If you’ve read many of my app marketing articles, they are typically very how-to and practical.

This article is going to be a little more high level. More basic.

If you need the practical how to app marketing try these articles:

• How to Market iPhone Apps
• Free iPhone App Marketing
• iPhone App Ranking Tools

If you want a bit of high level info on app marketing, proceed!

Here are the questions I will try to answer in this post:

• What is app marketing?
• How is app marketing the same as online marketing?
• How is app marketing different from online marketing?
• What are the “keys” to app marketing?

What is App Marketing?

Marketing is:  ”Everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential customers.”

So app marketing is the simply: “Everything you do to place your app in the hands of potential customers.”

Before you even start driving people to your app, marketing includes things like:

• Creating an app that people not just like, but love
• Picking a great app title and icon
• Writing a great description that is concise, clear, and compelling
• Having a clear plan on how you will monetize those users

After that app marketing might look like this:

• Getting app review sites to review your fantastic creation
• Creating a FB page for your app
• Running ads on Admob or with Tapjoy, FreeAppADay, or others

How is App Marketing the same as Online Marketing?

In both cases:

• You are trying to drive awareness, sales, and revenue
• Some activities are more awareness (PR) and others are more pure sales driving (ads you pay for)
• There is a need to track how you are doing

How is App Marketing different from Online Marketing?

App marketing is different in that:

• It is currently dominated by the iTunes app store
• Being fairly new, what works is constantly changing (just making a free app or getting promoted by Apple had a much bigger impact 2 years ago)

What are the “Keys” to App Marketing?

This is probably going to frustrate you.

It depends…

If you have a niche business app the keys might look like this:

• Reach out to business blogs that target your customers
• Start a specific LinkedIn group and/or Twitter account focused on the issues your app fixes
• Find ways to collect emails within your app (without being annoying) and build your user base

If you have an app from a huge brand (i.e. Facebook):

• You don’t have to do anything…just kidding!
• Cross promote your app in the right places within your website
• Make sure you listen to current users so that the app fits what they need (they might need something different in an app than online)

If you have a great app, but you are unknown:

• Test admob, Tapjoy, and other ways to drive app downloads like FreeAppADay to see if by driving a better rank you drive enough more downloads to make it worth your while
• Make sure you build in reasons for users to come back again and again and have ways to contact them
• Do lots of grass roots activities (contact app reviewers, bloggers, etc) if you have time

So in the end, the “key” is to apply some of the marketing concepts above to your particular app.

Hope you understand just a bit more about app marketing!

Best of luck!

Photo credit: Valerie Everett, dougbelshaw

This is part 2 of a 2 part series on iPhone app marketing. The first post was on the creative side of iPhone app marketing.

In this post we’ll look at the analytical side. You’ll need to not only start with a dream, but a spreadsheet!

Note: some of the tables below are very basic. These are just to get you thinking. Your projections will likely be much more complex.

iPhone App Marketing - Analytical Skills You’ll Need

• Start with a Dream (and a Spreadsheet)
• How you’ll make money
• Where you’ll spend money
• What you’ll track

Start with a Dream (and a Spreadsheet)

It’s just as important to be analytical as it is creative when creating iPhone apps. You’ll need to build projections to know whether you’ve got a hobby or a real business on your hands.

Here are some questions you need to analyze:

• How much will it really cost me* to create my app?
• How much will a customer really be worth to me?
• How much will it cost me to get new app downloads?

*I’m not sure if it’s for lack of planning but I talk to and hear about many developers who spend all their money on building their app with no money to market it. This is a sad place to be in. I’m convinced if you want to be an app development company you’ll need $5k-$50k per month to market your apps. If this is more of a hobby you can rely on more gorilla (free app marketing) tactics.

Notes – according to W3i, it costs anywhere from $30,000-$300,000 to develop an app

How’ll You’ll Make Money

It is essential that you:

• Investigate the different ways your app will generate revenue
• Create low/medium/high estimates for these revenue sources
• You evaluate the tradeoffs numerically

What are the different ways you can generate revenue?

• In app advertising
• Free apps with upgrades to paid
• Free apps with in app purchases
• Virtual currency

First I’m a big believer in free apps (not having just a paid app).

I’ve seen many developers get deep into development with a paid app, not realizing how hard it would be to promote that app. I’d encourage you to search for developers that share about what they are learning.

Where You’ll Spend Money

Before getting started you’ll need a budget. If you’re getting a quote for development leave extra budget. You don’t want to spend 30% over on development, just to realize that you’ve got no money to market your app.

Here is what a summary development budget might look like:

I encourage you to analyze every marketing dollar you plan to spend and don’t spend much if you can’t analyze it. For example, because I can track cost per download with Admob, I usually test there. Because I can’t track cost per download with Facebook ads, I never test Facebook ads.

