Welcome to the 6th episode of our Appreneur Podcasts.
In this series of podcasts, we’ll be bringing you some of the biggest names in the industry and the brightest app developers on the planet to discuss app marketing, monetization and development strategies with you every week.
In this episode, we site down with Brad Davidson, founder of AppConsultants.com.au, and extract (that sounds painful doesn’t it?) some great tactics and strategies that he’s using right now today. You’ll learn:
*Some common mistakes that new Appreneurs make and how to avoid them
*How to get out of your own way and move faster through the App space
*One vital way to exponentially grow the worth of your App business
*A golden nugget on getting more exposure for your App
Check out the video and leave your comments and feedback below…
 |  |
Download Appreneur Podcast Episode 6 Transcripts
TRANSCRIPTS:
Len: Hi, I am Len Wright, cofounder and CEO of AppClover.com. Welcome to another Appreneur Appcast; thank you for joining us. I had a hard time with that coming up. Did you notice that, guys? With me today is my partner, cofounder and COO of AppClover.com, Matthew Lutz, and the outsourcing Poobah himself, Jeff Williams, CEO and founder of Weblance.com. He just disappeared. He will be back any moment.
Today we have got a special guest with us, Brad Davidson. Brad is the founder of App Consultants, and has been involved in technology-driven industries for over 20 years. He has combined his experience and love of technology and business to develop a unique perspective on the mobile app industry that allows him to help mobile app creators explore their ideas and develop successful mobile apps. App Consultants is Australia’s first truly independent app advisors, who provide independent advice on the mobile app development process to assist companies and individuals — Appreneurs like yourself listening and watching right now — in taking their app ideas from concept to creation successfully. Brad, welcome today.
Brad: Thanks, Len.
Len: Maybe we can dive right in, and just tell us a little bit about app consultants and why and how you guys started in the app business.
Brad: Yes, thanks, Len. As you mentioned, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in innovative technology-based industries for most of my career. After working in my own business for the last five years delivering web and online marketing services, I was starting to see that those industries were reaching saturation point, and it was time for a new challenge for me.
I was pretty lucky when it came to app development, because the penny dropped fairly quickly. I was able to take a fairly broad view of the industry. That allowed me to use all of my previous training and experience, and that just seemed to fit well with this market. I was lucky to work for a local Australian developer. That provided me with some insight into the industry, but it also highlighted a number of areas where this new emerging industry and these emerging technologies that were presenting challenges to some app innovators and creators.
Unfortunately, I just saw that there were so many people that didn’t really understand what they needed to be doing, and how they needed to be successful as an app publisher. I’ve probably had conversations with over 300 different people in maybe the last 12 months who have a variety of different ideas from games, to business, to utility apps. I was lucky to get feedback on how they saw the industry coming in, what they knew, what they had learned from other developers. It was pretty easy to see that most of them were confused about what steps they needed to take, and exactly how they needed to get there.
Developers, by their nature, are interested in pushing their core technologies; they’re interested in pushing what they want to be doing. That’s not always in the best interests of the people that are developing the apps. You need to take a holistic approach, and App Consultants was born out of that desire to help people understand the full scope of what they’re getting into.
Len: Nice. I’m going to let Matt ask the questions from here on out so I’m not talking all the time. Matt, do you want to take it over? Just before you do, I just want to welcome Jeff Williams. I had a really cool — I called you that grand Poohbah of outsourcing and everything, and you weren’t even there to be able to…
Jeff: My Mac crashed just as you guys went live.
Len: Ah-hah, my PC wasn’t crashing. This time. Anyhow, Matt, maybe we will just let you take it away and continue on with Brad.
Matt: Sure. Brad, it’s funny, because one of the things you mentioned is that your skill set and your background just transferred and paralleled nicely with the app market. Both Len and I, we have a lot of similar experience. That’s one of the things that has been pretty easy for us, because there’s a lot of foundational stuff, especially when you are thinking of what you mentioned — creating a business and taking the holistic approach instead of just treating it as a hobby and all of that stuff. That’s what we’re seeing, too. There are a lot of foundational marketing fundamentals and monetization things that a lot of app developers and Appreneurs just don’t consider or don’t know about. It’s not necessarily their fault, they just haven’t been exposed to that yet.
