Any advices are appreciated. Thank.
I am new to IOS market.
I wonder that except the reviews, how can we promote our apps? [import]uid: 65906 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 319287[/import]
Just a few ideas:
- Make sure the app is good. It actually must be useful / fun / productive (or all of the above), otherwise no amount of marketing would help you sell it.
- Integrate social media capabilities into the app such as Facebook “likes”, post highscores or follow on twitter.
- Invest in the free version. It’s your app’s best promoter, so make it shine with quality. The user is more likely to become a customer once he gets a good taste of what you have to offer.
- Prompt user’s to post reviews for your app. You can use the promotion library for this. You should also have a “Review this app” button
- create a nice looking website to promote your app. Have good screenshots and videos to show your site.
- show your users that you care. Respond to questions, post a blog, make updates, listen and answer to user feedback. [import]uid: 33608 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 74401[/import]
Thanks for your kindly answer.
I will keep in mind. There are a lot things to do (^_^)
I see the promotion library… I never know about that.
I want to know about corona sdk as much as possible.
It needs time, I know.
But I’m ready to learn. [import]uid: 65906 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 74477[/import]
what is this promotion library? Is it in the community code? [import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 74482[/import]
I want to know too [import]uid: 55808 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 75088[/import]
This? http://developer.anscamobile.com/code/promotion-library [import]uid: 41389 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 75093[/import]
marketing should always start before the app is even approved. share the screenshots with your facebook friends. let your twitter and linked in followers know that it’s coming up. when building the app, you should always target a group/audience for your app like, kids 4-9 yrs old, working adults in the train or whatever and then find how to take your message to that group of people. Alll app reviewers (big ones) will say they are busy but we have this amazing $200 or so package that will help you reach 100K or so users. Don’t fall for that crap unless you have a big and really really interesting app. Look for small bloggers who would review it for free if you give them some promo codes for their users. Speaking of promo codes, pass them out to your twitter followers, linked and facebook friends. Make the app free once a month and you will see a lot of downloads. Go to different games or your apps related forums and find ways to market your app without being so freakn obvious. Ask your twitter followers to retweet your message with the promo codes. Oh and you have basically 1 month before someone in China will crack your app and make it available for different international market free which is also good in a funny way… 'cause it’s free advertising. Keep going. Never give up
-SI
Follow me @saidulislam [import]uid: 46630 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 77766[/import]
Can someone enlighten me on the concept of making your app “Free” for the day?
How does that drive paid sales?
I guess it could get you more reviews. You might pop up on one of the popular lists if your lucky, but once it goes back to pay, you drop back off and at best will get a micro-surge.
Why should I do this?
[import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 77767[/import]
giving it free, either in price or with promo code, doesn’t necessarily get you more reviews. people who pay tend to submit or feel like submitting reviews. what’s even more sad is they are more likely to write when the app isn’t working/has errors. Goes with real life/reality, right :-)? We don’t appreciate when we should but find the slightest issue and we complain and make it a big deal :-).
Anway, in my case, making an app FREE for a day can get me over 200 downloads. The idea with this approach is to let people download and spread the words or show the app to others. If people truely appreciate the app, they download. If it’s a good app they do download and you see the spike next day/week.
-SI
Follow me @saidulislam [import]uid: 46630 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 77772[/import]
Interesting way to think about it @saidul. By one side I was like @robmiracle but after read your last post I think that`s interesting really.
Thanks for sharing.
Rodrigo. [import]uid: 89165 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 77863[/import]
Free app -> This is called “having a back-end strategy”.
Hi SleepSheep,
if you start thinking about marketing once the app is finished, I would say that it’s a bit late.
You need a lot more preparation if you want to hit the market with a product that fits.
I would say : build other skills (communication, marketing, networking, copywriting) while you are working on your next game.
Start early, make people interested, build expectations, ship, market, market, market.
The key to success is : people. Build relationships, contact people, listen to them, and explain to the market why your app solves a problem.
Good luck!
-ps : t might be related, here is what I wrote a little while back on the forum on the topic : “How much money can you REALLY make with your appplications?”
Hi,
I totally understand why you want to situate yourself in the market (how well is doing the average mobile game developer) but I think that you have the wrong approach.
The rule is, if you talk about a market where there is a lot of passion in the mix (video game, illustrator, singer), the proportion of people failing is much bigger than in any other market.
Passion
Why?
