The Most Important Points Nobody Told You Before You Started Marketing That App
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After weeks of developing a new app, it’s perhaps only natural that you’ll want to market it as widely as possible. The whole world needs to know about your new “killer app,” right? From that perspective, it’s really just a matter of how much money you can squeeze out of your company’s marketing budget. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more that you will need to consider before marketing your app.
Before spending money, don’t forget to get feedback from users
The problem is, too many people try to rush their new app to market without doing the proper amount of testing. If you let your app loose in the wild without getting feedback from users, you risk wasting all of your marketing dollars. (Even worse, if the bugs and flaws are serious enough, you might be forced to use additional marketing dollars to clean up your mess) So do yourself a favor — always test your app with beta users and get their feedback. Once they’ve taken your app for a test drive, you’ll have a much better idea of how to market the app to others. It might just turn out that a feature you though users would be swooning over is not nearly as popular as you thought.
Check to make sure demand actually exists for your app
The conventional wisdom in the app development world is that, “If you build it, they will come.” That type of thinking is great for Hollywood movies, but it’s absolutely a trap for anyone in the software development world. It could be the case that an incremental improvement of an already existing app is not enough to move the dial. In other words, it’s tough to convince a user to download and use a brand-new app unless there is a breakthrough new feature that fundamentally changes the game. The world does not necessarily need a brand-new photo app with even more filters, or yet one more “to-do list” app for those annoying people who are constantly looking for ways to get more things done.
Come up with a unique selling proposition for your app
OK, if “unique selling proposition” sounds too much like a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo, then feel free to re-frame this another way: “Why should people download your app?” If you can’t answer that question in 30 seconds or less, then you probably haven’t yet stumbled upon the real reason why people are going to use and love your app.
Just remember — there are two components to this answer — a logical, rational component (“Cool, this will save me time”) and an emotional, highly subjective component (“This is going to help me become the office superstar”). You need to nail both if you are going to succeed with marketing your app. People buy things with their hearts first and minds second.
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Once you’ve addressed these issues, you’ll be able to roll out your app to the broader public. You’ll also be able to sleep well at night — that’s because you will know that you’ve created a “killer app” that is going to market itself, with or without a splashy new ad campaign to support it.
Hey! I’m Tomer, an entrepreneur and maker. You might know me from Mevee, Crane and Shots, among other products I’ve launched! This article is a part in a larger series I’m writing mostly based on my experiences and is largely made of my and my team’s opinions.
I hope this helps you to avoid making the same mistakes I did, and remember to keep shipping!
This article is part of a series The Most Important Points Nobody Told You Before:
- You Started Building That App
- You Started Writing
- Started Marketing That App
- Started Testing That App
- Started Specing That App