I just wanted to agree with you on that point and say that, yes, we have seen similar things to what you are sharing. One of the things that you mentioned was the mistakes; that is a huge mistake as far as not treating this like a holistic business. To that point, what are some other mistakes or lessons learned that you have seen a lot of Appreneurs or newbies making right now? What advice would you offer to help them avoid some of these pitfalls and mistakes?
Brad: I think the most critical one is not allowing any money for marketing. If you look at a traditional business, and the model there is that you reinvest at least 10% into your marketing spend. There are some people that are going in and not even allowing 10% up front to do any marketing. They are trying to do it all on a shoestring budget, they pumped every dollar they had into development project. They got a pretty good app, but if no one can see it and no one uses it, then it doesn’t matter how good your app is.
Len: There are a lot of great ideas that are still on the shelves that people have never seen. Marketing is really that vehicle that has to give the exposure. It’s usually an afterthought, you’re right.
Matt: I use this analogy all the time, that whole nothing new. I didn’t invent it, but when it comes to marketing I think especially with apps, it’s that whole, if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Just because you create the next Angry Birds meets Instagram meets whatever.
Len: Draw Something.
Matt: Yes, Draw Something, Friends. It can be the best app in the world, but if no one knows it exists, does it? Is it great? Yes, that’s a great point, man.
Jeff: Sorry, Len. I just want to ask, how do you prepare for that? I know in my own experience, when I’m developing apps, a lot of times things will go over-budget. There will be unexpected situations, and you get to the point where you have got your app, you’ve delivered it, but you have just burned through your marketing budget. Upfront, how do you plan for that? How do you make sure that that money that you have is going to be there by the time you finish building your app? That’s really difficult.
Len: Can I add one point and then Brad, you can add the meat. I was just going to say, we always run into — when you are doing a project, I don’t think I’ve ever had a project that has been on-time and on-budget that has been anything major. One thing I do, Jeff, with any project we go into, is I tack on at least another half of whatever I’m doing. That’s funding, that’s time, that’s resources, and you hope that that is enough. I will always do my thing up and then I will go, “Okay, now we have an extra whatever.”
Matt: That’s true, too. Working with Len, that was a new thing. With you, it’s like you would ask me, “When can this be done?” “Tuesday.” “Okay, cool, we’ll say Friday.” And I’m like, what? No, I just said Tuesday. That’s true, and it has helped us quite a bit.
Len: And that with funding, too, because things will definitely come up. There are no ifs, ands or buts — if you are developing something, there is going to be challenge. Even if you think of the word develop, you are actually creating something.
Jeff: Yes, its research and development.
Len: Yes, and you’re actually creating something so there are going to be glitches along the way, that’s just a normal thing of the project. The bigger the project, the more glitches, the more challenges you go through.
Brad: If all of the pieces were there and everyone knew how it all fit together, everyone would just be putting successful apps together. It would just be plug-and-play. I agree with you, Len, you need to allow for some type of excess there; I think that is smart planning and smart budgeting. That goes back to business methodology. I think the other thing there, though, is that when you’re thinking about the marketing side, you want to start early, and you want to get your prelaunch going. If you’re working on a shoestring budget and you haven’t got anything in there as a slush fund or an overflow amount, you will hit problems.
What I do for my clients, or one of the strategies that I suggest to them, is working on the model of building a minimum viable product. What do you need to build and take to market that is going to allow you to test your concept to get proof of concept, and understand if you’re right? If you’re going to look at spending 12 months working on this project, and you’ve got all the features that you think everyone wants and you’ve got to get this right and you’re working to perfection. Then you go to launch it, and they will usually say to you, “I don’t really like that. I don’t want to use that. Oh, that’s the one I want, I’m going to use that all the time.” If you had done your market research at the start and you understood that, and you understood what you need to take to market and you just try and get something out there. Get that minimum viable product into the market, and you start to minimize the risk and minimize the costs for stage one development. Once you’ve got that proof of concept, and then go and start to flow the big bucks into major enhancements.
