Drive views, installations and engagement on the Atlassian Marketplace
For many of our Marketplace Partners, developing and submitting an app is only half the battle. The other half is getting people to find it, buy it, and become a loyal customer. And, let’s face it, after all your hard work designing, building, and testing your app – it deserves to be seen.
Fortunately, you don’t need an MBA in marketing to get your app noticed. Together with Atlassian, you can be a small developer and be successful as a Marketplace Partner. As an example, the codefortynine team is a close knit group of three Atlassian experts based in Germany. They’ve achieved designation as a Platinum Marketplace Partner and Cloud Fortified, and developed 15 apps for the marketplace with 7,400+ installations.
For starters, if you haven’t already learned the Marketplace basics, take a peek at the “sell” section of the Atlassian Marketplace Developer Documentation. But if you’re ready to dive in and learn a lot about how app discovery works and how Atlassian can help you, here are a few tools and tricks to boost your app’s presence on the marketplace.
What is App Discoverability?
App discoverability is, broadly, how easy or difficult it is for customers to find solutions to their challenges. It consists of three parts: Marketplace discoverability, product discoverability, and solution discoverability.
Marketplace discoverability is how easy it is for someone to discover the Marketplace as a whole. Atlassian drives users to the Marketplace in several ways: through organic search traffic from top of funnel content and SEO best practices, onboarding emails, social media, the Atlassian website and content MicroSites (such as The Workstream and Agile MicroSite), and last but not least, the Atlassian Community. We’ve outlined the flow of new users to the marketplace in the following graphic:
Product discoverability is how easy it is for users to find a specific app, if they already know they’d like to try it. As a very simple example, maybe you saw an ad for a Marketplace app. You type that app’s name into the Marketplace search bar or Google Search and voila, you’re there.
Finally, solution discoverability is how easy it is to find an app or group of apps that solves for a specific use case. Maybe you’re searching for Jira automation solutions or a time tracking solution. The pain point that your app solves for should be clearly expressed on your Marketplace listing to help users discover your app while searching for solutions.
Get More Search Visibility
The more eyeballs you get on your listing, the more likely you’ll start seeing increases in installations as well. Atlassian helps Marketplace Partners achieve this in a few ways:
Become a Featured App via the Staff Picks program
Staff Picks are highlighted on the Marketplace homepage and given a badge. Apps are eligible if they are available for multiple platforms (Cloud and/or Data Center) and have a track record of success, including high ratings, installs, and frequent releases. If you think your app could be the next pick, view the full criteria and learn how to apply.
Get added to an App Collection
While you’re applying to become featured as a Staff Pick, you can also request to be added to one of our collections pages. These pages are where we highlight common customer use cases alongside our Marketplace Partner’s solutions. App collection pages get ranked on search engines like Google and Bing, increasing the odds that you’ll show up in front of exactly the right audience. Collections also get featured on the Marketplace home page and are often linked in Atlassian blog posts and emails to customers.
Run a Paid Ad Campaign
You can also use paid ad campaigns to get more views for your Marketplace listing. You can run ads on keywords in Google or other search engines (see Atlassian’s Ad policy for details), or create visually appealing display ads to promote your products on social media or across the web. Ads can also be run on social media, via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Display Network, or any other ad platform of your choosing.
Contribute to the Atlassian Community
The Atlassian Community is a forum for Atlassian users to find answers, support, and inspiration. Participating gets your name out there as a thought leader and connects you to the 3.5 million people (mostly customers) that hangout in these community spaces.
For one Marketplace partner, 40% of their business comes directly from the community. It’s an immensely valuable resource for getting your app noticed. Before you jump in and start posting, it’s a good idea to check out the community guidelines first.
Tips for a great Community post
- Offer a thoughtful, comprehensive response
- Add your company name to your username, for visibility
- Make sure you’re adding value to the poster through informative content, instead of going straight for the pitch
- Avoid selling your app directly — customers go to Community to find solutions and tips, so this is the content they’ll be most likely to engage with
Get Featured on the Atlassian Blog
If you have relevant educational content that you want read by a wider audience, contributing to Atlassian’s blog is a great way to establish yourself as a knowledgeable Marketplace Partner. Blog articles should be 400-800 words in length, product neutral (not self promotional), and address a topic that’s relevant to our community and the broader DevOps, ITSM, or business market.
Partners can submit content to be considered for the Atlassian blog, but it’s important to note that not all content is accepted, and the timeline for publication can be up to 2 months. Blog ideas that clearly focus on providing educational value to customers are more likely to be accepted.
You can check out the Partner Portal (submit a request to join, if you aren’t already in!) and our documentation for more information on how to outline, write, and submit your article.
Start your own blog
Creating and publishing content on your own blog gives you even more freedom to address your customer’s specific needs and challenges, while helping boost your own brand and web traffic. With a few SEO best practices, you can start ranking in search engine results. Once you have some blog content, you can refer potential customers to it when posting in the the Atlassian Community, other online forums for Atlassian customers, or even other developer communities.
Participate in Badging Programs
Another way to increase your app’s discoverability is by participating in badging programs. Badges tell our customers which apps have achieved a high level of security, reliability, support, and enterprise readiness.
Cloud Security Participant Badge
The Cloud Security Participant badge identifies apps that participate in our Marketplace Bug Bounty program. As part of the program, Marketplace Partners are given a badge for paying security researchers, or friendly hackers, to check their cloud apps for vulnerabilities. Participating apps are checked by thousands of security researchers to ensure their apps don’t pose a risk to customers.
Cloud Fortified Badge
The Cloud Fortified badge is issued to apps that meet our security, reliability, and support requirements for enterprise readiness. To get a Cloud Fortified badge, apps must participate in our Marketplace Bug Bounty and Security Self-Assessment programs, and make additional investments in reliability at scale and timely support. This badge signifies to customers that an app is ready to meet the needs of enterprise customers in the cloud.
Start making your app more discoverable
We believe that innovation can come from anywhere, which is why we’re invested in getting your app noticed, whether you’re new to the Marketplace or you’ve been around for years. Learn more about how to optimize your listing for discoverability in our documentation, and join our Partner Portal for access to even more marketing resources.