Sea of Apps: iPhone Application Marketing

Sea of Apps: Application Marketing

The explosive popularity of Apple’s App Store and iPhone Apps has created an unprecedented flood of mobile digital products. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard the phrase “there’s an app for that”. With the huge rush to build apps the opportunity to build any crap app get it noticed, featured by Apple and downloaded has vanished. If you think the app store is full of noise now then just wait.

All hope is not lost. I wanted to use this blog post to kick off a series of events around iPhone application marketing. The events will be called Sea of Apps. The organizing premise is how not to get lost at sea and how to get noticed in a sea of apps.

App Marketing for Indie Appers, Brands and Agencies

Whether you have a big app idea, are thinking about building an app or an iDev startup polishing your masterpiece the role of marketing is now critical to surviving and staying alive in the app store.

Businesses and digital agency’s clientele can’t afford to ignore mobile. Especially the iPhone. The level of brand engagement an app has the potential to deliver makes it foolish to ignore apps. However, the marketing circumstances are somewhat different than those of indie appers. The wow factor of I can’t believe this brand has an app will also begin to fade. Brands will soon be no exception and will get lost in the sauce without the right marketing considerations.

Again all this gets back to how the app is marketed from pre-marketing to launch marketing to post launch marketing is a now an effort that is equal to the development of the app itself. Those efforts look different for agencies and brands.

Sea of Apps Key Points of Discussion

My hope is to start some discussions around iPhone application marketing for indie appers, agencies and brands. The Sea of Apps event will feature one presenter who will present for 5 minutes, followed by a chill salon style environment that promotes further discussion of app marketing. The key points:

Understanding What’s Unique About Your App
Is there anything that distinguishes your app from the competition? Does that distinction unlock unique marketing opportunities that can deliver that distinction to targeted audiences? Drilling down into the unique value of your app will help you determine who the target audience is and who the competitors your competing with to attract that audience.

App Marketing Plans
Twitter and Facebook are not enough to get the word out about your app. Having a focused marketing plan that takes the uniqueness of your app and translates them into viable marketing tactics is key to being a successful app marketer.

App Store Pricing
The introduction of in-app transactions for free iPhone applications has further disrupted the pricing games that were successful for a minute. App pricing is currently a race to the bottom. Sharing thoughts on how to design your app for alternative means of monetization.