Len: That is a very, very good idea, because we do it with marketing. You actually build a product or build whatever you are building to a certain extent, then you allow certain testers or beta testers to come in and use that certain thing, and give you feedback before you pour everything into a finished product without that necessary market research. Sometimes that’s where going overboard happens, too, is because people look at creating this giant mammoth thing right off the bat. When you do that — I’ve seen this happen so many times — they wait to release something so long because they want it to be so perfect that they’ve missed the opportunity, and their competitors gobble up the market while they’re still waiting to be perfect.
Matt: Like Weblance.
Jeff: I was just going to say, sometimes doing this show is a real pain in the ass. You guys make me feel bad.
Len: It’s called learning.
Matt: You know, the reality is, that’s what updates are for. Updates are not only functionality to keep improving your apps, but it is actually a marketing tactic too, right?
Len: How many ideas have we all probably had where we thought that this was just going to be awesome? Then we get it out there, and our friends are all telling us it’s awesome too, stroking our egos and telling us what we want to hear. So we spend all this money, all this time to get a market out and there’s nothing there. It’s just not what we’re going after. We took that view, and we could have taken the view of getting it perfect with AppClover. There are a lot of moving parts with AppClover. We would still be working on it, which means that we wouldn’t be doing these podcasts any which way they are, we would be making it perfect, and thus you guys out there would not be getting this information.
When you are doing something, Brad, you hit right on the head, that is fantastic. You want to be able to join or co-timeline it to where you have the research to be able to come together and not blow the whole marketing wad upfront on making something better than you think it should be. Just get it out there and find out what people say, and then take that and market it in.
Jeff: I will tell you another thing, just on the emotional front. When you’re working in your phase 1 to perfection and you are really trying to finish the product off, at the time you’re supposed to be getting that customer feedback, it’s actually very difficult to receive that feedback and to really let that sink in and try to put that into your product. You’ve worked so hard to get everything perfect, then somebody comes along and says, “That’s crap.” It’s difficult to make these changes.
Len: That’s right, it is exactly that emotional thing. My whole mantra is I don’t do emotional business, and that’s really hard. That’s an easy statement; that’s one of those timeless statements that sounds so easy, but are incredibly hard. I have been working for over 20 years on it. It’s all personal growth, but I’ve gotten to the point where it doesn’t usually bother me that way unless someone really goes off and tweaks something really weird. That just shows me I am attached to that thing, and it’s just a thing, man.
Matt: Len and I have had some — not heated discussions, because at the end of the day we always say, “Let’s let the data make the decision.” There is one thing I have been trying to implement for a while. We will get to the point where we’re going to test it, but Len has been adamant since day one that he doesn’t want to do it.
Len: Which is?
Matt: The forced opt-in.
Len: Yes. I’m interested in seeing what the results are.
Matt: I think if we test it for a couple of weeks, like once we get our traffic where we want it, our regular opt-in where we want it, then we will test it just to see so we have a good baseline to work from. Then you will have to eat crow. It is what it is.
Len: Yeah, you better believe it, just like you did with the subject line two weeks ago. Jeff, it’s true. What Matt is saying is so correct in that if you’re emotionally attached, all it is, is just another drag on the project. It’s just another way to self-sabotage, really, because you’re not the one buying the product. You can only buy it so many times and you will go broke; it just doesn’t work. You have got to have other people buying it, so that means that you have got to really find out what they want, their feedback and just implement it. It sounds really cold, and in a way it is, but it’s a lot more fun because you’re not getting hung up on all of the snags along the way. You can move so much faster. I just look at data, what are the numbers telling me? These numbers like this. Okay, that’s what we go with.
Brad: Actually, I have a sign on the wall in my office. It’s about getting the best results. I have found that people that come in approach me there, if that’s sitting there, they know that the conversation isn’t personal. It’s a debate, and it’s a debate about, what is the best? Sometimes you’ll be right and sometimes you’ll be wrong, but if you’re constantly looking for the best result and you’ll be open to that feedback. Like you said, Len, you might be attached to it sometimes, you might have a personal attachment, but you’ll notice that if you’re thinking about doing the best.
