to plan advertising campaigns to let your users notice it on the app store. But let me ask you that have you tried to get the maximum out of your web presence to increase conversion in the form of downloads? Now, this is something everyone forgets and ignores. So plan out the strategies to create a microsite for your app. You can even take up the option of blogging to spread the word and increase the app visibility in the search results. This will go a long way to get a steady traffic to your app on the app store.

10. Failing To Promote Your App On Social Networks

We all are active on social media sites and have even found ways to connect with the target audience there. But have you any time thought about having a special social media marketing strategies to promote your app? If yes, then well and good.

If not, then here is your chance to do so and get the maximum conversion rates once your app is launched.

Offer incentives – We all love it, so your target audience too. In case you are having a gaming app, you can offer extra lives or levels. When it comes to in-app purchases just check out the free things you can give away to promote more downloads. This will also help you get more follows on social media pages.

Give a human touch – Gone are the days when the robotic tone was used to communicate with the audience. So try to find a tone that matches with your target audience. Once your audience will be attracted towards you, they will find it interesting to stay on the app.

Schedule your posts – If you feel that it takes the time to post on social media sites, better start scheduling them. This will save you enough time and will let you have time for other activities.

You can even make use of social media ads to attract your audience and for this, you must first know on which social media site your audience spends more time. So accordingly spread the word about your app through the ads.

11. Underrating Reviews And Ratings

Many app developers think that ratings and reviews matter only when the user download the app on their mobile devices and start using it. The fact is that this is not at all necessary. When it comes to the ranking algorithm, ratings and reviews are very important. Moreover, positive reviews about your app will confirm it is beneficial thus increasing the number of downloads.

12. Failing To Pitch Your App On Quality Blogging Sites

It is a bitter truth that your app will not get all the attention the moment it is released. One of the main reasons for it is that your app is not talked about by any credible blogger. So waste no time and get it pitched today.

Simply sending an email will not work. You have to take care of certain things to convince the blogger to write for you.

• Keep the email short with all necessary information.
• Let the editor know why he should be working for you.
• Offer them a beta version so that they can use and test the app on their own.
• Try to build a personal connection with the editor rather than simply talk about the app.

13. Thinking PR is Everything

There are a number of developers out there who think that once your app is on MobileMinute, Mashable or TechCrunch you are done. No doubt PR is very important when it comes to implementing marketing techniques, it does not mean that you will be doing fine. If your app is good then it will get better coverage which will help you drive sales. One of the advantages of PR is that it will help you get reviews and comments which you can put in your app description to boost sales.

At the end of the day, something matters is the quality of your app. If your app is good enough you will definitely get great sales.

14. Not Concentrating On The Features

Whether it is Google or Apple, they both want quality apps in their app store. But there is one more thing that they want to have in the apps. They want to showcase the best of technology through the apps. If your app focuses on some distinctive features or has some functions that make you use specific keys, they will love your app for sure. Even though it does not guarantee success but it is definitely a wise move.

The app store platform is evolving continuously and so for the same reason, you have to keep yourself updated as marketers. To be safe, just keep these pre-launch pitfalls in mind whenever you plan to launch a new app. You can even create a checklist and make sure everything is tried at different stages. Just remember that every small detail matters when it comes to app marketing.

The post Avoid These 14 Prelaunch Mobile App Marketing Pitfalls appeared first on Buildfire.

Plus, in a world where you can build an app in minutes, you really have no excuse not to create one.

However, there are so many mobile app development tools out there today it can make your head spin. How do you know which one to use? How do you avoid paying too much for tools you simply don’t need? Do you need to become a developer to use them?

Don’t worry – I have you covered. In this post, I’ll give you a detailed comparison of the best mobile app dev tools and which ones are right for your app and budget.

You’ll also get a better understanding of some programming language.

(Not sure what kind of app to build? Check out this list of 19 app ideas you can steal.)

