The App Success Guide
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THE APP SUCCESS GUIDE9 m a g n e t s . c o mBuilding Your Story
Think simplicity The Press Release developers lose sight of when
writing up a press release. Page 3 Getting on TV Dont lie to me,
you want to be on TV Here are the strategies weve . used to be on
three shows. Page 4 Developers often overlook the most Its not
always about who has the What 99% of application important step of
marketing an most features when you market an app. Page 2
application. Page 2
An informative guide to success in the App Store by Cameron
Banga, our head of marketing and business development.Lets be
honest here for a quick second. Like everyone else, youre drowning
in the App Store. What was once seen as an endless gold rush has
become an ever difcult way for indie developers to make a living,
with 200,000 apps ooding the iTunes App Store alone. Each day, more
applications are released, making it even more difcult to make your
app stand out. Weve gone through the same ups and downs which you
have. A year ago, I worked with a couple friends in founding
CollegeKidApp.com. Our goal was to come together and get one app
released on our summer vacation from classes. In just over a month,
we were able to release our rst application for the iPhone called
Battery Go!. We were able to capitalize on a solid idea and less
than 36 hours after release, we broke the top 100 paid apps list in
the USA and climbed as high as number 72. It was a great experience
and while we learned a bunch through our efforts, we were far from
becoming nancially successful developers. Through a bit of trial
and error, a lot of hard work, and continuous learning, I was able
to land our apps in the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times,
Macworld, Fox Business News, WGN9 Chicago, NBC5 Chicago, PC
Magazine, and more. Getting your app on television or a big
publication isnt easy, however most developers dont even know the
rst steps involved in getting an app featured by a major media
outlet. Over the next several pages, I hope to explain some of the
key lessons Ive learned about getting an application media coverage
over the past year. If you have any other questions or comments,
feel free to send me an email to [email protected] and Ill do my
best to help you out.
YOU CAN HAVE APP SALES SUCCESS
Who is Cameron Banga? Cameron recently received his Bachelor of
Arts Cum Laude in Economics from Valparaiso University. In addition
to helping found 9magnets.com, Cameron has had his blog mentioned
in the New York Times, hosted popular gaming podcasts, been general
manager of a radio station, raised thousands in charity while
playing video games, and conducted interviews of Steve Wozniak,
David Cook, and Zach Braff. You can reach Cameron at
[email protected].
The App Success Guide http://9magnets.com
[email protected]
The App Success Guide
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B U I L D I NG Y O U R S T O RYWhy start with a story?Im going
to give you the key to being a successful app marketer in one
single word: story. When pushing an app or your company to blogs,
television stations, or newspapers, you need to have a compelling
story. Experts often argue that marketing is a science and difcult
to manage, but the truth is that the key to pushing an application
is nding a good story for your application. What makes your story
different than everyone else is the key to success in promoting
your application. So before you put together any marketing strategy
for you iPhone, iPad, or Android application, take a time out to
map out just what story you want to tell. Decide how your emails,
blog posts, advertisements, and everything else will embody the
story which you are looking to tell as well.
What makes me unique?This is a question that you really need to
sit and ponder for a while in order to best determine what just
pulls you apart from the competition. Here are some examples of
different scenarios which may make your situation exceptional:
youre a teenager making apps as a hobby, youre middle-aged and are
doing development as a side-project afterwork and on weekends,
youve never done any programming before, or youve programmed your
whole life and are now transitioning to the iPhone. Anything can
make a good story. If youd like, email me at [email protected]
and we can discuss what your story is. Finding your story can be
extremely simple, you just need to sit down and gure it out.
The story of CollegeKidApp.com I often mention to others that
the rst step toward a successful marketing plan for a product is
development of a good story. People want an interesting plot to
draw their interest in any form of media, just like a good movie.
An app or company is no different, you need to develop your own
backstory to draw people in just like a great author. With
CollegeKidApp, I really wanted to hit hard the fact that we were
young students coming together to put together an application with
essentially no prior experience. This meant that every blog post,
email, interaction, everything, needed to be written as if it were
coming from a group of kids who werent quite sure as to what they
were accomplishing. I wanted our team to come off as unsure yet
cocky. I wanted people to read our story in nd a sense of wonder in
just how we pulled it off. It worked out well for us because it was
a true story. Here we were, three college students who spent 60
hours a week each giving full effort toward learning how to best
build iPhone apps. It just so happened that this was a story that
people wanted to tell and then mainstream media outlets picked it
up. Everyone is part of a story which others will nd interest in,
you just need to gure out what your story is and then share it with
the world.