Len: You’ve got to be fluid. To move faster in a space like this, those emotional things of, “Oh, they didn’t like this or they didn’t say this.” Or whatever. I just got our first cancellation on our subscription a bit ago on Appreneur magazine. I was like, that’s cool if they don’t want to be there. But take it back like eight or ten years ago, I would have been e-mailing him saying, “Why? Why don’t you love this beautiful thing that we created?” I just realized something on his side is not right and that’s cool. When you have a marketing plan that’s working, you don’t get caught up with the onesies and the twosies, what they think. You’re looking at the mass scale of the other 200 or 300 that are coming in at the same time that that one is tell you, “I don’t like this.”
Chad Maretta, we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. He said, “Haters are going to hate.” I love it. There are going to be haters, and they’re going to do what they do and just let them do it. Take the value, take the nuggets from what they’re giving you and then move on.
Matt: To that point, I will leave you with two little thoughts and then we’ll move on to the next question. At the end of the day, the market never lies. The market will always tell you what it wants, so you just have to pay attention to that and put your ego aside. The last thing is I always use this mantra. It’s kind of a weird phrase, but sloppy success: Put it in the market and update as you go along. That’s how we have created our whole business is just get it to the market and then improve it. If you just worry about improving and getting it perfect, once the market sees it, there are going to be new improvements to be made.
Len: I’ve just got one thing to add and then yes, the next question. This one is really good. Think of it this way; if adults had to learn how to walk for the first time again, how many of us would be walking? We would give up so quickly because we’re adults, and that’s the societal thought of doing things. Kids don’t do that. Your 4-month-old, when he starts walking and getting out there, he is going to fall flat on his face I don’t know how many times, and he is going to get right back up again. He will maybe cry, but dust himself off and he will keep going. Really, we’ve used the word mantra a few times, but that is really the example for an entrepreneur. It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you got up. If you get one more time than you fall, you have created success.
Matt: I don’t know what you’re talking about, all I know is I’m getting a segue after that.
Len: As you walk and learn how to walk it evolves your learning space and grows that way around you. In that, how do you see the app space evolving, Brad?
Brad: I can actually lead into one point I wanted to make off the previous one. This is a good one, of course, we can be so dynamic. This technology allows us to iterate quickly and to make changes based on that feedback. We might sit there and look at the fact that hey, maybe sometimes there is a one-week or even a two-week delay in getting apps through the Apple app store and the approval process. Jump back to 10 or 15 years. We have all been around in the world when you had to print physical CDs and distribute them through a shop. Think about how slow the iteration process was then. On that point, I think it’s the user feedback which is one of the most valuable areas that you have got. To answer your question, what are the elements that are going to give an app an edge? I think user engagement is the absolute winner there. We have probably all seen a lot of ugly but successful websites over the years. I take from that while design is certainly important, web experience would show us that people can overlook design issues if the functionality delivers on expectation. In addition, if I have to make a choice on a stage one deliverable where the decision came down to budget, and it was design versus functionality, I would probably choose the functionality first, as long as it fit into that budget. It will be a lot quicker in many cases to modify the design elements that go around that functionality down the track in an iteration than it would be to change the functionality. If usability factors are wrong, it could mean you have to take that complete code base back to the drawing board and start again, whereas you can change a graphic, you can change your Apple icon, you can change the little tweaks, but if the user engagement is all over the shop you’re done.
Matt: Out of curiosity, though, the expectations then would be that your download rate, while it’s not as visually appealing at the beginning, would be lower. But you know you’re going to circle back around and add that in afterward, right?
Brad: Yes, exactly. Again, it’s a very big-picture comment, but sometimes you’ve got to make these things. As I said, you can’t get everything into stage one, and this is working on that minimum viable product thing. You’ve got to make some choices, but my overriding thing is, user engagement and usability all win out.
Matt: It’s funny, just in that one little sentence there you have kind of converted my — I’m just sitting here thinking. I am a design guy, right? I come at everything with the idea that you can either serve someone a piece of Spam, or you can serve them a venison medallion drizzled in port wine reduction and served on a bed of whatever. My point is, what is going to get consumed quicker? Well, Len might eat the Spam, but for most people…
Len: Is it gluten-free?