Here’s what we’ll cover in this guide:

1. What is A Mobile App?
2. Mobile App Development Tools That Are Open Source
3. Hybrid & Cross Platform Mobile App Development Tools
4. Native Mobile App Development Tools
5. Mobile App Development Tools You Can Download For Free
6. Rapid Build Mobile App Development Tools
7. Mobile App Development Tools For Android
8. Mobile App Development Tools With No Coding Needed
9. Windows Mobile App Development Tools

Now then, let’s dive in!

What is A Mobile Application?

Before we talk mobile app dev tools, we need to understand what a mobile application really is.

A mobile application, commonly referred to as an app, is a type of application software designed to run on a mobile device, such as a smartphone or tablet.

Mobile applications provide users with similar services to those accessed on PCs, such as online banking, accessing email, or viewing their calendar. Apps are usually small software with limited function, designed for a very specific purpose.

Mobile applications are also sometimes referred to as Web apps (although they aren’t actually the same thing), online apps, iPhone apps or smartphone apps.

I asked Michael Facemire, an app developer for Forrester Research, what his take on mobile application development tools was. He had this to say:

“Mobile app dev tools are like paint brushes for an artist – they all come down to personal preference. Personally, I use some of the most well-known, like Android Studio, because they help me develop apps quickly.”

Now that you understand exactly what a mobile app is, what are the best tools to develop a mobile application? Let’s find out:

Mobile App Development Tools That Are Open Source

Open source mobile application development tools can be a boon to mobile app developers due to their free (and, obviously, open source) nature.

Take advantage of these if you’re white labeling apps as well.

Tomas Laurinavicius, a lifestyle entrepreneur, blogger, and co-author of Mobile Design Book had this to say:

“I’m a big believer in prototyping and early validation. Before diving into development, I highly recommend sketching your app idea on the paper and iterating it until your target audience gets it. Prototyping on Paper is a great choice that can save you hours of development work later. If you set clear goals, you can go from idea to functioning prototype in one day.”

The setback of open source, however, often includes a steeper learning curve than some of their paid counterparts. If you have the time to learn them, it may be worth saving the extra dollars.

Here are some open source mobile app dev tools you can choose from:

BuildFire.js

BuildFire.js is a cross platform library used to build custom functionality in BuildFire’s platform. It allows unlimited customization with nothing but JavaScript, making it one of the simplest to implement frameworks. Leveraging the existing functionality of the BuildFire platform BuildFire.js gives mobile app developers the ability to shortcut 80% of the app development process by leveraging any of the 45+ open source plugins that exist and simply focus on the custom functionality that is required. Read more here.

Framework 7

Framework 7 used to be iOS only, but now offers Android support as well. If you want to develop an app that looks and feels like a clean iOS app even on Android, Framework 7 is for you.

It’s also very easy to understand, as long as you already have a decent knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Some of the features of Framework 7 include Material Design UI, a custom DOM library, 1:1 page animation, native scrolling, and XHR caching and preloading.

Ionic

The Ionic Framework is based on the Sass CSS language. It’s also cross-platform, meaning it can run on multiple operating systems. It’s pretty easy to use and can also be integrated with AngularJS to build more advanced apps.

Ionic also has a library of mobile-optimized HTML, CSS, and JS CSS components, tools and gestures, and works with predefined components. A command-line interface provides features like logging, emulators, and live reload.

Here’s what Tony Gilyana, co-founder of Formilla Live Chat, had to say about Ionic:

We use Ionic and Apache Cordova to power our iPhone/Android mobile apps. Basically, Ionic handles all the UI components to make the app feel and look like a real iPhone app or real Android app, but it’s actually all built with HTML/CSS/JS (Angular). Apache Cordova is the layer that’s exposed to developers to interact with the native phone APIs (e.g. to trigger a sound, vibrate command, etc.) in a generic way that works with multiple platforms.

When we initially built our apps, we started with iPhone and it took nearly three months to build, but when we did Android, it took only nine days and shared virtually all of the exact same code!