 Here is how your lil tracking spreadsheet might look for a test:

What You’ll Track

If this is going to be more than a hobby you’ll want to track and analyze metrics at a minimum monthly.

Here is a REALLY simple chart of what you might track and the questions you might ask yourself.

Questions you might ask & take action from:

1) Is revenue trending up or down and why?
2) Is cost/download trending up or down and why?
3) What can I do to increase my revenue?
4) What can I do to decrease my cost/download?

Don’t be offended if this is too simple…it’s just food for thought. Track what’s important to moving your business forward.

In Summary

During all phases of app marketing (from conception to launch and so on), knowing your numbers and making decisions by them is essential.

iPhone App Marketing is both a science and an art.  In this post we’ll discuss the right side of the brain of iPhone app marketing. Here are 7 different ways you need to use creativity to effectively market iPhone apps.

iPhone App Marketing - 7 Ways You’ll Need Creativity

1. Dreaming up a new app
2. Best possible user experience
3. Stunning visuals
4. Describing with words
5. Building a crowd (with no $$$!)
6. Creating ads
7. Adding features

Dreaming Up A New App

Great apps don’t happen. They’ve got to be ”dreamed up“. Creative types are crucial to the app creation process, especially when there are so many apps currently in the market.

The dreamer/creator will come up with unique answers to these questions:

What will this app do?
Will it be fun or more of a utility?
What will make people want to use it?
What will keep people coming back again and again?
What will make this app so special?

I’ve always thought Faces iMake was one of the most creative apps.

Use your creative side to dream up a GREAT app.

Best Possible User Experience

Apps with a poor user experience either fail out of the gate or have very short life spans.

Don’t cause users to feel this when in your apps:

• Confusion - “ah…what do I do next?”
• Frustration - “argh…this doesn’t seem to work”
• Boredom – “ok…so why did I download this?”
• Jipped – “no way…is this all I get?”

You want them instead to feel sure of themselves, intrigued, and wowed by the whole experience.

I encourage you to go and try 4-5 free apps and examine their user experiences. Find one that WOWs you and write down why.

Stunning Visuals

I’ve mentioned this before. You’ve got a tiny screen and less than 5 seconds to be noticed as someone scans for new apps. That’s why you’ve got to be visually superior to apps next to you. The icon, the screen shots, and the app itself need to be:

• clean
• professional
• capture the user’s attention
• make someone want to check them out!

Admit it…you probably can’t do this yourself. You need to spend some money to make some GREAT visuals.

Look at the different between Xenome at #114 and Epic Pet Wars at #111. Xenome’s icon (and the rest of the game for that matter) is clean, professional, and makes me want to find out more. Epic Pet Wars Ultimate’s looks very rough and unprofessional to me. That’s just my opinion of course.

Describing with Words

When someone takes the time to get to your app description or even moreso into your app, you better be ready!

Here are a few ways I’ve seen app developers use words to underwhelm audiences:

• Say too much – sentences and descriptions that go on forever
• Say too little – leaving users with a bunch of unanswered questions
• Not clear – the title, the first line, and so on should be simple and clear

Building a Crowd (with no $$$)

This one is really tough. I’ll be honest. Having a top 100 app is nearly impossible without a marketing budget. But there are some things you can do to be creative.

Here are a few I’ve seen work:

• Find non competitive apps to cross promote
• Get noticed by Apple or Techcrunch
• Getting a rave review by a YouTube reviewer
• Be patient and build a slow, steady user base over time with great features (but don’t quit your day job)

You might also take a look at my Free iPhone App Marketing post to learn more.

Creating Ads

Let’s say you have a few dollars to spend on marketing your app. I suggest one place to spend it is doing a test with Admob.

But here’s the challenge. You’ve got just 35 characters to describe your app. That’s it!

You better user top notch creativity to grab the user’s attention without encouraging just anyone to click (since you pay per click).

Make sure you:

• Use your own visually stunning icon (not Admob’s)
• Simply, creatively describe your app (rather than using a phrase to encourage a click)
• Think about who your users are (iPhone or iPod touch? US or Worldwide?)

By spending some creative cycles when creating ads, you’ll have  a MUCH better chance of hitting your cost per download goal.

Adding Features

You could be one creative feature away from a real hit.

With Doodle Buddy (originally Chalk Talk), it was actually 3 small changes that made all the difference:

• New icon
• New name
• Paid ($2.99) to free

If you’ve got a stagnating app, what one change could you make to cause it to take off?

In Summary

Creativity is a HUGE part of iPhone app marketing. Grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and get thinking. Best of luck!

Photo credit: Shockadelic