Matt: If you disappoint them as soon as they download it, they are either going to uninstall it or just never revisit it again anyway. To your point, yes, get the functionality working, and then polish it up afterward because it’s a lot faster and cheaper to do it. I like that, man, it’s smart.
Brad: If you can do them all, then do them all. I’m not saying put crappy graphics up. You’ve got to balance, but again, if I was going to pick which graphics I was going to do, it would be my Apple icon. That’s the first visibility thing. That’s the first thing in the app store that’s going to make them get into the app. At least if they have downloaded it and tried it, if the app store app icon is rubbish, you don’t even get to the next point; they’re not even clicking through to the page.
Jeff: Brad, when I hear you guys talk about this stuff, when I built websites for people I would say a lot of these things. Then once I started building my own applications, I was amazed on how hard it is to actually do that. For instance, design. I’ve got to get it out the door, but I just can’t deal with the design the way it is; I have got to do something about it. These are the kinds of things that you go through when you’re building this stuff. It is almost impossible to express how difficult it is to do these things even if you know they’re true. I think one of the great things about having a consultant and somebody on your team, especially if you’re doing it by yourself, is to really help you remain disciplined and help you keep the perspective. It is very, very hard to do that.
Matt: Yes, I think that’s a good point, because you are married to certain things if you’re a design guy. Obviously, I have seen Weblance, it’s a beautiful site. All of the graphics, the videos, everything that you have created — the brand, it’s consistent, it’s pretty, it’s modern. It all works, but I know that that is not an easy thing to create. I know that you put a lot of time and effort into that, but you’re right. You’re very much married to that. However, you have somebody like Brad that is helping you along and saying, “Okay, you can do one or the other thing, that’s what you time and budget allows.” You’re going to weigh the options, and you’re going to be a little more disciplined and strategic than just emotionally invested. I think that’s good for a lot of people, especially the newbie Appreneurs and stuff that are just like, “I have got this vision, this idea; it’s going to be the next greatest thing.” But they are only concentrating on one portion of it; they are not being, to Brad’s point, holistic in their approach.
Jeff: Why don’t you call yourself a coach? That’s really what it is.
Len: Every successful person out there that has any real mention of any success, that has wealth or whatever, they have a coach.
Matt: Mentorship is huge. That’s the reality is that’s what we’re building the majority of our business around is the idea that we are creating or providing all of these tens and tens, and eventually we’ll get into the hundreds of mentors that other people can tap into. We believe in that, and we’ve been shortcutting your learning curve as much as possible. Why reinvent the wheel? It works. The model works, so let’s improve upon it, but let someone else take the lumps. Then we’ll take it from there, we’ll tag in from there, and shortcut your learning, and basically just streamline your app creation and your marketing and your monetization.
Brad: Alluding to Jeff’s point there about doing stuff yourself, I think there are a couple of different groups of Appreneurs. There are the ones that are just outsourcing everything. There are ones that might have either the design experience themselves or the programming experience themselves, and they want to contribute a part of this process. One of the challenges there is costing out your own time. It’s all good if you look at the fact you hire an outsource partner to work with and you know what the cost overhead of their work as. But if you are doing all this work yourself, I suppose if you’ve got the time, and you are the designer, you can spend a week tightening up all of your graphics if you have the time. I think a lot of people fail to account for how much time they actually spend working on the project as well when they’re looking at the overall cost.
Jeff: The other downside to contributing to your own project, and we will just continue with design as the example. I will look at something and I will look at something, and by the time I’m done it looks terrible. I will go away, I will get busy for a week. I’ll come back a week later and I will look at it and it will be like, “Damn, that looks pretty good.” Or the other way around – I think something looks great, I come back in a week and it looks terrible. When you’re really, really close to the project, sometimes it’s difficult to maintain that perspective.
Matt: I think also, again, just treating this as a business. Do you want to be a worker bee? Do you want to put in all the hours? Do you want to be doing that? Or do you want to be the queen bee? I don’t know.