From a programming perspective, we didn’t need to hire developers with specialized mobile skillsets; it was very easy to use a web developer to build both apps. They have significant backing (so you don’t have to worry about them shutting down) and their documentation is great.

jQuery Mobile

Over half of all mobile websites are currently using jQuery mobile. It’s one of the oldest app dev tools out there, and has more functionality than most. It’s been called the “swiss army knife of mobile app dev tools”.

While jQuery brings all the well known JavaScript features to the table, the ‘Mobile’ part of the upgrade is mostly responsible for CSS and HTML. While it lacks native-like functionality or advanced UI, it makes up for this by being as close as possible to the “write once, run everywhere” dream.

Cross Platform & Hybrid Mobile App Development Tools

There may be times when you need cross platform support with the speed of hybrid development so you can support multiple mobile platforms without developing multiple code bases.

But, before we get into them, Jason Kneen, a freelance cross-platform native app developer at BouncingFish, has some advice:

“For the past 6 years I’ve been working with Appcelerator’s Titanium SDK, building native cross-platform app development for iOS, Android and Windows.

Titanium was the first development platform that enabled developers to build native applications in JavaScript.

The Alloy MVC framework is great; I find I can build MVPs and full-blown apps quickly and share over 90% of the code between iOS and other platforms.

For me, the choice is native over hybrid apps (where the app is basically a local website running in a native wrapper).

With the Appcelerator Platform, they’ve added Hyperloop (the ability to access 100% of the underlying SDK from JavaScript), and the Arrow Cloud Services and ArrowDB, making it easy to create and deploy scalable and flexible API services.

All this plus being able to share over 90% of your code means you can go from zero to app faster, with less code, using fewer developers – making it cost-effective.”

Here’s a list of cross platform supporting hybrid mobile app development tools to choose from:

BuildFire

BuildFire is one of few high performance do-it-yourself mobile app builders that supports Android and iOS phones as well as tablets. BuildFire can shorten the time to launch by months or even years with pre-built functionality in the form of:

• 45+ plugins
• Direct integrations to Segment, Smooch and others
• And pre-existing templates to build from

Think of it like a Weebly or Wix, but for mobile apps with the actual capability to build an app that’s launch ready in 20 – 30 minutes.

The pricing is free to build, $20 per app per month to launch.

Mobile Angular UI

Mobile angular UI is a free hybrid mobile app development tool which allows you to build HTML5 Mobile Apps with Bootstrap and Angular JS. It’s very similar to Sencha Touch and jQuery Mobile.

It also provides switches, overlays, sidebars, scrollable areas, and absolute positioned top and bottom navbars that don’t bounce on scroll, and makes for easy mobile to desktop and back transition. The only drawback is the documentation isn’t quite up to par, but they’re working on updating it.

Salesforce1 and Lightning

If you’re a Salesforce developer, Salesforce1 is for you. Regardless of your skill level, you should be able to find good options for building mobile apps based on your Salesforce site. It’s easily customizable with just a few clicks.

The pricing is $25 per app per user per month.

Xamarin

Xamarin is a Microsoft-owned software company. With C# codebase, you can develop Android, iOS and Windows apps. One of Xamarin’s best features is that it allows code sharing in multiple platforms (aka cross platform mobile app development). Xamarin also has a cloud service, which allows you to test on any number of mobile devices.

The price of Xamarin is $25 to $158 per month.

Mag+

Mag+ is a nifty app SDK which allows developers to build on top of their core components, saving loads of hours of coding. They also have an iPad app which provides a fast and simple publishing platform for creating mobile-optimized content, no code required.

The price of Mag+ is $499 to $2,999 per month.

Xojo

Xojo is an app development tool for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, x86 Linux, iOS, Raspberry Pi, and the web. They also allow you to create native apps and provide Xojo Cloud for easy, secure, and maintenance-free web app hosting.

The price of Xojo is $99 to $1,999 per year.

Corona Labs

Corona Labs supports all major platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows. While their app dev tool is specially made for building 2D graphics games and educational apps, it can also be used for developing other 2D apps.

The price of Corona Labs is $79 to $199 per month, although they do have a free version.

