In a closely-related article, we cover:

1. an overview of the mobile app market: size, revenue, forecasted growth,
2. how to turn an app idea into a functional app,
3. how even non-programmers can create a profitable app,
4. the very best way to create mobile apps, and
5. working with- and managing- an app programming team.

This article builds upon that one by assuming you are already at least in the process of creating a tangible, usable, SELLABLE app. If you are not quite there yet, you might want to hop over to THAT article so it can offer you great insights from our experts on those crucial steps. At the end of that one, it points right back here for MONETIZING your mobile app.

APP MARKETING STARTS EARLY TO DRIVE BLOCKBUSTER RESULTS

Given the vast amounts of money that can be made with app entrepreneurship, there's little doubt that good app ideas should be monetized. We recommend 3 key next steps once you've hatched an idea for a "WOW!" app. Two of the three involve intelligently making the app ready to go to market. The third is using exceptional marketing tactics to harvest the store of wealth within your great idea.

The two biggest business errors app entrepreneurs tend to make are:

1. putting off the marketing until almost the last minute or
2. failing to invest in marketing their app at all.

We estimate 92% of all apps launch with at least ONE of these marketing mistakes in play. Many launch with BOTH! 😱

Unless it's absolutely impossible for you to do any marketing- which is almost never the case for any situation- you should avoid making both mistakes if you want to maximize profit. No product or service will sell as well on purely organic, "let buyers discover it on their own" approaches vs. "greasing the wheels" of sales with some good marketing. Apps are no different. Consider the ultimate commodity...

Those who recognize the value of app marketing often make the mistake of thinking linearly: get the app completely finished, THEN work on the marketing. That doesn't work well.

Why? When the app is done, you'll burn like a blue hypergiant star wanting to "get it out there" Trust us on this one. It's hard to hold back a launch when ANY amazing product is ready to go.

Even if you are sure you can exercise SOME patience, that heat only rises as time passes... which often manifests as rushing the marketing process if you've saved it until AFTER the app is done. Rushed marketing is never great marketing. There is an applicable guiding saying in biz-dev:

quality, speed and cost... pick TWO.

So what's the RIGHT thing to do? Flip linear development to parallel. Or in another programmer term: multitask. Get minds expert at programming to work on coding the app. Get OTHER minds expert at marketing working on marketing. Those can run TOGETHER- at the SAME time- like 2 rails on a train track. It's actually the BEST way to go.

Others fool themselves into believing the world is somehow going to beat a path to their door, without making that world aware of their door. There is the very rare success of "going viral" but those are more like playing the lottery: yes, there is the big winner... but you don't hear much about the countless losers who did NOT get the jackpot win. Yes, with apps, there is an occasional organic growth sensation but you don't hear about all of the others- many, MANY others- who played the no-marketing lotto and did NOT go viral.

Great app promotion is crucial to almost all big revenue success stories. This becomes even more important as the volume of competitors going into mobile app stores continues to accelerate. BI can help you avoid the common & uncommon errors and do it all right.

OPTIMAL MOBILE APP MARKETING APPROACH IS SIMILAR TO MOTION PICTURE MARKETING

App entrepreneurs are often surprised to learn that the best marketing approach starts well in advance of the launch. A popular strategy the produces well is to market your app like motion pictures are marketed. Long before anyone can be among the first ticket buyers to see a new film, a variety of marketing tactics are employed to build early buzz.

Every time you go to the cinema, you see this in an obvious way in the teasers, trailers and "coming soon" posters. There’s also the press & entertainment circuit, public relations and social media buzz-building tactics in play well ahead of the premier too. Ever see movie & TV stars spending valuable time on talk shows, talking up their next big project? There's predetermined marketing strategy and BUDGET behind those appearances. Odds are VERY high it was scheduled FOR them as part of an overall pre-launch plan.

Why spend money on these types of promotions & activities when NOT one dollar can be made so far in advance? Movie companies invest that marketing budget as part of a clever, extraordinarily well-proven strategy aimed at winning a huge volume of ticket sales the very first weekend the movie comes out. In their business, major opening day(s) revenue is essential, as it leads to a chain reaction of potential lifts that can motivate many more people to open their wallets to see the new release.

Apps can make a great deal of money for their creators when we employ some of this same kind of marketing strategy. Why spend marketing budget before it’s even possible to sell a single copy of your app to anyone? For the very same kinds of revenue-boosting impacts that motivates those motion picture marketers.

Apps that launch strong tend to be the big money makers. Apps with weak launches tend to quickly vanish and rarely make much money. Do you want YOUR app to launch strong or weak?

Big revenue ROI in apps has a fair amount of dependency on roaring out of the gates on the first day they can be sold. With so many brand new apps being released every day, there are app store mechanisms in place to notice the one or two that are winning a good volume of early adoption. These initial revenue victories are rewarded with special, sustained placements in highlight sections of app stores, a crucial catalyst towards winning even more attention from prospective buyers. All these early sales can push your app into the hot app list for its category, which then wins even more buyer attention.

