This has led to the development of integrations, and many businesses are now turning to app marketplaces to offer a single platform for their integrations. Check out our “Ultimate Guide to App Marketplaces” to learn more. However, building an app marketplace is a complex process that requires significant time and effort. 

This effort can be fruitless if your customers and prospects are not aware of its existence. In this blog post, we will explain the importance of marketing your app marketplace and share five tips and best practices to help you market it effectively. Finally, we will explore the benefits that your business can gain by actively promoting your app marketplace. 

Let's get started.

Benefits of App Marketplace Visibility

We started off this blog post,by talking about the need to get your app marketplace in front of customers and prospects. But why is it so important?

Before diving into some tips on how to market integrations, it's worth first exploring the reasons as to why it's so important.

Increases visibility and reach

The primary reason to market your app marketplace is straightforward: it needs visibility. Without marketing, your app marketplace might as well not exist.

When you decide to offer all your integration partners in a marketplace for your customers to download, you are promoting your ecosystem and making it easier for them to access the integrations.  However, it is naive to assume that customers will spontaneously discover these integrations. Instead, it is crucial to market your app marketplace and clearly guide customers to where they can find it. 

Without proper marketing, you could end up investing significant time, money, and effort building out your app marketplace only to see very few people visit it or take action on the listed integrations. Check out our article on “How to build an app marketplace” to learn more about how much it can cost to build out an app marketplace.

Builds credibility and trust

Another compelling reason to market your app marketplace is to establish credibility with potential prospects. As we touched on earlier, buyers now critically consider integrations when selecting software. Therefore, it's essential to have a clear list of your integrations to demonstrate the depth and breadth of your integration ecosystem to the broader market. 

By showcasing all of your integrations in one place and promoting them effectively, potential prospects will have greater confidence in your product and be more likely to book a call with your sales team.

Generates additional revenue

Another reason to market your app marketplace, and thereby promote your close integration partners, is the potential for additional revenue. Although not the main objective of building an app marketplace, some larger marketplaces monetize their app listings, as seen in the case of Asana's app marketplace where they charge for premium integrations.

 By attracting more people to your app marketplace, you will have more chances of people downloading integrations, which can increase your likelihood of generating revenue.

5 strategies to market your app marketplace

Up until now, we have emphasized the significance of promoting your app marketplace. But how can you market it efficiently to your potential and current customers? 

The good news is that we've uncovered five powerful strategies that can aid you in increasing engagement and drawing visitors to your app marketplace. 

Keep reading to find out more.

Onboarding flow inclusion 

The first strategy for marketing your app marketplace is to include it in your new customer sign-up flow. When customers purchase your software, they typically go through a series of emails and calls during the onboarding process. To highlight your app marketplace early in the customer's journey, include it as a step in the onboarding process, encouraging them to explore available integrations.

The first strategy for marketing your app marketplace is to include it in your new customer sign-up flow. When customers purchase your software, they typically go through a series of emails and calls during the onboarding process. To highlight your app marketplace early in the customer's journey, include it as a step in the onboarding process, encouraging them to explore available integrations.

For low-touch, product-led growth (PLG) companies, this could be an email touchpoint that highlights popular integrations and directs them to your app marketplace. For enterprise-grade tools, a customer success manager can direct new customers to the app marketplace and even walk them through integration sign-up. Not only is this an excellent way to spotlight the existence of your app marketplace, but it also encourages customers to integrate any tools they use into your product, which can increase overall adoption. 

Several sources, including Crossbeam, have shown that integrating tools can significantly improve overall adoption of your core product. By getting customers to integrate tools early on, you can also improve the likelihood of longevity with your product in these early stages.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a widely used traditional marketing tactic that can also have a significant impact on promoting your app marketplace. It is common for B2B SaaS companies to communicate regularly with their customers, providing an opportunity to also get your app marketplace in front of them.

To effectively promote your app marketplace through email marketing, it's important not to be too pushy or sales-oriented in your messaging. One effective tactic is to include a recurring feature in your customer newsletter, such as "Partner of the Month" or "Integration Showcase," to highlight select integrations.

Rather than hard-selling your entire app marketplace, be sure to accentuate the benefits of specific integrations. 

Take, for example, a hypothetical customer support tool that has integrated with HubSpot. You could spotlight this integration in a "Partner Spotlight" feature, saying: "Discover our new integration with HubSpot: Seamlessly sync all your customer interactions into your HubSpot CRM. Explore it here." By focusing on the benefits to the customer, you can make your email less sales-oriented and more valuable to your customers, increasing the likelihood that they will explore your app marketplace.

An additional way you can use email marketing to promote your app marketplace is to include it in your cold outreach to prospects. If you have built an integration out with a partner, the next thing you should be doing is account mapping in order to work out potential go to market opportunities. Using tools like Crossbeam and Reveal, you are able to see accounts that you are prospecting that are using your new integration partners technology.