Cocos2D

Cocos2D is another 2D app builder that allows you to publish from a single code base to mobile, desktop, web, and console. You can also write in cocos2d-objc, cocos2d-x (which uses C++), cocos2d-JS (which uses JavaScript), cocos2d-XNA (which uses C#), cocos2d- swift (which uses objective C), and more.

Plus, it’s free!

Unity

Unity is one of the most well-known game development platforms. You can use it to build high-quality 3D and 2D games, deploy them across multiple platforms, and even build AR/VR apps!

The price of Unity is $75 per month.

GameSalad

GameSalad revolutionized learning through applied game development. You can craft your own mobile games with a drag and drop visual editor. It’s built to help graphic designers, animators, and game developers quickly prototype, build and self-publish cross-platform games and interactive media.

The price of GameSalad is $19 to $29 per month.

Cordova

Cordova allows you to write a single code base using HTML and JavaScript to be used to create apps for multiple platforms including: for Android, iOS, Windows, Blackberry, Firefox, LG WebOS and FireOS. All from a single code base wrapped into an app container. Cordova has multiple tools to help with development including PhoneGap, Ionic, Onsen UI and more.

Kendo UI

Kendo UI works in HTML5 or JavaScript, and is available in open-source or commercial versions (The commercial version starts at $999 one-time fee). The tool boasts tons of prebuilt themes with Material Design styling, as well as a theme builder for custom themes.

It also offers a wide selection of UI widgets and plugins, Angular and Bootstrap UI integrations, and performance optimizations. The only downfall is the complexity of the tool – it’s not quite as easy to learn as some of the others mentioned here.

Appcelerator

Unlike others on this list, Appcelerator uses JavaScript to create native code, with claimed benefits in performance. It offers over 5,000 APIs for iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, and HTML5.

If you’re looking for performance and loads of features, Appcelerator is for you. It’s not the easiest tool to learn, but you’ll get plenty out of it once you do.

Sencha Touch

Sencha is another mature platform available for free in open source or as a commercial version (which starts at $9,475 for 5 developers). With Sencha, you can prototype and develop, theme, code and debug, as well as test your web applications on any browser and on any device.

Sencha uses tools like Ext JS Stencils to enable native-like performance and make creating apps quick and easy. However, some have felt Sencha lacks in the support department.

React Native

React Native is a fairly new and emerging open source framework from Facebook that promises a “learn once, write everywhere” experience, using JavaScript as it’s main code. It enables quick prototyping and a very high initial velocity. Its basic features are also fairly easy to learn and implement.

It can also be extended with native code and native views. However, JavaScript code isn’t as efficient for calculation-intensive tasks and there’s an overhead when JavaScript is controlling native elements.

Dropsource

Dropsource was built for developers to easily design, build, and launch iOS and Android apps right from the web browser. They use drag and drop features and allow you to connect apps with any RESTful API. They use automated programming to generate clean and concise source code for you.

Right now, you can get Dropsource for free until they are out of beta. Once they launch, the price will be $20 to $75 per month.

Native Mobile App Development Tools

Native mobile apps are created specifically to interact with a single operating system. Because they work with that system, they can take advantage of the software and features built into that platform. Here are some native mobile app dev tools:

Pedro Piñera, an iOS developer for Soundcloud, gave us some infight on his personal favorite native app development tools:

“When it comes to developing a mobile app, I like the following tools:

• Fastlane: It’s very useful to automate tasks. You set up a list of actions and anyone in your team can run these tasks from the console. It’s also very handy on CI because you can run these tasks and deploy the application directly from there.
• CocoaPods: It’s the most popular dependency manager on iOS. Most of iOS projects use it for fetching external dependencies and integrating them into their projects.
• Screenhero: You can do pair programming even being remote thanks to this tool. You can share the screen with another person and you’ll be able to control it with two cursors and keyboards.
• Sip: It’s a color picker that integrates with MacOS on the status bar. If you want to get a color and the representation in your favorite programming language you can just open the tool, click the color, and you’ll get the values copied to the pasteboard.
• Zeplin: Very useful tool to use across designers and developers. Designers can share the designs with you by using this tool and developers can explore the designs online, get colors, fonts, sizes… without having to ask the designer.”