If you work in a bank, it’s not hard to understand that the job is composed of many different tasks and that you need to master all of them *or* delegate to the right people (specialists).
You can analyze your progress by tracking your progress in each area.
You don’t have the choice, you have to do it or your boss will do it for you.
For a lot of people working in the bank, there is much less passion involved that in the game development field.
Emotions don’t come much in the mix and it allows them to track what actions that they take are working, and which ones are not.
Without all the emotional barriers disturbing the analysis.
When your passion becomes your job (or you have the feeling that you are able to do the job because you are passionated) you become much less rational.
“Believe in yourself”, “make a Facebook page and it will work!”, “work hard and some day…” are misconceptions of passionated people that don’t track the right datas.
They can’t even notice that they lack a major part of the required skills (or they don’t want to delegate) because they are blindfolded by their passion.
I know about this *very* well, I have been a professional illustrator and book author for years and struggled to find my way for a long time (but I have been doing very well since I changed my mind about some things that I am going to talk about in my post).
Passionated game developers are able to delegate the creation of the framework to (in our case) Corona to save some time. That’s a strategical choice.
But what about the marketing? What about the promotion? What about market analysis?
Those skills take years to master.
And game developers are not conscious about that. Or they don’t want to be, in some cases.
Money, marketing
First, there is a big misunderstanding about money and marketing.
1. “If you are a ‘sincere’ artist, you care about making something great more than money”
One of the worst misconception (invisible script) about the people who want to get paid to follow their passion, but don’t want other people to tell them that “having a job” is a bit different.
If you don’t bring any value to the market, to the people, to their life, then you are just trying hard to get paid for doing what you love.
You can be sincere *and* bring value but it takes a lot of preparation.
2. “Put a lot of money in your marketing campaign so you can push people to buy your game”
Wrong, marketing is communicating around the fact that your game solves a problem that exists, and that you (or your company) have already identified.
Don’t make the mistake to think that marketing = mass marketing (tv ads that want you to buy by interrupting you).
Mass marketing is expensive and you don’t have the resources.
Mass marketing require constant investments. You need to interrupt new people all the time.
You don’t create any relationship with your customers.
As soon as you stop investing, your customers are gone.
They were just looking for the *new* app, the *cheap* app, the *discounted* app, the one that everybody is talking about, and that everybody will forget when there will be something *newer*, *cheaper*.
Permission marketing, marketing by establishing a relationship with your customer by solving one of his fears/pains/needs is another way to do things.
Angry Birds is doing well because Rovio invested a lot in their brand.
The marketing efforts are just communicating well about the value of the brand.
Behind success, there is always more than just “lot of money in marketing campaigns”.
Doing the real work
A lot of people spend too much time on the things that they think are the rights things.
Setting up a Facebook page. Spamming followers on twitter. Printing beautiful business cards “in case I need it”.
I think that the article that Carlos wrote is a nice mix of “passion + market analysis” wisdom.
To do the right things, you have to understand the market. You have to know your customers.
You need to give it a name :
-
My customer is called Jenny.
-
She is between 22 and 26.
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She likes A, B, C.
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She fears D, E, F.
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She is struggling to G, H, I.
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My app can help her J, K, L.
And yes, even a game like Angry Birds digs so far.
That is called “doing the right things at the right time”.
Get to know your prospects, what forums do they use? Which sites are already in a relationship with them?
- What can you do to make their life better?
- How will you solve their problem? Which kind of benefits will your service provide? Be specific.
- How will you communicate the fact that you care about them and that you have something to solve their problem?
- How will you make it profitable, scalable, and repeatable?
Promotion
I am always surprised to see that apps are mainly advertised on … app review websites.
That’s only targeting a small potential customer base.
Apps are not only for the geeks.
the iPhone and the iPad are that great for us that they put a great device full of technology in the hands of our parents. It opened such a big market. They don’t care about “apps”.
They care about convenience.
Let’s say that you have an app to help people choose the right shoes with the right shirt depending on the color they want to wear that day / or the kind of party they go to (I just got the idea of that app now) then the right place to advertise is on Gq, men’s style etc… not app review website.
This is just marketing basics. And that’s an app that solves a real problem.
Ok this might not be as as exciting as working on the platform game that you have always dreamed of.
But this is called “doing business”. You can always profit form that app and then invest the money in your platformer.
And most of the time Game Developer don’t know about it.