Jeff: Oh, thtop it.
Matt: The reality is, you can put in all the hours, you can do all of that stuff. I love design, but I also know that there are a ton of amazing designers out there that I can hire that would be cheaper than me investing my own time into this stuff. That’s not to say that — I do a lot of design work. I put in a lot of hours designing stuff because I enjoy it, but at the same time, eventually I would like to have a team where it’s like, “Okay, cool, I’m working with this guy on the 3-D graphics, this one on the icons.” That’s where we’re getting, because we just want to grow. Otherwise, your time is only — you only have 24 hours in a day, but if you use three or four people, the leverage point just keeps growing and growing. It’s just a matter of, do you want to create one app at a time, or do you want to create a whole empire of apps?
Really quick, I want to jump into — because one of the things that motivates us all, at the end of the day, economics plays a huge role in app creation. We’re all in it because we want to make money also, right? It’s fun, but we want to make money. I assume that everyone is looking to hit it out of the park with an app and be the next Instagram or whatever. That being said, Brad, what do you recommend your clients put in place as far as monetization methods for their apps? As a follow-up question, do you see changes coming as far as monetization goes? What do you think is on the horizon there?
Brad: I think there will certainly probably be some new monetization methods that will appear, but I think the way that it will evolve is that people will find more innovative methods to integrate the monetization into their app. If you think about app downloads, there is certainly a strategy out there that suggests if you’ve got an app that has got some kind of in-app purchase, coins or whatever it might be. You can incentivize people to view or download other apps in your network. I think that that could potentially also work for incentivizing people to view the ads as long as they are relevant, and as long as they are targeted, if that is your strategy. I think it is the creative ways to do it – bundling, different ways to display it. I think mobile video ads will start to become more prevalent. It’s still pretty much some of the apps have mobile video, others are just basically a banner.
Matt: It’s funny, Len recently was talking to somebody, Amish Shah. He brought up something – Len, by the way, I listened to that interview yesterday — he brought up something that I was like, “Yeah, that’s cool.” It is totally relatable to the Internet marketing world, but in the apps, no one is doing this yet. No one – Amish. He talked about, literally, we have always said that building a list is important, right? It is hugely important for various reasons; we could spend an hour talking about those reasons. One of which is, at the end of the day, it’s for monetization purposes. If you can build a list offline or an e-mail list based off of all of your downloads and stuff like that, you’ll be able to send other offers and all that stuff.
In addition to that, what he’s doing is he’s basically working with list companies and he’s selling the leads. That’s a very 30,000-foot view of what he’s doing, but if you look at it that way like every lead is worth $4, $5 or $6 or more, those are bigger numbers than a $1 download, or you get someone to do an in-app purchase for a buck. The reality is it’s hard to tell, because every app is different and there are all of these different categories and stuff, and everyone’s monetization strategies are different. It’s hard to know what the lifespan is worth of every download, and that’s going to vary from app to app. If you know that you have got an app in, say, a utility category or a reference category or whatever, you can sell those at $5 a pop, you’re a little bit motivated to get those downloads going.
Those are pretty big numbers, and I think that’s something that we will probably spend a little more time and create some turning around, because we really want to push that strategy. It is a huge monetization strategy.
Len: Thank you, Amish — I was going to say the same thing. He is doing a 90-day app challenge right now, and that’s what we did the interview around. When he brought that up I was just like a lightbulb went on, and it was like, “Yeah.” The Internet marketing world, generating leads is a huge, huge business. That hasn’t been explored, really, with the app world yet. What else is coming? What else hasn’t been? I think we’re in the infancy in the monetization app field right now. I think that it’s going to grow by leaps and bounds, and there is a lot of ingenuity and creativity that can be utilized in generating income from the apps. You have an audience, you’re creating a crowd. Now, what you do with them?