Furthermore, review sites, channels, magazines and blogs wanting to showcase "what’s new and hot" take notice of the newest best sellers and race to be among the first to review them. Can you guess what happens when your app is reviewed by many of those sources? Even more buyers get turned onto your app (driving even more sales). At this point, you have the very lucrative momentum of many other people you don’t even know effectively marketing your app to many millions of prospective buyers you can’t possibly reach on your own.

This SNOWBALL EFFECT is your ultimate (business) aim… the way to become the next app success story instead of joining the massive crowd who put little to nothing into marketing their app and watching it languish in an ocean of apps that don’t sell.

Again, think about the movie marketing model. Along with the big blockbuster you know is hitting theaters in the next week or two, there are probably a good number of other- often independent- films with no marketing budget also being released. You have to really search hard to even notice those other new releases and it is extraordinarily rare for the no-marketing film to organically grow into a big (revenue) winner solely on word of mouth. Also note...

Many of the no-marketing releases will be critically rated much better than the one(s) getting almost all of the revenue.

This weekend's big hit is going to get lots of press, lots of reviews, lots of references on entertainment-related programs, websites, blogs, magazines, streaming channels, etc. Buzz from all that attention will spread and those not already pre-sold on the film by studio (advance) marketing will buy their own tickets and further amp up the sales numbers. The snowball gets bigger and bigger and the film becomes a profitable success.

The catalyst for that success is the studio previously allocating some marketing budget & focused expertise to start that snowball rolling. This same marketing model is repeated over and over by EVERY studio because IT WORKS. You personally know it does first hand because it has almost certainly worked on you too. So why not apply something you KNOW works well to your own app launch marketing plan?

Do you ever see pre-launch teaser marketing for software like this? Of course you do! All of the big software players advertise their 'next big thing' apps like crazy. Ever see upcoming game releases being advertised before the game is available... sometimes LONG before the game is available? Those are often prime-time, national/global advertising in some of the most expensive advertising slots... such as during major sporting events. Why do that do that before they can even sell ONE copy of that software to anyone? Now you know.

OR... there's the cheap alternative: the independent film, no-marketing approach. Hardly anyone knows some sometimes-exceptional films are coming... or are in theaters now... or are already rolling to second run (disc & streams). This is actually how MOST apps are launched- no marketing or little marketing leading to sparse awareness, tepid launch numbers and then quickly falling into the equivalent of "second run" Some otherwise GREAT apps flop because of this ONE business decision that almost certainly dooms them to making much less than their potential.

DON'T BE A PASSIVE APP ENTREPRENEUR. MAKE EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT TO GO GET THEM!

Go into the app store cold (no advance marketing) and you’ll be inserting one of dozens or hundreds of new release apps added that day that won’t sell well. Tomorrow, the next batch of new apps will push yours out of the new release section and you’ll join the countless apps hoping to be organically noticed over time. Almost ALL apps in the stores suffer this fate- falling into app store black holes- because nothing is put into marketing them.

No new release volume means no hot lists. No hot lists means no reviews. That free, attention-building snowball that can propel an app to another (revenue) level(s) never begins to roll down that hill. The app gets lost among a multitude of competitors. In almost all cases, sales will trickle at best. While it's not necessarily "game over" from a business perspective, it is definitely a major "tilt."

The typical catalysts for making this no-marketing mistake are:

1. a lack of money to put toward marketing,
2. a lack of the required risk tolerance involved in any entrepreneurial pursuit,
3. little-to-no real marketing expertise to make optimal use of a marketing budget and/or
4. an erroneous belief in the "build a better mousetrap" concept.

If you have no money, there are ways to seek backing from third parties: friends & family, investors, debt markets, etc. We can be hired to help you with this if you need backers. This is the most common way for the "no money" inventor of almost anything to get the backing to monetize in a big way. Many of these weirdly-named startups doing major advertising have raised the money for that big splash from various sources of financial backers. Few-to-none have it in their own pockets to fully self-fund.

Ever watch the television show called Shark Tank? The parade of product inventors on that show generally don't have the money to launch big and/or scale. They are there seeking big backing. There are thousands of "shark tanks" beyond the one you see on TV. Pitching your offering to "sharks" can be one way to get the funds so you can launch big.

If you lack risk tolerance it may help to view it as investing in yourself and your good idea. An entrepreneur must believe in what they are trying to sell if they want many buyers to get turned onto the proposition; if you don't see (and show) much value in what you want to sell, why should your prospects see it any differently?

If you don't have the marketing expertise to help you launch as effectively as possible, there must be some 'big innovative' team of experts who could be engaged in this role. Try to think of someone that seems to have many good ideas about how best to take your great app to market. If you are having trouble thinking of any such source of help, perhaps a rub of our magic logo might reveal a good option? 😉

The next page covers important topics:

1. The proven alternative to "build a better mousetrap" mentality,
2. Why 99 cents (or FREE, or $99) is not necessarily the RIGHT price for YOUR app,
3. A lengthy checklist of smart marketing tactics designed to MAXIMIZE app interest and
4. Another list of marketing-driven concepts that influence ideal app development.

WOW! Page 2 is LOADED! Click NEXT to dig right into THOSE goodies...