Hard Questions: Achieving REAL Success in App Markets
App marketing has grown into a paradox. The main dilemma of app marketing is the overwhelming competition, preventing most products from catching fire. Google any variation of "app marketing advice," or "releasing your app," and you get several "helpful" tips on how to garner more publicity. Yet these tips are available to everybody, and they usually recommend:
1: Social Media (which must have existing customers to be effective)
2: Active Forums (again, they must have preexisting customers to be effective)
3: Blogs (still the same concept)
4: General aesthetics
5: SEO
6: Press releases
As explained, the first three are ineffective until your app has already gained momentum. 4 and 5 seem practical, at first, until another factor comes into play:
Hope Marketing.
The idea that simply having a good product is enough to get it sold. SEO may prove slightly effective, but all it improves are the odds that someone will stumble along, and buy your product. In this market, large crowds and lists are the way to go. Anyone who's seen Jeff Walker has been drilled on how ineffective Hope Marketing is, and he (like everyone else) recommends the same thing:
Build your fan base. But nobody has adequately answered how.
And here at 6, we again reach the same dilemma:
Everyone is attempting to get their app noticed. The websites dedicated to these press releases are swamped and overcrowded with your competitors, and the best ones are priced far too steep for an independent developer.
So how do you truly build a fan base and get your app noticed? What ways are there to break this vicious cycle?
I believe Walker began his business selling an overpriced newsletter, with a list of 200 people he just happened to know. Where do the ones who do not know 200 people go?
1: Social Media (which must have existing customers to be effective)
2: Active Forums (again, they must have preexisting customers to be effective)
3: Blogs (still the same concept)
4: General aesthetics
5: SEO
6: Press releases
As explained, the first three are ineffective until your app has already gained momentum. 4 and 5 seem practical, at first, until another factor comes into play:
Hope Marketing.
The idea that simply having a good product is enough to get it sold. SEO may prove slightly effective, but all it improves are the odds that someone will stumble along, and buy your product. In this market, large crowds and lists are the way to go. Anyone who's seen Jeff Walker has been drilled on how ineffective Hope Marketing is, and he (like everyone else) recommends the same thing:
Build your fan base. But nobody has adequately answered how.
And here at 6, we again reach the same dilemma:
Everyone is attempting to get their app noticed. The websites dedicated to these press releases are swamped and overcrowded with your competitors, and the best ones are priced far too steep for an independent developer.
So how do you truly build a fan base and get your app noticed? What ways are there to break this vicious cycle?
I believe Walker began his business selling an overpriced newsletter, with a list of 200 people he just happened to know. Where do the ones who do not know 200 people go?