Brad: I think the reason list building has been, I suppose, missed a bit by a lot of people in the app space is I think that they jumped over it. People have looked at the fact that you’ve got push notifications and everyone has thought, “Oh, instant, it’s on the phone. They are going to have their phone or device there; I can push this message to them straight away.” It’s even more relevant and they are more capable of taking action. Everyone has sort of missed the bit where it says, “Hang on, an e-mail address is still valuable. They have still got their e-mail client on their phone. Most of them, if anything, e-mail is probably just as visible as a push because you’re reading your e-mail when you’re ready to read your e-mail. You’re getting a push notification irrespective of what you are doing. If that push notification comes at an inconvenient time, your’re going to cancel it and you will have forgotten it by the next time you need it. If you’re going back to look at your e-mail, if you’ve got that e-mail address, you’ve just got the aspect.
Len: It’s not an either/or situation, either. I view it as you’ve got to have multiple strategies of being able to contact your crowd — one by e-mail, one by push notification, one by the ads or what you’re putting in — like I look at our magazine, as an example. There has got to be a number of different ways that you can contact and talk, or converse with your audience.
Matt: I would take that a step further, Len ,and say that — get ready, your mind is about to blow here — not only is it important to build an e-mail list, but in my opinion, I view it as absolutely critical. Here’s why. If you get that e-mail in your inbox from Apple that says, “Hey, we changed some things. Your app is kicked out because it doesn’t meet these criteria.” Your database is gone, like everything. You could have 30,000 people in there and you can’t contact them, you can’t send a push notification. However, alternatively, if you have captured a majority of those on your e-mail database, you can send an update and say, “Hey, here’s what’s going on. Bear with me, we’re making some updates. We look forward to having you back as our customer.” That’s hypothetical, and that’s a pretty extreme case hypothetical, but it happens.
Len: Plus it makes your app business more valuable as an asset.
Matt: Yes. With the speaking Len did at another interview not too long ago with the guys over at App Business Brokers, Eric and Mike, that was one of the things they harped on. It was, “Okay, you have your app and it’s successful. Do you want to exponentially grow the worth of your company? Build your e-mail database.” They said that, they have circled back to that time and time again. Just from a worth standpoint of your company, if you want to sell your company, cool. If you want to sell your company for more, build your e-mail database.
Brad: As opposed to web, I think within apps, especially those that have got mechanisms for and in-app purchase or an incentivization. I think you’ve got more methods that you can incentivize people for giving you that e-mail address. On a website, years ago they were saying that the free line was moving, and all of these free reports came out. It was the reciprocity of, “You give me your e-mail address and I’ll give you a free report.” You can only create so many free reports, you can only do so much stuff there. If you were giving away a completely hypothetical item for a bit of a prize like coins or something like that in an app, you can just continue to give those away. It will continue to up the value until you get what you want. Realistically, it costs you no more.
Matt: That’s a good point. You look at it, especially when they kept moving the free line and everything like that. In addition to that happening, so many more marketers were swarming the market and doing the same thing. It just grew and grew and became just noise to everyone. Now, it’s not as easy as it was three years ago to get an e-mail address. Not only that, even if you get it, it’s not as easy to convert it as it was. You have to get a little more creative. The fact that apps — that’s a huge opportunity is the fact that you can literally build in some gaming into it, and have achievements built into your app. Like you said, coins, that doesn’t cost you anything, but it allows them more play, or to reach a new level or whatever.
Len: Or to share it with friends.
Matt: Yes, that’s huge. There are so many opportunities. You have them share with a friend and they get 10 more coins or plays or levels or access to whatever.
Brad: That also has the effect of increasing user engagement, because they might not be willing to put their hand in their pocket and make the purchase upfront for these coins that are going to save them time or give them extra features. If you give them to them for free, and they have then got the chance to experience what the app is like if they are using the coins, when it gets to the point that the next opportunity comes to say, “Oh, you can do this quicker if you have 1000 coins. Do you want to buy them now?” Hang on. All of a sudden, they have already had the experience of the instant gratification that that can deliver. You’re actually even pre-selling what you’re going to want them to be doing in the future.
Matt: That’s great, and you’re basically training them, “Okay, you can either wait or you can get it now.” You know that everyone will pop for a buck, it’s incredible.