Mobile App Development Tools To Download Free

I’ve already mentioned you can get various open source tools for free, but here are three additional options:

Android’s free software developer kit

If you’re building an app for Android, you can use Android’s built-in developer kit for free as well.

Rapid Mobile App Development Tools

Rapid mobile app development (RMAD) tools allow you to create an app without the use of code, very quickly.

Typically, RMAD is used to develop apps that are “good enough” to perform their function – they may not be as pretty or have any extra fancy features as a professionally coded app, but they do enough to get by.

If you’re looking to get an app developed cheaply and quickly, RMAD is for you. Here are some of the best rapid mobile app development tools I’ve found:

Appcelerator

Appcelerator was mentioned already above, so I won’t go into detail about it here. However, it is an excellent RMAD tool.

Alpha Anywhere

Alpha Anywhere is a database-oriented, RMAD tool that excels at creating hybrid mobile apps that work offline (allowing you to work on them on the go). It allows you to build good apps quickly, with strong performance and a native-like look and feel. What more could you want?

The price of Alpha Anywhere is $1,499 per year.

Mobile App Development Tools For Android

Don’t worry – if you just need a mobile app development tool for Android, we’ve got the best of those too:

Android Studio

Android Studio, as mentioned above, is Android’s official free IDE.

Eclipse

Eclipse is a free open source Android developer tool and IDE. However, it also boasts an active forum and collaborative working groups to help you, should you encounter an issue you can’t fix.

IntelliJIDEA

IntelliJDEA’s goal is to make development an enjoyable experience. They have features like in-depth coding assistance, quick navigation, clever error analysis, and refactorings.

Corona Labs

While mentioned above, I also placed Corona Labs here because it’s an excellent tool for developing Android apps and games.

Mobile App Development tools With No Coding Needed

If you don’t know code, you can still develop a mobile app! There are more and more drag-and-drop builders being created every single day. Here are our favorites:

BuildFire

BuildFire is  a Web-based app creator that does not require knowledge of code. It targets iPhone, iPad, and Android applications.

BuildFire is free to build your app, you only pay when you publish to the Apple and Google Play app stores.

EachScape

EachScape is a cloud-based drag-and-drop editor for creating native iOS and Android apps, as well as HTML5 Web apps.

EachScape is free to start, but you have to pay to publish.

Windows Mobile App Development Tools

Finally, if you’re looking specifically for windows mobile app development tools, we’ve mentioned a few already. Here are two great ones:

Xamarin

Xamarin, being owned by Microsoft, is perfect for developing windows mobile apps.

Corona Labs

Corona Labs is also excellent for designing windows mobile apps, as mentioned above.

The Bottom Line

The mobile app market is flooded tools to create mobile apps. There are mobile app tools for Android app development, web technologies, cross platform apps, progressive web apps, and more. If you run a quick Google search, you’ll quickly learn that there are more mobile app development tools out today than you can even count. They vary in price, complexity, usability, and a million other ways.

I hope you’ve found a great app development tool for your business somewhere in this guide. That said, sometimes developing an app – even using a simple drag-and-drop editor – can still be too time-consuming or too confusing.

Once your app is built, don’t forget to focus on promotional strategies like creating a unique app icon.

If you don’t have the time or energy to build your app, don’t worry – we have you covered. You can hire one of our professionals to build it for you.

Once you’ve created your app, check out our definitive guide to mobile app marketing to get the most exposure possible.

What are your favorite mobile app development tools? Why do you like them? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Mobile App Development Tools: A Detailed Comparison appeared first on Buildfire.