If we use Crossbeam as an example, some of the account data you are able to pull includes the use cases below:

The section that is going to be most applicable here is “Our Prospects” that are your partners customers. Once you've gathered this data, you can equip your Business Development Representatives (BDRs) with it, as well as with relevant app marketplace listings, to incentivize prospects to schedule a demo with you.

SDRs strive to personalize their messaging to maximize impact. Thus, highlighting your tool's integration with a platform the prospect already uses can serve as a compelling hook to pique their interest.

In their outreach efforts, SDRs can include a link to your app in the marketplace. This not only draws more attention to your app but also heightens the potential for converting prospects into paying customers.

Partner Co-Marketing

When building an integration with a partner, the goal is to create value for both your customers and their customers. That's why collaboration on marketing efforts is crucial when launching a marketplace listing with an integration partner.

Partner co-marketing can be highly effective because it allows you to leverage joint resources and audiences to promote the new integration. To create buzz around the integration, get both partner teams to promote it via LinkedIn when launching an app marketplace listing. 

Partner co-marketing can be highly effective because it allows you to leverage joint resources and audiences to promote the new integration.

Census’ approach to announcing integrations provides an excellent example of this. Each member of their partnership team announces new integrations, with the partner they are integrating with doing the same. 

This double posting is an effective way to market the new integration and the corresponding app marketplace listing.

Another useful tactic for marketing your new app marketplace listing with partners is to run a joint webinar. Instead of focusing on the integration and the relevant app marketplace listing, present on a joint topic that your customer base is likely to find valuable. 

For example, again using our fictional example of our customer support tool integrating with HubSpot, consider a webinar on "Why a single pane view for customer communication is important." This approach teaches your joint customer base tips and tricks while also announcing the integration and directing webinar attendees to check it out. Just as with email marketing, partner co-marketing shouldn't appear salesy. 

Attendees are unlikely to join a webinar entitled "Customer Support Tool and HubSpot Integration," but they are far more likely to join a webinar that they will find genuinely helpful, such as how to improve their customer support. This provides value to your customers and also gives you a double audience (you and your partners customers) to promote your tool to.

SEO

Another way to increase the visibility of your app marketplace is through search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves optimizing content so that it appears in Google searches for specific keywords. To boost traffic to your app marketplace, start by optimizing your listings for passive appearance in Google searches.

For example, again using our fictional customer support tool, you might target a keyword like "HubSpot integrations."  According to SEO tool AHREFS, this keyword gets over 4,000 hits per week. 

‍

Going a level more specific, "HubSpot help desk software" gets 50 searches a week.

lthough being highly competitive, by ensuring that your app marketplace listing for the HubSpot integration is optimized and features these keywords, you have a better chance of your app marketplace showing up each time someone searches for these phrases, driving more traffic to your app store. You can make this easy, by using app marketplace software like Pronto. With Pronto each integration having its own page complete with tags, metadata and other snippets that can be picked up on by search engines.

Another effective tactic from an SEO perspective is to write articles for large integrations that link back to your app store. For example (again using our fictional HubSpot integration that we have talked about above), you might write a blog post about the power of customer conversations and how your HubSpot integration can help, with a link to your app marketplace listing for the integration. 

This approach leads with value for the customer first, highlighting the benefits of the integration and indirectly promoting your app marketplace listing

In App Messaging

The last tactic on our list for promoting your app marketplace is to use in-app messaging tools to reach your customers. In-app messaging is a common customer communication strategy for many B2B SaaS companies. It's typically used for notifying users of software issues or new features, but it can also be an effective way to promote your app marketplace. However, remember to use in-app messaging sparingly. It's not necessary to announce every new integration to your customers.

Another way to use in-app messaging is to provide targeted integration information to specific customers using data from platforms like Reveal and Crossbeam. For example, if you can identify that 100 of your customers use both your solution and HubSpot, you can create a targeted message just for them that mentions your new HubSpot integration.

Targeted messaging is far more effective than a broad message that isn't as relevant to specific customers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, effective marketing of your app marketplace is crucial for enhancing customer and prospect awareness of your integration ecosystem. 

The strategies we've shared in this guide, ranging from onboarding flow inclusion, email marketing, partner co-marketing, SEO, to in-app messaging, offer various avenues to promote your app marketplace, boost its visibility, foster credibility, and potentially generate additional revenue. As we navigate the evolving landscape of software preferences and buyer behavior, integration of tools is becoming indispensable for businesses of all sizes.

By effectively promoting your app marketplace, you're not just providing a one-stop-shop for your customers and prospects, but you're also paving the way for increased adoption and revenue for your business.

If these strategies feel overwhelming, or you're looking for a straightforward solution, consider exploring Pronto. 

Pronto's app marketplace solution enables you to create visually appealing and fully customizable app marketplaces within minutes, showcasing your app ecosystem to the world, and simplifying many of the strategies discussed above.

Interested in seeing how Pronto can revolutionize your app marketplace? Get started for free or schedule a demo with us today. We're here to help you navigate the world of app marketplace marketing effectively.

For additional partnership tips and insights, be sure to sign up for our newsletter and explore our blog.