Focus on the simple things in your app.The biggest problem in
software marketing is the focus on feature sets and the drive for
more. Often, developers work on a variety of features which only a
small subset of users will actually use and then focus all their
marketing material on just how many new features were added since
the previous version. However, you often dont have time in any
marketing situation to throughly explain each and every different
feature. Instead, nd the one thing that your app does better than
every other app and focus primarily upon that when pushing out new
advertisements or when interviewing for a newspaper article.
Journalists dont have the time to sit and listen to your 5 minute
pitch and instead want the must-have feature of your application so
they can make mention of it. So nd something about your application
that no other competitor has and nd a way In Battery Go!, our
slider bar was the to summarize the benets of that feature into a
brief sentence or two which you can rattle of to any journalist or
blogger which asks about your application.simple, differentiating,
and enjoyed feature that we focused on.
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The App Success Guide
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THE PRESS RELEASEWhy most people miss the point entirely.Ill be
honest, I hate the term press release. When I worked as general
manager of our school radio station at Valpo, I would receive 20-30
poorly written releases actually made us less likely to announce an
event. Press releases only work for large companies with successful
products, because people know the brand and are excited about
whatever is being pushed. If youre an indie developer, chances are
great that no big newspaper or blog is interested in your app
because they have no idea who you are and your product is like 30
other press releases they received earlier that day for fart noise
apps. Instead of sending 1000 press releases, take some time to
write 50-100 more personal emails to larger media organizations.
The receiving person will be way more open to reading the email if
it seems personal. The email that got us in the Chicago Sun-Times
and NBC5 Chicago Heres a copy of the email that got us into the
Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 Chicagos website. Hopefully you can see
a bit into the writing style I used to push our story. Thanks for
taking the time to read this e-mail. I wanted to contact you about
a possible story involving two friends of mine and I and our crazy
experience over the last two months of coming together with no
programming experience, learning the fundamentals of iPhone
development, and then releasing our rst application which became
one of the top 100 paid applications in the country. We're all
students at Valparaiso University and began the project in May,
deciding that it would be a great way to spend our last summer
before we graduated doing something that we really enjoyed. It was
our one last hurrah of sorts. We began on May 13th, the rst day
after nals, for our rst day of work. We were pretty much the most
inexperienced group you could nd, but we still had hope for the
project. Jeff would do art/design, I would handle the business/
marketing, and Mike would do all of the programming even though he
pretty much had no experience and had only taken one basic intro to
C++ course three years ago. So anyways, we plugged along and worked
pretty good weekends for the next month in a half. Mike would spend
about 60 hours a week learning how to code, I would promote us to
anyone who would listen, and Jeff would help mock and create art
for graphical interfaces. We would work long hours, sleep on
couches, eat PB&J or off dollar menus, and do pretty much
whatever it took to develop an app at pretty much no cost because
frankly, we didn't have any money to spend since we didn't have
real jobs. After toying around with a few app ideas, I had the idea
for Battery Go! one night before I fell asleep, calling Jeff and
Mike at 2am to tell them. They gured I was drunk, but it turned out
to be a pretty good call. We spent the next couple weeks learning
code and eventually developing Battery Go!, which we submitted to
the App Store. Finally, we found out on Sunday that we were
released, which was pretty much the most proud moments of our
lives. We would have been happy had the story ended there, but then
Monday came and we were lucky enough to have a review of our app
published on PCMag.com. The story gained a spot on Google News and
our sales promoted us right to the fringe of the top 100 paid
applications in the iTunes App Store, a goal that seemed impossibly
beyond reach when we started, and well beyond our wildest dreams.
