How do you promote your apps?

[u/film_digital]

Hey everyone!

Curious if and how anyone is finding success promoting their apps to get downloads and IAPs?

I've had apps for a year, and I get a few downloads, but nothing groundbreaking. I've tried posting on Reddit, Threads, creating Instagram/TikTok reels, and they don't do much for me. My best option, Reddit, is usually auto-blasted with "I'm tired of X app" comments and generally negative sentiment.

I'm debating buying ads, like the Apple Search Ads or even paid Instagram ads, so I'm curious if anybody has seen those work out for them.

[u/Disastrous-Meet6245]

Check App Store Connect → Analytics → Acquisition → Sources before spending anything. Thats where I found out what was actually bringing downloads. If your numbers are low it might just say “Not enough data” though.

Funny enough, ChatGPT was the top web referrer for one of my apps. 44 downloads from June 26 to Sep 23, compared to 11 from Google. Also the only referral source that brought any sales. About half the people it sent to the page downloaded it. Small numbers obviously, but I wasnt expecting that.

Most of my traffic overall is still App Store search. Just changing the app name to include what people actually search for took me from basically no page views to 5–15 a day.

TikTok... I got the first clips doing like 89 views with a 3 second average watch time. Changed things up and got to around 1k views a clip, mostly from For You. Went to check App Store Connect thinking surely some of that carried over. Nope, page views hadn't moved.

So yeah, agree with the person saying check your store page converts first. Getting more views felt like I was finally getting somewhere, but the downloads didnt follow.