The Mobile App Trap

You could say that I am a poacher turned gamekeeper.  Right up until mid-2010, I was, among other things, an enthusiastic app developer. I’d invested my time, energy and creativity into my unique ideas, creating what I believed to be the best mobile app of its genre. It’s only then that I encountered the scale of the market into which I was trying to make inroads. If you are Apple, then the statistics are amazing, but if you a competitor in the apps space, then quite frankly, it’s frightening.

There are more than a million apps already in the market and 60,000 new ones being added to that list every month. While Apple and Android remain the largest platforms, others like Palm are hunting for market share.

Let’s take Apple as an example: at the beginning of this year there were already 104,919 free iPhone apps and 201,635 paid iPhone apps available in store; in July this year Apple saw the 15 billionth download from the Apple App Store, clocking up the last 5bn downloads in just six months.

So, critical to any app marketing is ensuring that the finished goods have a unique value proposition which resonates ‘what I’ll do for you’ to the consumer, differentiates itself against its competitors, and has a great name that sums all of those things up and, of course, is a joy to use. If you’ve done all that, then surely you are home and dry. You’ve got an app that will sell itself!

Big mistake
This was the assumption I made, only to discover that this is just the start of things. I still had to make myself heard in an exceptionally noisy market, and in this respect, was guilty of the same big mistake made by thousands of apps developers before me. We may be operating in a near virtual world, but lots of the marketing options open to us remain firmly in the ‘traditional’ channels.

In a global market, even if you can identify the segment in which you want to shout, outbound advertising, direct mail and television can all be measured, monitored and adapted to ensure maximum return on investment, but they come with huge wastage, and remain cost prohibitive to most.

For app developers, even in the brave new mobile world, channels like online advertising, websites and indexes that list and rank apps, are complex, time consuming and potentially expensive. Search engine apps and apps recommenders are also part of the mix, but from experience require too much effort from the user. Venturing down the road of incentivising users to download can work, but comes with the risk of spiralling costs, not to mention being a no-no as far as the major app stores are concerned.

Word-of-mouth

Ironically, word-of-mouth is one of the oldest and most valued of methods in the marketing tool kit. This translates to the apps market as trying to gain exposure with the major bloggers or being featured by an app store. But the bloggers are now overwhelmed with requests; even distinguishing an app sufficiently for them to look at it has become a major obstacle, and of course ‘featuring’ remains a much sought-after gift of the platform owner.

With a world increasingly occupied by web natives, it’s those tools which embrace the concept of sharing and showing the stuff we love to friends, family and colleagues which are set to stand out in the app marketing arena.

Developers need powerful and cost effective distribution channels. The ability to penetrate the noise and to utilise word-of-mouth as the most effective and reliable way to promote buying decisions has become critical to effective apps marketing.

It’s the precept from which buzzdoes was born. I realised that I needed to create an effective means of tapping into user advocacy in an intuitive way which reflects and embraces the social media channels.

User operation needed to be simple, with single-click operation which provides automated contact suggestion and transparent application distribution. To complete the loop, buzzdoes also enables apps users to profile their applications to friends and receive rewards for every download that occurs as a result of the recommendation.

It also guarantees developers a risk-free route to market penetration by utilising a pay-by-success financial model and, from an integration perspective, requires only simple drag and drop operation and 2-minute assimilation into their application before it’s ready to go.

There are a host of business already out there which have been built by word-of-mouth – Google is a prime example. I see this method of app promotion becoming increasingly key in an already saturated apps market.

Assaf Kolirin is the founder of buzzdoes