Marketing your new App.

It's done, it's done! Finally! Now what? Actually unless you've made an app that can market itself you're not done, you're missing one of the most vital steps, you have to Market it! At least that's what the marketing folks tell me.

You could have just made the best app in the world but if no one knows it's in the app store here's what will happen: Your competition who is scouring the app store for any new entries will see that your app is not getting any attention, steal the idea and throw a lot of money at marketing the hell out of their clone as if it was their idea to begin with and make millions. Business is business, it's pretty cut throat.

Make sure when you release your app that have a moat of users protecting it from anyone who wants to clone it. How do you get users? make sure they know it's in the store and they can't resist getting it.

A semi marketing postmortem:

I released Vanity back in 2009 with absolutely no marketing push what-so-ever except making a shady looking YouTube video in my bedroom and a poor looking website that I just changed yesterday...3 years later (actually the video is still up). Truth is, that it took me so much energy just to finish the app that when it was time to submit the final candidate I couldn't wait to hit the launch button. I had quit my decent paying job at EA after I shipped DeadSpace1, moved back home for a bit, started selling Google & Baidu stock to buy dinner at Aldi's. Here's what went well and what could have been improved at the launch of Vanity & the launch of CrunchTime, my next app.

What went well:

The idea was there. A simple idea that taps into natural human desire and solves a problem that was previously unsolved on mobile phones. Take a picture of a person and your phone tells you how attractive they are.

Users can't beat or finish the app, there will always be fresh faces to try.

The app is pretty controversial and makes for some great sensational headlines.

The app was affordable to make.

A week after launch UrbanDaddy was the first to pick it up as the "World's first face rating app."

Then Cosmopolitan ran an article about it, The NewYork times ran an article on it, Huffington

Post ran a story, Allure ran a story...etc.. all this happened over the course of a couple years. Then all the email

s came asking for me to let vanity be promoted and be included on other sites for a fee.

My marketing strategy for Vanity.

-The first thing I did after the initial sigh of relief of making it to the app store. Was Google... "How to market your iPhone app." After that I acquired a public contact list through mashable or Techcrunch of the 100 most influential female bloggers today and wrote a personal email to each and every one on that list offering a coupon for a free download. In hindsight I don't think this was the best approach but this was before I knew anything about writing a free press release. I emailed a famous female Japanese blogger with an offer to try the app for free, when I opened her reply email and read the words " Jackass - I love my android phone." I figured I deserved that for not doing my research before hand.

Out of 100 emails I got back 5 that were willing to try the app and 3 that gave me feedback.

-I was approached by a guy who wanted to do a video review for vanity for a fee, so I said sure why not. His first video review was positive but he was trying so hard to keep the video under 1 minute that it ended up being a waste of time and money for me. I wrote him a letter to actually to use the app properly and he did resulting in a much better video presentation of the app.

-A French guy asked me to be a part of a free app a day promotion on his site for a fee of 150 dollars. I said sure I'll give it a try. It was probably the best marketing decision I made. I became the number 1 downloaded app in France over night boosting the visibility of my app. When the app hit number on

e I switched to 99 cents the next day.

-twitter page- I wasn't a big fan of updating the vanity twitter page, it felt like I needed to hire someone just for that.

- I added facebook connect and sharing features into the app

- Celebrities in Hong Kong began to use my app and say they loved it. This freaked me out a bit & it still does since I have movies in my dvd collection with the same actors and actresses. Seeing the smiles on their faces as they hold up my app is a bit surreal. But seeing people smile when they use may app keeps me inspired to make more cool new apps.

Bosco Wong after scoring 9.1 on Vanity.

"I got the highest score? I'm so happy! This app is amazing, what is it called? Let me download it too!" Bosco became the Siu Sang with the highest score of 9.1, even happier than getting TV King.

- Localizing the app and app descriptions into 5 languages was one of the best decisions I made. 40% of sales come from outside the US.

-What I should have improved on earlier.

- App icon: I was being all artsy and chose the mona lisa as my app icon. Mistake#2. No one knows what the app does when they see the icon. I changed this later to a face with a measuring tool. My Mom still loves the Mona Lisa icon and asks when it's coming back.

-App Name: to me Vanity was the perfect name for this app but a more marketing effective name would be "Ugly calculator." The media would eat that up and say that cyber bullies can use this app to be mean to children thus forcing the app into the limelight. It's sad but true a lot of people don't know what an app called Vanity does just by reading the name.

- I should have made the app free with a freemium model to gain lots of users who might not want to pay 2.99

-CrunchTime (my second big app) marketing strategy. (disaster)

- Hire some other company to do it. I talked to different companies till I found a company which I won't name with a good portfolio and results. They promised me the moon and tried to market CrunchTime the same way they had marketed other apps before it. The appstore is always changing and what may have worked once before to get an app to the top just didn't work. The company was more focused on getting my money, they didn't understand the app fully and due to a horrible development experience that went 8 months over schedule the app wasn't really ready for prime time on launch.

- The marketing team suggested I install tapjoy and pay for installs so I gave that a try. This was a waste of money for my app ( I think it works better for games). Everyone tried to wait for Christmas to boost their app into the top ranks and wait for the apple holiday freeze so they could ride the exposure to the bank. This could work if you want to pay 20 dollars per install for a 99 cent app, you could also just burn money for the same effect.

- In the end I received a very expensive printout of how much media exposure I received due to the marketing team and I told myself I will never do that again.

-One Positive result was that the app was featured by Apple in the new and noteworthy section of iTunes.

- Another positive was learning how to create a Presskit & getting to create my own little short film advertising the app.

- Made a standout icon.

Moving forward Marketing Strategy.

- Moving forward I will try to only create innovative apps that people will want to tell their friends about.

- I will try to make apps that help people.

- I will try to make apps that people will use at least twice a day.

- I will remember marketing folks are all jaded and want to be able to print the most sensational headlines.

-I will make apps that are simple at their core and that people "get."
-I will make apps that make people smile.
-I will make apps that are free(mium)

-I will learn from my mistakes.

-I will collaborate with talented developers.

-I will not let Apple automatically select a launch date for my app after review.

-I will brainstorm on new ways to get everyone to know about my app before launch.