MARKET THE MASSES

RESIST THE BETTER MOUSETRAP ILLUSION. IT DOES NOT WORK WELL BY ITSELF

If your goal is to try to make a LOT of money with ANY product or service, you should never lay back hoping buyers will come to you… even if you actually HAVE built a better mousetrap. Instead, you should...

The marketplace is far too crowded for any form of passive seller to have much chance at a home run success. You must BE AGGRESSIVE about pursuing your target market, having many of them anxious to buy your app the first day it hits the store. It is the most crucial catalyst for starting your own snowball.

In a world where most of the competitive offerings are free and the ASP (average selling price) of paid apps is less than $3, your "for profit" app aspirations require the flexing of great marketing muscle to stand out from the crowd. One key concept is helping buyers see your offering as an obvious bargain, which is NOT driven by how low you go on price but how high we build up perceived value. Even a very high price can still be a bargain if perceived value makes it so.

BI experts are sometimes hired to conduct sales training classes for clients. One topic always in need is a refresher on techniques for building value. Clients ask for this help whenever their teams are leaning too heavily on (margin-eroding) price discounting to close sales. Salespeople need to be regularly reminded that the job of selling is mostly about building up perceived value so that the price- whatever it may be- convinces buyers to act now. One of our favorite segment illustrations involves a game in which we'll ask them to guess the prices of 3 common containers of Coca-Cola: a 12-ounce can, a 20-ounce bottle and a 2-liter bottle...

As you read this, we encourage you to play this game too. Guess the retail prices of each of these 3 soda products.

In most cases, pricing guesses rise with the size of the container. The salespeople assign lowest price guesses to the can and highest guesses to the 2-liter bottle. You probably just did this too. After everyone has their guesses locked in (you do too, right?), we’ll "remember" just one small detail they should know before we reveal the actual prices: we bought the can at the airport. As soon as we share that bit of new information- only 7 little words- they immediately want to jack up their price estimates on that can.

What changed about the product? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING... it’s still the exact same 12-ounce can of Coke. What changed about the perceived price? With one short, 7-word statement, their perception of what it should cost always jumps from lowest to highest. It makes ALL of them want to change their price to a HIGHER one. Did a tiny bit of marketing detail have that effect on your guess too?

The lesson we illustrate is how easy it is to adapt what buyers think something should cost. In this case, 7 words made them believe the price of that can should be 3, 4, even 5+ times higher than their initial perception.

In app marketing, there are many ways to pump up the value proposition. Success means you can sell it at a price that is not necessarily 99 cents and have it still be coveted as a great bargain. Poor marketing is about trying to win competitive battles on price. No marketing pretty much pressures you to go out with a (too) cheap price.

If you "win" that race to the (pricing) bottom in an app store where most apps are priced at FREE, you make little- if any- money. DON’T DO IT!

We can help you creatively build up the perceived value of your app, so you can price it right (to make money).

Finally, when considering the appropriate price, it is vitally important to think beyond the single, initial transaction:

• Freemium: can you offer a sample of your app at a low price or for free which can then lure its users to want to pay for the rest? An upsell model is a great way to win big volume in free or cheap trials but then turn good chunks of that volume into paying customers.
• Ad Model: Can an ad model work within your app? Consider building screen space for ads into your app or consider 2 app versions: with ads and without. There are many ways to tap into ad revenue and all should be explored. Ads can sometimes offer good (but often ancillary) revenue. We rarely recommend putting all revenue hopes around ad sales alone, but there are applications where ad revenue can be an additional revenue stream that makes great sense.
• Sponsorships: Could your app win a sponsorship? Conceptually, you might think of a sponsor in answer to "This app is brought to you by..." as a way to start building a list of potential sponsors. Implementation of a good sponsor model is often much more than only an introductory ad like that but thinking about those possibilities early is important.
• In-app purchases: Can you leverage in-app purchases? In other words, can your app be fed more content, data, modules, levels, etc, over time with the add-ons SOLD as followup transactions?

• Is some form of a subscription model applicable? Subscription models can turn even free apps into very lucrative revenue streams. They can yield great revenue that keeps on coming month after month and year after year. Many of the most lucrative app revenue models lean on subscriptions.
• Data Dependencies: Can you make a high-value portion of your app dependent on data that YOU control/manage? An app with a little functionality that becomes much more desirable when users sign up for _________ on your website is one you can give away in the app store for maximum reach but make the money on the dependency that makes it actually great.
• Etc. We are highly skilled at helping entrepreneurs think beyond transaction #1. There are MANY ways to turn a good app idea into a revenue generator. Let us help you think about ALL of the ways to make money on your creation.

