Hey, marketers, what's wrong with you? Or promoting free apps

    My consulting experience suggests that there are two professions that everyone understands. This is people management and marketing. You can be sure that you will get a bunch of tips on this topic, you just have to give a hint that you are doing something.

    A week ago, I wrote an article " How much does it cost to create an application or the whole truth about money ." And, of course, a lot of interesting, useless and harmful tips were voiced in the comments.

    The main problem is that our marketing is either philistine (“it seems to me that it should be so”) or book (“But Kotler says that ...”). In the first version, advice is a mixture of commonplace with stereotypes, in the second - knowledge is outdated for half a century. To do book marketing, it’s the same as working on PCX86 - it seems possible, but does it make sense?

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    I made a rating of the most useless tips. The rating methodology is subjective, not proven by anything other than its own feelings.



    Rating of the most harmful marketing tips:



    1. The hunt for piranha. Formulate the target audience and sharpen the marketing for it.



    It takes 5-7 minutes to understand who will use your application. If you need more, then you have a problem with the concept of the application, and not with marketing. But the biggest harm lurks in the phrase “sharpen marketing”.

    All this absurdity comes from those times when each product instance cost a lot of money, and sales were personal. And accordingly, the seller always had a choice - which of the potential buyers to go to. Who argues - do not sell Maybakhi in South Butovo.

    But with free apps, this is not the case. Your target audience is everyone who has a device. A copy does not cost you anything. But each installation improves you in the ranking. Even if this grandmother in deep sclerosis downloaded her grandson to the phone.

    The utter axiom:

    Never narrow your audience. Maximize the audience as much as the project concept allows.

    2. Thirst is nothing, image is everything. Make a website, brand, print in cool offline publications.



    The task of marketing is not to amuse the pride of the creators - the task of marketing is to attract consumers. Website development rarely costs less than $ 1,000. To recoup even this thousand free application you need (for monetization of 10 cents), so that your application is downloaded from the site 10,000 times. According to my data, the conversion from a profile site (writing about applications) does not exceed 15%. That is, you need to get at least 50,000 unique visitors to your site. Where will they come from? With a keyword search? A site is a product in itself requiring separate marketing ... As they say, to sell something unnecessary you need to buy something unnecessary, but we don’t have money. Offline editions are as expensive as meaningless. The conversion from “paper” to “network” makes even experienced sergeants cry.

    The utter axiom:

    Do fashionable things to a minimum. The site is exactly such that it would not be embarrassing, and could be shown to colleagues, investors and publishers. The clip is cute and understandable. Consumers generally don’t need your site or video if you don’t offer something unique on it.

    3. Agency OBS. Go to social networks, chat on blogs, engage in SMM.



    A flock of battle trolls trained in the secrets of network marketing in Shaolin monasteries will ensure you develop your Facebook group, capture twitter and forums ... Social media marketing is certainly cool. But the question again arises - how and how much will it cost? If you have a group for 100,000 people - this is a project in itself, which will take a lot of time to deal with. And the advertising budget for gathering a group of 100k is itself very significant. Many applications are sold in a bunch of countries - by whom and how will you communicate in Dutch or Swedish? Who will write posts to the group and moderate it? As long as your customer base is not approaching millions, you do not need and can not afford it. And if you have millions of users, then I should not advise you.

    The utter axiom:

    You don’t have the strength and money to do network marketing and development at the same time. So - choose who you are - the creators of applications or bloggers and network personalities.

    4. Antibiotics are useless. Create a viral video. Launch a viral ad.



    How? Tell me how to create a viral video? If you can create a video that people will send to each other - what prevents you from creating an application that people send to each other? And why did you decide that the usual "ignition" of a viral video is not worth the money? Budgets there begin to approach the advertising budgets of applications. And why, please tell me, are you sure that people will like it and they will spam friends and enemies with links to your masterpiece?

    The utter axiom:

    If you believe in luck, go to the casino. There, at least everything will be fast and in a good setting.

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