Your job is to choose your strategy, not only follow what everybody else is doing.
One rule
If there was one thing to remember :
-
if 95% of the game developers are not making money from their app
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if the answer to success is always “try harder”
-
and if still the average level of success doesn’t increase
then probably people are doing things wrong.
And you should not take that path.
About Corona
Some people will tell you that the tool is just a tool (but a great one in that case).
A hammer is not enough to build a house, but it’s not easy to build a house without a hammer.
However, you need many other tools in order to ship (yes, that was my point).
Giving advices
I am not in a position of giving advices on how to make money with apps because I *just* installed Corona.
I want to make a game / ebook from my published books and see if that would make my stories more enjoyable for the children and more profitable for me.
I don’t know anything about apps (except my market analysis).
So you really should take my advices with a grain salt. If you don’t like it or think it’s nonsense, then i Completely understand and this is ok 
But I have been able to make money in different fields by learning how to do the right things first.
That’s my job to help people and companies to make their business profitable.
Facebook Marketing
There would be many things to explain, but to make it short I would say :
Do your market researches before even developing anything. Know your audience, who they are, what they like, what are their hopes/fears/desires/dreams.
Don’t build something if no market has expressed a need for a solution.
Ex : I need to show to the people that I am very clever and I can solve the hardest puzzle-games
Ex2 : I need to show to the people that I contributed to help the people in Sendai by displaying a badge given by the Red Cross after I have confirmed my payment
Provide a solution to those needs and you will make money.
Focus on building something that people will want to talk about and share, and that makes them appear good to the others (in many ways, see below)
Find the tools that your audience use the most to encourage them to share (facebook, twitter, blogs, forums, digg, stumbleupon, many others)
It’s all about them. Make the people shine.
Social networks and social games are all about giving the user the ability to display his values and habits (strength/cleverness/happiness/likeability/cuteness/silliness/coolness/openness/whatever he wants to express) to the others in order to find his place and importance in a group.
Give them that tool that will help them find that place, and tell them how to climb (by playing more, by buying items, by destroying the others, by helping the others, by sharing more, by playing with cleverness, by being more ‘social’, by contributing more to the society ex sending the highest amount of money to the red cross etc etc etc).
For you, the money is there.
You can apply that to any group that you target by, first of all, knowing what are the core values that drive them.
That would be the short answer. It works.
That’s (one of) the key(s) to facebook game marketing.
There would be a lot to say about monetization also. But my post is already too long.
About having a strategy :
It depends on many things:
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how much of your resources will you invest (money, time, people) first?
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how much will it cost to maintain the success of your app (do you follow a trend, or do you solve a real/recurrent problem?)
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how does the app fit in your overall strategy :
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does your app represent your main income?
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does it help to build your brand?
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The list could go on.
This is ok to loose some money in building your app or releasing it for free if it serves a bigger goal.
Look at the big picture.
“How much money will I make” is an “absolute” data and doesn’t mean much.
The Return On Investment (ROI) is a “relative” data that you should focus on instead.
And if :
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you are not making any money
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you don’t have any short-term/long-term strategy
then I guess you should start worrying 
[import]uid: 95346 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 77911[/import]
Thank you, everyone even though I don’t know you, guys in person, you taught me a lot. Also, sorry for late respond due to new year stuff. Happy new year 2012.
I did not expect about my first app that it will be lucky on sales. Since I know nothing about this market + I am a rookie programmer. My real life is busy. It is hard to do all alone and be success in a short-time but I still love to challenge. Although, I did not expect about sales from the beginning but I seriously create my app. My primary concept for making app is to satisfy whoever play my game (my target’s market). Well,as I want to hear from a lot people about my works to improve my skill. I started to think about marketing-plan.
I aware that it gonna be a long journey but I gonna go on.
Cheers! thanks
[import]uid: 65906 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 78244[/import]
If you are looking for a new way to promote your app, consider LunarAds (http://LunarAds.com).
We have an SDK for Corona users (and a native Xcode & Android SDK as well).
As a developer you can cross promote your apps with other developers, run various ad networks inside your Corona app, get deep analytics about your apps usage and much more.
You can sign up at https://lunarads.com/signup/
Richard
[import]uid: 9046 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 93934[/import]
long path tool is the process by which a person can easily fix his files managing problem. http://long path tool.com [import]uid: 135358 topic_id: 19287 reply_id: 94100[/import]