If at all possible and in the interests of keeping new app development costs to a minimum...

The revenue strategy should be fleshed out BEFORE programming begins

...and woven into a marketing section of your app specification. Why?

Many of these kinds of app revenue innovations can directly affect HOW programmers code your app. Sure, they can be added later but that often involves meaningful changes to the app codebase, which can be time-consuming & costly.

Also, you establish a transactional standard with buyers up front. What YOU might consider as adding new revenue streams later, THEY will probably negatively view as nickel & diming tactics... just as you probably do when some app you use decides to add some unexpected revenue requirements.

If your own revenue concepts are in place at launch, you win smoother acceptance of the revenue-generating variables woven into your app. Instead of negative reaction when you "get greedy," accepted terms right up front are MUCH better received.

BI APP MARKETING EXPERTS CAN HELP YOU DO IT ALL RIGHT

Our master marketers can help you:

1. identify your target market(s),
2. fully layer in many crucial marketing considerations in the architecture phase... so that your specification includes what the programmers need to know to fully take advantage of many ways you can make money with your app,
3. build pre-launch buzz,
4. determine the right price and venues in which to market to them,
5. maximize your launch marketing, and
6. continue to build interest after the launch.

Here’s a small sampling of tactics & concepts that may be important for your own app marketing mix:

• Build buzz through various buyer channels including social media. Like movie marketers, one of the big goals is to cultivate buyer interest in your app well in advance of the launch. Ideally, you get your target audience spreading their anticipation & excitement to friends & family.
• Is there any kind of addiction factor that can be built into your app... something that motivates repeated use? Volume of usage directly translates into value AND the likelihood of leveraging social marketing. Addicted users tell their friends about your app. Their friends try your app.
• If there are social marketing opportunities, build in viral marketing considerations. More simply: if there are any strong reasons for users to tell their friends about your app, BE SURE to make it ridiculously easy for them to do so by weaving Facebook, Twitter, etc, functionality right into your app specification.
• Create 2 versions of the app: free & paid. Cleverly design the free app with many enticements to motivate its takers to buy your upsell version. Make the upsell as easy as possible for interested buyers to buy. Be direct about the upsell pitch. No soft selling.
• Nail down the USP (unique selling proposition) of your app and leverage it throughout your various marketing promotions.
• Pinpoint the targeted audience most likely to buy. "Everyone" in not a target audience; that's the universe of prospects. Within that universe, there should be a target group(s) more likely to buy than others. If you (or we) can identify them, a cost-efficient marketing plan to pitch your app to that group can be developed. The more narrow the definition, the less it will cost to entice them. Getting this right maximizes the ROI on your marketing budget.

• Think globally- many app entrepreneurs find that more than 50% of their revenue comes from outside of the United States. Promote to your whole market of buyers, not just those in your own country. If you can anticipate particularly strong markets other than your native one, consider building versions of your promotional content in that/those other language(s).
• Develop a "WOW!" app icon. On the crucial category page for all brand new apps (for which you get 1-3 days at most to win early adopter transactions), there are only 3 things shown to grab early attention: icon, name & price. Name & price are bland text that will blend in with the names & prices of all of the other new apps on that page. Your icon is the only thing that can pop. It must be great!
• Maximize the quality of your selection of app screenshots, often the first thing potential buyers review when browsing new apps. This is not a throwaway step to do in 20 minutes. Think about those movie marketers and the movie posters they develop (example). Members of their art department may spend weeks perfecting the look of a single movie poster. If they gave that work only 20 minutes, they would be fired. You may not need to spend weeks on a portfolio of app screenshots; but you shouldn't make it a quickie either.
• Create a succinct "sell the sizzle" video(s) (your movie trailer equivalent) that shows the best of your app in action. Also consider releasing a teaser trailer video and/or persuasive multimedia marketing well in advance of your launch. Big movies often have several trailers and/or teaser videos ahead of their premier. Replicate what works so well. And again, put EFFORT into these... no quickies slammed together fast & cheap.
• Put intense effort into copywriting the ideal app store description & choose your keywords carefully. It’s the only written content you fully control within the app store. Its job is to motivate strangers to actually download your app over many other competitors. It will somewhat compete against the customer reviews that you can’t control after the launch. This marketing copy is crucial to a concept called discoverability which is all about maximizing how you can help strangers find their way to your particular offering and be moved to get it on their device.
• Develop a terrific website loaded with promotional content. A separate website or marketing section for your app can offer far more impressive promotional content than what you can place within the app store description. Many app prospects are always interested in learning more than what they can see in the store description. Give them some dazzling promotional content & imagery and you’ll do something that most of your competitors don’t. It’s one of the most potent ways to stand out from the crowd and pump up perceived value.
• Advertising has many pros & cons. It can make great sense in some cases and be a waste of budget in others. We can help you make a good decision whether to advertise your app and, if so, WHERE to run those ads.
• Get onto the MANY Internet app directories & review sites like appshopper, toucharcade, appsafari, iphonehacks, 148apps and many more.