Here are some mobile marketing strategies you can implement to increase your visibility and user base:

App Store Optimization

App Store Optimization is all about improving the visibility of your app. Most of the app marketers know its importance. There are millions of apps in the app stores and more than 60% of them have never been downloaded. One of the main reasons for that is that they are not visible for users in category and keyword search. This is what app store optimization helps to avoid. These points will help you with your app store optimization:

• Finding keywords that matter: Keyword research is your first task in App Store Optimization and maybe the most important one. Finding relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition is your objective. Due to the high competition in the app stores, it’s very hard especially when Google and Apple doesn’t provide you with data.

• Tracking Competition: There will always be competition in the app stores since there are millions of apps. ASO Tools like App Radar Keyword Tracker can help you finding out, how your app ranks for specific keywords in contrast to your competitors. Thus, you can evaluate, whether users will be more likely to download your app or your competitor’s app by analyzing app store search rankings. In fact, higher ranked apps are considered to be more relevant to the search term and therefore nick a greater number of downloads. Having an overview of your ranking statistics, helps you finding new optimization potential.  

• Creating Outstanding Assets: Create great high quality screenshots (especially the first three are the most important). When people visit your app page they should not feel disappointed by the quality of video and screenshots. Graphical elements are always helpful to convince users. Therefore, app screenshots and promo videos have a direct impact on your app’s downloads. These elements thereby should give users a quick overview of your app’s features and functionality. Updating them based on occasions and festivals is also extremely important.

Besides well-designed images, you should have a great description for your app. Edit it every now and then to remind Google that you are active and see improvements for your rankings with better keyword insertion. Keep it short and simple with strategic placement of keywords.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is underrated in some industries and overrated in others but if you are able to find the right influencers, it can be a game changer. Influencer Marketing, in general, perfectly matches for App Business. Marketing apps through industry experts and entertainers on Social Media and YouTube, works well for new apps. Do some targeted research on suitable influencers and pitch them your idea. If they are really interested in your app, ask them to cover it on their channels and show it to their audience.

Fortafy is a app publishing and mobile marketing agency that you can hire to promote your app. They really has a lot of different YouTubers and Facebook stars under contract promoting their game. They also published a Color Switch game that has over 100 million downloads and was at the top of app store in around 100 countries. The game was developed with no coding expertise using a tool known a buildbox.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is something that is underutilized by small and medium sized developers but can be the most effective way to get downloads and retain your customers for a longer period of time.

Enlight app is a great example for this. As a photography app, they engage with their community on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They regularly post great images and photography-relevant content on their social media profiles. They achieved over 134,000 page likes on Facebook, 67,7k followers on Instagram and 56,1k on Twitter over the last two years. This example shows, that you can build a great community by regularly updating content and engaging with your users.

This approach allows them to easily communicate with their audience directly with minimal efforts like in the case of Email. This will also allow them to promote a new app very easily as they already have a huge user base of Facebook.

Branded Apps

Branding apps is something, many app developers utilize and have great success with. Especially, apps in gaming category use the power of branding. Sure getting license and permission to use the content of a brand is hard to get for most of developers, however, there are many of them, that afforded the cost at the beginning of a brand and made a game around it.

The best example of branded apps is Pokemon Go. Ninantic, a game development company created a game around the huge brand of Nintendo’s Pokémon and it was instant success. It has over 500 million downloads and it is also the most grossing app in the world.

Even though the idea was different than most other games but the brand and marketing of the game really stood out. Since the story of Pokémon already was very popular years ago, the app achieved instant success. Due to the fact, that they allowed users to share content anywhere, they managed to create a great hype around the app though user generated content, mainly.

User generated content is always great and when you mix it with big brands that people love from their childhood, it is a great recipe for a successful app.

Real Life Connected Marketing

Real life connected marketing is great for online retailers with physical shops. It means rewarding people who have downloaded your app.

You can also give different offers to loyal customers. For example, Chick-Fil-A station in Jefferson station handed out free burgers worth $ 3.55 to its customers who have downloaded their app by June 11 and the offer was redeemable through June 30.

Online food order companies utilize this tactic very effectively that hand out in-app coupons only for customers to retain.

