How much effort does it take to market an app?

One of our developer members, Ush from BrightStart, posted such a resourceful comment on our forum the other day that I requested making it “public” on our blog. He outlined every detail of his app marketing plan, from creating the website, to contacting reviewers, to the actual app download numbers in the first four weeks. The post was very well received by our community, and we hope it serves as a resource to others who are undertaking “app marketing”. 

Posted in the MWA Forums on July 22, 2011:

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share BrightStart’s app marketing efforts with you all as I think it might help better prepare your app launch, save you time and may help you sell more apps. Generally, our experience (4 weeks only) with marketing Pre-K Letters and Numbers has been interesting. A total learning experience, like a local app developer told me recently “there are no experts in this field purely because its so young and new. Just feel your way through, learn from mistakes and share experiences”.

Back in early June once our app was submitted to Apple for approval (3-4 week process for first timers) we set up the following:

BrightStart Website:

• Set up a simple two-page site
• Key thing for us was to post pictures of the app and unique selling features
• Links to social media and app store
• Set up Google Analytics

BrightStartApps Facebook Fan page:

• Created a “welcome” page
• Added pictures and general updates to the wall before adding users
• Liked MWA and others appropriate fan pages
• Completed descriptions to include links to site, social media and app store
• Individually emailed EVERYONE I knew on Facebook to like the fan page and spread the word

BrightStartApps Twitter Account:

• Set up twitter account with logo
• Initially linked to our site, then moved it to the App Store
• Found many groups of people to follow from app developers, parent developers, mommy bloggers, super bloggers, follower collectors and app reviewers
• As people followed us we thanked them publicly for the follow

BrightStartApps YouTube Channel:

• Recorded some initial basic demos of the app
• A number of reviewers ask for a video before they consider reviewing, so this step is important

Into week two of the approval process we got an update from Apple informing us that Pre-K Letters and Numbers was being Reviewed. At this point we felt we were close and were advised by other developers that we have about 2-5 more days until it will be available in the store. Nail biting period for us. Will it work? What will the reviews be like? Bugs?

We felt it was necessary to start preparing a press release document announcing our app. Taking inputs from developer experiences on Moms With Apps and googling similar apps and checking their footprint helped us conclude that PRmac was definitely the best options for us in terms of reach as well as cost. We got a nice spike in sales once this release went out, most of the sales came from US, UK and Canada.

Moms with Apps was a great starting point to help put together an initial list of reviewers.  We ended up with about 150 after using various methods including Google, Facebook and Twitter. We broke down the list based on email, online submit, video sample, promo code only, busy people etc.., collected names and agreed to approach the ‘submit via email’ reviewers first. We didn’t want to use up all of our bullets, plus we were worried that they may be too critical.

A list of successful discussions with reviewers is attached (in MWA forum only). Approaching the reviewers, sending out the PRmac release, and joining MWA all occurred in July after we launched our app. The reviewers we contacted purely because they had looked at similar products or came recommended via MWA or other forums. Many of the reviewers that wrote back pretty much said they would review our app but to expect delays due to the summer holidays, kids or other commitments, which is totally understandable. About 50% of the people we wrote to didn’t respond, but this could be due to the summer slowdown (we hope..). Perhaps our launch timing was a little mis-judged. Should we have waited until mid-August to launch our app to get maximum readiness of reviewers and parents? Next time.

Once the reviewer reviews were published we started tweeting about them, putting them on FB and asking your inner circle to ‘like’ the articles and postings, this was definitely worth the time. We extracted some comments from reviews and put them into the app store description which will definitely help win parents over (it works with me!) –  always worth asking the reviewer if they are OK with it though. Our stats were definitely better once the reviews were published, i.e., spikes in sales, visits to our website, and at times more twitter followers. It’s a good idea to get to know the reviewer and understand their reach.  For example, Leanna from www.TiPB.com wrote a positive review about us which was later picked up by about about 50-60 websites in the first four hours and progressively more each day – the whole experience was very good. On the other side, there are some new reviewers whose reach is still developing therefore we are helping them as much as they are helping us.

For me, the last four weeks has been a very interesting learning process. Reviewers come in all shapes, sizes and locations – their wants and needs are very different. But they are extremely powerful and can make or break your app. These are just my thoughts and experiences, I don’t expect people to agree on the comments made, I just felt that had I seen something like this before I started then perhaps it may have saved us some time.

Other Lessons Learned So Far (in 140 chars)

* Twitter has many super bloggers all willing to review.. start preparing that list..
* Review awards websites – a lot of them around – Anyone have a list they can share? or experiences?
* Tweeting regularly is important – multiple times a day
* www.TweetDeck.com works very well and you can schedule tweets whilst you are out 
* Special offer deals are definitely worth considering [planned for August]
* US market is huge (70%), UK (5%), Canada (7%) and rest of the world (18%)
* http://www.appannie.com/ is great and support is fantastic
* Spikes in sales each time PR is sent or app is reviewed
* Glad we went with a free option with in-app purchase
* App Store reviews are very important 4* and above is key
* Take app criticism positively and improve the app – version 2.0 being worked on
* Update descriptions in the app store to reflect reviewers comments, awards etc..
* Create a metric to be measured against, for us it was “Lessons given so far”

Pre-K Letters and Numbers – By Numbers (in first 4 weeks)

0 – Download cost ($)
1.99 – in app cost ($)
3 – App updates
3 – New apps in pipeline
4 – Rating in App Store
4 – Reviews by reviewers
5 – Team size
7 – Sleepless nights
11 – Beta testers (thank you)
12 – Expected time to recover investment (months)
17 – App Store reviews
20 – Amount spent on marketing ($)
21 – Size of download (Mb)
38 – Reviewers approached
70 – Research & marketing effort (hours)
75 – iPad users over iPhone (%)
153 – Tweets
235 – Facebook Fans
300 – Development time spent on app (hours)
362 – Number of cities visitors came from
664 – Twitter Followers
1089 – Website visits
1503 – We’re following on Twitter
2,364 – Page views
5,920 – Registered students
8,190 – Mentions of BrightStart Pre-K Letters and Numbers (Bing)
15,530 – App downloads
38,100 – Mentions of BrightStart Pre-K Letters and Numbers (Google)
300,000 – ‘Lessons give to date’, metric we use track number of user plays

About Us:
Pre-K Letters and Numbers (With Real Time Performance Reporting) by BrightStart LLC is the first of a series of applications aimed at pre-kindergarten kids who are just setting out to build a foundation of language and numeracy, develop fine motor skills, understand phonics and build their vocabulary with the bonus of blending common letters and counting. Our unique characters, music, sounds and over 75 fruit, vegetable, animal and items around the house illustrations help with the learning experience. Elel, Momo, Lili and friends guide the child through the letters, numbers and phonics experience with clear instructions, applause for success and “Uh-oh” for mistakes. This is being corrected based on user feedback. Parents and teachers can review children’s performance through their iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or via www.BrightStartApps.com which shows a Report Card highlighting success rates, bell curve ranking amongst peers and recommended development areas for each registered user.

Product:————   > http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pre-k-letters-and-numbers/id440235386?mt=8
Website:———–   > http://www.brightstartapps.com
Twitter:————   > http://www.twitter.com/brightstartapps
FaceBook:———-   > http://www.facebook.com/brightstartapps
YouTube:———–   > http://www.youtube.com/brightstartapps
Press Release:—–   > http://prmac.com/release-id-27699.htm

Any comments, suggestion or anything just give us a shout: ush@brightstartapps.com

Cheers
Ush