Marketing Your App For Long Term Success
With so much money being made by the top apps, either through sale on the app store or sale to a larger company with deeper pockets (see: Instagram / Facebook), there is little doubt that any good app idea can achieve the success that the creator envisioned when they came up with the idea.
There are even places like KickStarter where you can look to get funding for your app before you have even engaged a developer or finalised the design.
While everyone dreams of developing a successful app, the most won’t get major venture funding before commencement and therefore everyone else is left to develop their idea, launch their app and hope for a miraculous take-up in popularity resulting in a flood of cash from sales of the app and a buyout offer from a major corporation!
Strangely enough, there is nothing about that previous statement which can’t happen, the reality is that it will take longer than you expect develop, probably cost more than you want to pay to get it off the ground and then flounder around on the app store bringing the cash infrequently dribbling through your door.
There are two things that it is worthwhile making clear here:
1. Developing an app needs to be treated like a business
2. All successful businesses have a plan
While it is important to be working on the plan for your app in order to get it built, it is also important at the same time to be working on a plan for your business – the business of marketing, promoting and selling your app once it is released to the app store.
Many years ago, in the early Gold Rush days of the Apple iTunes App Store, it was certainly possible for an app to become successful immediately upon launch simply by activating it on the app store where it stayed in the “New Apps” listings on the first page for a number of days….almost guaranteeing exposure.
However those days are long gone and an app needs a serious marketing and promotional strategy in order to be successful – and even then, it might still take time to reach that critical mass that you need to top the app store rankings.
One of the critical errors that app entrepreneurs tend to make is putting off the marketing until the last minute, or even worse, failing to market their app at all.
Great app promotion is critical to the success of almost every app and many people are surprised to learn that the best marketing approach for an app starts well in advance of the launch.
To give you a good example, think about the way you see some of the top grossing motion pictures promoted to the market. They will release the name of the movie to the press, let them know who the stars will be and what it will all be about. Just enough information at the really early stages to get you interested to find out more.
You will start to see some more trailers released and “Coming Soon” posters all around. As time goes on, there are public relations exercises and social media buzz-building well ahead of the release date.
An A-List Premier might precede the public release but on the night the red carpet is rolled out, the world is buzzing and people are already lining up to buy tickets to see it as soon as they can.
Then compare this to a Direct-To-DVD movie release where everyone still gets paid but there is no fan-fare, no red carpet and the only way people ever find it is when they are watching movies at 2am.
If you think of the marketing of an app as a bit like a motion picture launch then it will hopefully help you realise that there is a lot more to successful marketing for the app store.
There are certainly other ways for an app to make you money, other than direct sales and there are many businesses providing free apps for their customers where the return on investment (ROI) from that application comes in the form of increased exposure for their brand and hopefully, more sales for their business, not directly from selling an app on the app store.
However even in the case of a free app you need to ensure that it is properly promoted to your target audience in order for you to show a return on your chosen monetisation strategy.
About Brad Davidson
Lessons learnt over last 20 years working across a variety of different industries provide Brad with a unique perspective on the mobile app industry.
A passion for technology was sparked by his first computer in 1985 and exposure to the BASIC programming language and followed up with formal training in system analysis and design in 1993. Brad has delivered many successful project for his clients over the years using both system and web based programming languages and he combines this experience with his love of technology and business to help mobile app creators explore their ideas.
7 responses on “Marketing Your App For Long Term Success”
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This is precisely the thing that worries me and which discourages me from attempting to develop an app. And I think I have a great concept. Doesn’t everyone? I hope I don’t wind up like the uninitiated, with tense and worried faces, discouraged and overwhelmed and who have found the whole game all too complicated and have surrendering to the push and pull of things. This strategic suggestion hopefully will provide some ideas to turn the tide.
A year and a half after Apple launched its iPhone App Store, there are over 100,000 apps available, the Store has already seen more than 2 billion total downloads, and the App Store is now being discussed as Apple’s most important invention ever. Those staggering numbers could inspire even the least tech-savvy business owner to hop on the iPhone-app-bandwagon. I know it has caught my interest and I think I’ve conjured up a great idea.
I haven’t noticed this yet on my Analytics dashboard, but I understand that Google is announcing a big addition to Google Analytics Mobile App Analytics. The interest in mobile analytics is obvious if anything, it may seem that Google is a little late in chasing these trends. The new analytics cover the three main stages of an app’s relationship with users acquisition and user metrics, engagement, and outcome. Developers can also track new and active users.
This bets the question: how much revenue do the top selling apps bring in and how much of that is net profit? And even more interesting is how much of that revenue is split between the investor and the developer – in such arrangements where there is some sort of partnership agreement. I ask the later question because people may have a great idea, but not the money to develop and market an app – not both.
The app market has clearly doubled in size thanks to the Android market and Google’s push to capture a share of this market. There seems to be no limit to what market Google will try to compete in. And don’t think that Google hasn’t gotten hit with their own share of antistrust lawsuits over the years. But that has not deterred them from spreading their reach far and wide just like the ancient Roman Empire.
I have seen advertisements for fund raising sites like Kick Starter and a few others that escape my memory at the moment. The thing that has kept me from posting a profile to accept donations for my app, which is based on a film that I am also seeking funding for, is the pessimistic thoughts that I cannot seem to rid myself of. I see how other profiles have raised thousands of dollar, but I have my doubts.
I think perhaps the most important piece of advice in this article (not to say that the rest of the information is any less useful) is bullet point number 1: Developing an app needs to be treated like a business. I say this because many novice or even intermediate business persons who consider developing an app, tend to think of it as a one shot deal. You pay the developer and, Bam! – the money flows.