• Take advantage of various smart ways to cultivate a big following to mobilize on app launch day. If you can get your followers really fired up about your app, you can also ask them to review it in the store on day one. Lots of good reviews heavily influence your future prospect's buying decisions. A nurtured, bonded, pre-launch base of "fans" can LOAD the review section with positive reviews. For those who lean on reviews to make app decisions, this gets that particular snowball effect rolling.
• Reach out to youtube channels and podcasters who review technology and software. These are very influential people who review new, interesting apps. Their (sometimes enormous) followings can explode your early buyer numbers.
• Contact those who write popular blogs about apps. Be sure to reach out to all of the medium & higher volume blog & review sites.
• Etc. This is just a sampling of marketing mix possibilities. There are so many more. We can help you assemble the ones most relevant for driving sales of your particular kind of app.

SOME MARKETING-DRIVEN CONCEPTS THAT INFLUENCE HIGHEST QUALITY APP DEVELOPMENT

There’s a number of important marketing-driven concepts that should influence the app specification development. Here’s only 5 of them...

1. Don’t be trapped into believing your app idea must be completely original. Building upon something already proven to sell well is becoming a competitor in a marketplace of live buyers. If you can’t be first to market, can your crack at an existing market be the best app for that market? It’s a lot easier to catch fish in a pond that you know is well stocked than to find an entirely new, previously-unknown pond that may or may not hold many fish.
   
   If your idea is already implemented in some established apps, scour all reviews- especially negative ones- for ideas on how to make your new offering stand out from the established apps. And download all of the real competition to get a first-hand, deep-feel for the good & bad in each of their apps (or have us do this for you and deliver features, benefits and revenue-angle summaries). Leveraging customer & competitive analysis is an excellent way to come to market AFTER the pioneers and quickly take share from them.
2. Dress (your app) to impress. There is an abundance of free apps that are dazzling in look & feel, functionality, etc. If you want people to PAY for your app, you need to raise the quality bar above what they get for free. Our talented graphics artists can help you do this right.
3. Don’t make the very common mistake of failing to offer some form of real service & support. Many buyers don’t want to pay for an app from an unknown company without some way to communicate with that company. Even a service email address is better than nothing... though more than only an email address builds confidence for prospective buyers.
   
   If you support your app sales with a dazzling promotional website, we can help you further leverage that website with (self) service & support features that impress. We can make even one-person companies look much bigger than they are, which is another great way to pump up perceived value for your offerings.
4. Create a product road map to keep the app fresh over time. Your initial version needs to be appealing enough to drive many sales. But that doesn’t mean you should attempt to build in every possible feature & benefit up front. Once you confirm buyers (in volume), you can delight them with meaningful subsequent updates- not just bug fixes. Evolutionary enhancements bring the added benefit of improving store visibility (a lucrative bonus). Defining the map up front also helps with the programming phase... so that the codebase is set up in advance to efficiently accommodate the new stuff as you evolve the app.
5. After you launch, learn to love even the bad reviews and don’t take them personally. Criticism can be painful but reading it as constructive criticism is a smart way to turn lemons into lemonade. Put good effort into carefully considering the professional reviews too, as they are often peppered with (missing) feature wish lists (sometimes between the lines) that could be incorporated into road map updates.

Are there more than these 5? Certainly! But hopefully (all of) the above lends confidence that working with a capable team like BI can be very helpful toward your app entrepreneurial goals. We are often lauded by clients for our unique capability to think in both the business and tech dimensions simultaneously... a kind of translator between business minds and programmers. We think in revenue and code, so we can get both contributors to work their very best together.

We can be as involved as you like, helping you do nearly all of it yourself... or in up to turnkey services:

1. developing a complete app specification document,
2. sourcing, recommending and managing the programming team and
3. creating & executing the best possible app marketing plan and creative to fit your budget.

Contact us for a FREE CONSULTATION