Similarly, many other companies, like Uber, handed out free rides in their taxi app. This not only helps in branding but also increase customer loyalty. However, doesn’t mean giving a bad service because it’s free but giving the best service so that you can retain customers for a longer period of time.

The post 5 Sensational App Marketing Strategies To Use in 2016 appeared first on Buildfire.

#1. Mobile Friendly Websites

When Gartner predicted that M-commerce will reach almost 50% of E-commerce revenue by next year (2017), e-commerce companies all over the world started rushing to provide a streamlined shopping experience over desktop and mobile. Customers are choosing only those website builders which offer responsive templates; this speaks volumes about the emergence of mobile-friendly websites. Also, there is an increase in the number of dedicated apps, as 2016 has seen substantial growth in app indexing, i.e. SEO optimization on Google and app store.

Tips for Marketers

• Ensure your company has a responsive website, even better if you can push them for a dedicated app.
• Design a new campaign for promoting mobile-friendly website or app.
• Optimize email marketing by segmenting mobile and desktop users and sending customized emails.

#2. Vertical Video Ads

In the last few years, vertical ads have become quite popular with companies like Burger King running vertical ads on Snapchat. However, the trend now is going to evolve in to vertical video ads, which to be frank has been a sensible shift as rotating the mobile screen every time you want to watch a video is quite annoying.

Tips for Marketers

• Create vertical video content and show only vertical videos to mobile users.
• Adapt old videos to vertical format.
• Use tools like Crop Fill and RVF to optimize your videos.

#3. Social E-commerce Integration

According to Alex Frias of Track Marketing Group, native e-commerce integration on social media websites will be the biggest market disruption. What this means is that users will be able to make purchases from their phone or desktop on a brand’s social media page. Shopify has been offering Facebook Buy Button since a long time which enables Facebook users to buy from Facebook itself and now it has come up with a Twitter Buy Button to add to its offerings. This is a great opportunity for marketers to monetize their social media platforms.

Tips for Marketers

• 60% of social media time is spent on smart phones. So while your customer is scrolling down on Twitter or Facebook, you can trigger their buying instincts with this single buy button.
• It is extremely easy to integrate buy buttons on social media pages, and you as a marketer should be able to drive more sales and generate leads via it.

#4. Mobile Marketing Automation

This is perhaps the most important trend in mobile marketing recently. Mobile marketing automation will be seen at its best with predictive analytics, user behavior testing, email marketing and personalized content will become the mainstays of mobile marketing. Companies will have to evolve in a way that they create different customer personas and then craft different content based on these personas. Even marketing automation providers are taking mobile seriously with more mobile friendly features and dedicated mobile marketing campaign platforms.

Tips for Marketers

• The sooner you adopt marketing automation, the better. Marketing automation software provides valuable intelligence on your customers so you craft better campaigns with more suitable content.
• Best part is it leaves out the guess work out of marketing, so all your campaigns perform better than expected.
• It also helps you save time, which can be better utilized for creating unique content for each persona.

#5. Bonus Trend

No mobile marketing trend prediction is ever complete without mentioning Snapchat. This mobile social media platform is breaking patterns at many levels. If you haven’t cornered the market on Snapchat yet, do it at the earliest.

Tips for Marketers

• Snapchat will soon be coming up with location-based ads, so be prepared to include that in your suite.
• A lot of companies have set aside budget for Snapchat advertising, this is a must do in 2016.
• Snapchat is famous for scavenger hunts, flash sales, contests, etc.; include these in your campaign.

Recap

So let’s do a quick recap of what we learnt about mobile marketing trends for 2016:

1) There’s no way one can go on without mobile friendly websites or apps.

2) Optimize your videos for viewing in portrait or vertical mode.

3) Marketers must focus on creating social commerce campaigns

4) Mobile marketing automation is no longer indispensable if you want a competitive edge over others.

5) Snapchat is not the future, it is the present of mobile social media.

The post 4 Must-Watch Mobile Marketing Trends in 2016 appeared first on Buildfire.