Always be launching (in App Marketplaces)
March 13, 2024
Whether you’ve just launched your first listing in your first App Marketplace, or you’re managing tens of listings across lots of App Marketplaces, there will always be one evolving challenge to deal with. The number of customers - and types of customers - that use these marketplaces will be different a month from now, a quarter from now, a year from now.
Once your listing has dropped off that “newly added” list on the homepage of each App Marketplace, how can you stay top of mind with potential customers? And, for that matter, how can you stay top of mind with the the marketing, sales and support teams working for the owners of each App Marketplace? They, after all, have a direct line to those potential customers. They also hold the keys to potential distribution and co-marketing opportunities.
“If you build it, they will come” is a fun motto but rarely works in practice. I’ve seen many partners struggle with this. They launch their listings and… nothing. An expected flood of traffic and leads doesn’t materialize. A well-built integration they spent months creating sits largely under-utilized, aside from a small number of customers that asked for it to exist.
So, what can you do about it? It starts with doing the basics right. That includes launching and re-launching your App Marketplace listing as much as you can. Here’s some ideas to get started.
Launch your listing
If somebody gave you a store in a shopping mall - rent free, forever - would you move in, stock the shelves, sit back, and wait for customers to wander through the door? Of course you wouldn’t! Posters would appear on windows. Flyers would be handed out. Special offer coupons would be created and shared. You might even throw a champagne-fuelled launch party.
Champagne-fuel aside, the same playbook applies for launching App Marketplace listings. You’ve spent months building an integration and going through a listing process - tell the world about it! Here’s some great recent examples, sans-flyers.
Blog posts
LMS startup LearnUpon went all-out with this blog post to launch their HubSpot App Marketplace listing. It earned them placement across news sites, including the Financial Post.
Nimstrata founder Sebastian Hooker leaned into LinkedIn to announce the launch of their Shopify App Store listing, right before Black Friday. His post earned over 150 engagements, including 12 comments. He’s since backed it up with follow up posts with regular growth updates.
Twitter (sorry, X)
Max Russell penned this Tweet to announce the launch of his very first app, Flowio, in 2021. The launch clearly went well - Flowio now counts over 500 reviews with an average 4.7/5 rating!
ProductHunt
Arrows launched their HubSpot integration on ProductHunt and earned a ton of engagement (230+ upvotes!) and feedback for their efforts. Others like PSOHub and Kixie launched equally well on ProductHunt.
Celebrate milestones
Whether it’s reaching a milestone of hundreds of reviews on your App Marketplace listing, becoming a featured partner, or trending in certain categories or keyword searches, there’s no bad time to celebrate! I love this update from Mike Potter, who reached an incredible milestone of 1,000 reviews in Shopify’s App Store with his app, Rewind.
Share social proof
Every 5 star review for your app or integration is a vote in favour of it earning more installs and paying customers. So shout about it, and share it! Sharing individual reviews outside of App Marketplaces is a fantastic way to extend your reach to new audiences. And, best of all, this type of content lasts forever - so don’t just share it once! Zachary McClung has shared this particular example more than once!
Listings can - and should be - a core foundation of your Marketplace go-to-market activities, whether it’s inside or outside of App Marketplaces. Repurposing the content you create for them, and the content created by them, can help you earn more customers, more quickly, at a super low cost. So what are you waiting for?
