Adventures in Mobile Marketing

(cracking knuckles) It’s been a long time, but I’m ready to re-invigorate this blog! A question was posed by a fellow developer on an iPhone mailing list: how to promote his app?

My current company – PickAxe Mobile- of which I am a founding partner, deals with this problem constantly. Well not a problem, more a challenge.

The first thing to ask yourself is:

What are my goals for this app?

That will determine your marketing strategy.

- lots of users
- product direction
- cash

Those are separate strategies, by the way.

Lots of Users
Products such as Instagram weren’t out there for the money, they were out there for the wallet-share. Getting onto phones and getting used by as many users as possible. This marketing strategy is going to be viral, with ad dollar and key reviews. Focusing on top placement in the App Store and very aggressive responsiveness to customer concerns. Alpha and beta groups are a necessity, and all product planning will go towards happy customers.

Product Direction
The goal here is to have the users define your product direction. Similar to “lots of users” you are focusing on getting feedback and usage details and highlighting *what people want* versus what you want- basically,Customer Development. You’re evolving a product to an ideal opportunity (which may pivot) or customer. Methods would involve setting up a feedback loop mechanism, a/b testing, and high responsiveness to all feedback. Alpha, beta groups of users that are more along the lines of your ideal customer than earlier adopters or friends. Bloggers, ads, and placement in the store aren’t as critical. It’s not about the number of customers but the quality, defining your product (probably for acquisition, or for your brand).

Cash
You’re doing this to make money. So the viability of course depends a lot on what kind of app you’re making. Assume you have a great product. How do you get the most monetarily out of your app?

The very first thing is product uniqueness in the store. Do your competitive analysis.

Next, find out where users* of your app (or competitors) are going to get recommendations. Is it Google and SEO, the Store’s keyword categorization, or blogger and top app sites? Create relationships and try to get your app some visibility. May involve putting some capital forward, where promo codes aren’t enough.

* Find out who/what are those potential customers of yours. This is a hard task, but try to define the ideal customer.

Strategies of monetization include:
- pricing app (revenue from downloads)
- in app purchases
- free version, with upgrade sans ads
- in app advertising

The positives and negatives of each of those monetizations is another blog post, of course!