Tuesday morning, we found out that we cracked the top 100, seeing
ourselves in the #99 spot at about 9am. Needless to say, we were
pretty excited, and from there we've climbed to #73 in the sales
charts. Again, just gured that their may be some sort of attractive
potential story behind our journey so far and I would pass it
along. In these recent economic troubles, it's been pretty cool to
buck the trend and see success through hard work and dedication
while learning a bunch of great business principles which will last
with us for a lifetime. If you have any interest or any questions,
feel free to e-mail me back. Thanks
Tips for writing a better releaseRelationships with bloggers and
journalists is key if you want your apps covered often, because
these people trust their friends more than they trust random press
releases. Here are a couple quick tips. Research the people you are
writing to. Know a bit about them before you pitch your
application, so you know what they focus on and in what manner they
would write about you Address them by name in the email Mention
their publication name too Dont get down on yourself when the New
York Times doesnt reply. Its alright to follow up after a week or
so and ask if theyve looked at your app
The App Success Guide http://9magnets.com
[email protected]
The App Success Guide
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GETTING ON TVI think most developers would be lying if they said
that they dont want to be interviewed on TV or in a magazine about
their application. Gaining media attention is the key to landing
big sale numbers and the accompanying climbs up the most downloaded
app charts. But how do you actually go about getting your story on
TV? First, you need to know that youre never going to get on TV or
in a newspaper if you sit around and wait for these organizations
to call you. You need to reach out and send emails to the people in
charge of such programs and inform them about what youve
accomplished. Weve been on television three times and Im always
surprised that most people believe that these shows reached out to
us about appearing. In reality, we wrote emails and suggested a
segment for two out our three
The keys to getting covered appearances. One show did reach out,
but only because they had seen our in mainstream media. team on
another television program.For nearly every radio or newspaper
piece weve been in, Ive had to send out emails to encourage use of
our story. My next bit of advice is to go back and read the last
page on writing a press release again. Remember that prog ramming
directors at a radio or television station are people too and they
hate reading generic press releases more than m o s t b e c a u s e
t h ey receive so many. When writing up your more personal email, I
also encourage that you go about trying to suggest a way in which
your story would make a good human interest piece for their
program. Maybe your local television station runs a weekly piece on
entrepreneurs? In your email to the producer, make note that your
personal story would be a great example of the the type of person
they would typically have on that segment.
First time on air? Our programmer, Mike Phelps, found himself a
little bit taken back with nerves after his rst appearance on
national TV For those of you . going on air for the rst time, Mike
offers this advice.
Even if you are condent with public speaking, as I thought I was
before being set in front of a television camera; I cannot stress
enough the the importance of experience in public speaking. Ive
been able to practice my public speaking a bit through several
seminars and lectures and I cant stress how helpful that has been.
Take the jump and speak in front of people. Its a great skill to
have.
THE COST AND BENEFITS OF DIFFERENT MEDIA TYPESMedia Type Large
blog (TUAW, Gizmodo) Small blog Radio station Newspaper Television
YouTube video review Typical Reach 300,000+ 200 - 3,000 5,000 -
50,000 Varies greatly Varies greatly 300 - 20,000 Large Jump in
Downloads? Yes No No Yes No No Time Consuming? No If interviewed
Yes If interviewed Very No Gain to Credibility? Large Small Medium
Medium Large Small
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The App Success Guide
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THE FINAL CHECKLIST
Final words of advice.When all is said and done, a lot of your
app success with regards to marketing is going to come down to your
drive and desire to succeed. Youre going to need a well designed
application with great utility, that is true, but by the time you
roll out your marketing campaign, itll be too late for the other
components. At this point, its just hoping that youve put together
a strong strategy and then working your butt off to make that plan
succeed. Be prepared to make a good portion of your day dedicated
toward sending emails and working to get coverage of your app. When
we released Battery Go!, my typical day would involve waking up at
6am to look over previous day sales statistics and read the news,
then work on reaching out to different media organizations until 5
or 6pm. Id then take a quick dinner break and go back to pushing
out more emails until 1 or 2am or later, followed by wake up and
repeat for a 2
week period. My time commitment was probably a bit excessive and
driven by the fact that I was still learning on the job in the
process. However, you need to be committed to a similar level of
commitment if you want to succeed in the App Store.
rate, marketing concepts as presented here will remain valid for
years to come. Thanks again for taking the time to read this and be
sure to email me any questions, comments, or suggestions which you
may have. Our checklist for success Have your found the interesting
story behind your development process? Have you determined what
your key differentiating feature is and how to explain it in 2
sentences or less? Have you researched large media outlets around
your area and contacted them if your story is something that they
would run? Block off chunks of time to spend on marketing your
application each day, like you do with programming or designing the
application. Spend less time pushing on Twitter and Facebook and
more time emailing blogs or newspapers. Take time to be
personal.
The checklist for success.In closing, Ive but together this
short checklist of encouraged steps to take when pushing out your
marketing strategy. I hope that you nd them of use as you push
forward your next application. If you do have any other questions,
feel free to send me an email message to [email protected] and
Ill do my best to get back to you as soon as possible. As a whole,
the mobile app market is still fairly young and difcult to manage
for the typical content producer, especially from a marketing
perspective. However, while the methods of production and
technology may change at an increasingly rapid
Need more help?We offer a detailed App Marketing Makeover for
developers. Learn more about this service and its benets at
http://9magnets.com/appmarketing.html
Check out our blog too!Looking to keep up with what I see as the
leading trends in mobile marketing? We offer a free blog you should
denitely take time to check out at http://9magnets.tumblr.com.
Suggested readings.Im often asked about what sites I read daily
to keep up with Apple news. Daring Fireball and The Unofcial Apple
Weblog are my two must read sites to check out.
The App Success Guide http://9magnets.com
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