Len: I look at my dog. If I give my dog a new treat he has not tasted or smelled before, there is not any interest, really – curiosity, but that’s it. If I give him a little bit, and then after hold it in front of him, that’s a different game. Now I know what you’re holding there, and he’s salivating — he’s a mastiff, so that’s like really salivating. He’s a big boy. But that’s the attention is gotten, because he’s already gotten a taste. It’s the same with the audience; make them have the experience, feel the pleasure, feel the whatever they’re going to get, then do the, “Well, okay. You already felt it. Want to feel good again? Here’s this.”
Matt: That’s a great analogy, too. It’s true. Now all I do is just shake my little box of dog treats, and my dog just comes running. It’s essentially the same thing. Really quick, I’m going to shift gears a little bit and go from monetization to marketing. Before I do that, one of my favorite — this is going nowhere, but it just popped into my head and I want to share this. Angry Birds — just like everyone, there was a period of time where I got obsessed and was addicted. They built into one of the coolest in-app purchases I have ever seen. If you can’t clear a level — and I can’t remember what it’s called because it’s been a while since I’ve played, but you can basically pay a dollar to get this eagle that comes in and saves the day, and helps you pass. I was like, “That’s awesome.” I would play the same level like three or four times and be like, “Give me that damn bird. Bring it in here, let’s pass this level and move on. I am so sick of this level.” I was like, “That is one of the coolest in-app purchases I have ever seen.”
Jeff: And they made $10 million on that.
Len: You could have the executioner come out and actually chop the head off the bird or something. It’s like, “I hate this thing, I can’t get through it.” It’s like, “Okay, I will pay a buck.” Pay a buck for the executioner to take care of your problem for you. He comes out and does his thing, and you’re just like, “Yeah, the bird is gone.” Whatever that does. What it does is it engages the user in another psychological win. As much as you can build into your game or your app, those psychological wins after the barrier has been gotten.
Jeff: It’s operative conditioning, isn’t it?
Len: Yes it is, and it is all about conditioning. I learned a lot about it through NLP, and that type of idea, but it’s all conditioning.
Matt: At that point, I would like to make a huge suggestion to anyone watching this right now. Go out and buy Dr. Cialdini’s The Art of Ethical Influence book. That right there, they talk about the whole commitment to consistency. You get someone on a path, and mentally they want to keep going down that path. It’s just something we commit to and we want to keep going. You don’t want to shift gears because it goes into the unknown and all that stuff. Just reading this book should absolutely be a handbook for any app developers or marketers out there. So that’s really quick, I just wanted to jump in and talk about it.
Len: That’s a good book. It is all about the carrot and stick, and finding the best carrot that meets the audience, and the biggest juiciest carrot for them, and then utilizing that carrot to be able to get them to jump through the hoops that you want. It sounds so easy, but it’s not.
Matt: Since we were talking about marketing, it will be a good segue, too. One of my last question – there are a couple of questions, but this one, I basically want to talk about marketing strategies. There are a ton out there, and everyone is having various success and various takes on things. If you had to take literally just three that you told your clients about, like you could only use these three, what would those be for their apps and getting them more eyeballs and downloads of them?
Brad: I think two of them certainly are a little bit tired in the way you would go about it. Unfortunately, I keep bringing myself back to my history with affiliate marketing and online marketing. As I think you’ve said before, Len, there are so many lessons to be learned there and so many things that haven’t been done. I have effectively translated the tactics and strategies that I used in the web space to app marketing. If you’re thinking about, firstly, app review sites, and secondly traditional PR. I think both of those people, while distinctly different, are also a little bit the same.
I think if anyone that is going to write about your app and help you promote your app, the more work you do for them and the easier you make their job, the more likely they are to go out and do something for you. I think that certainly applies to traditional journalists, but app reviewers. You think about what we have done as affiliate marketing, as a publisher. We always created banners and maybe some stock e-mails that people could use and all of that sort of stuff. There were always a bunch of affiliates that would go out and just use the stock stuff, and you would start to see the same e-mail subject line appear from 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 people. The ones that got more traction or had better results were the ones that customized that themselves, that added to it and did something that was a little bit deeper.
I think you certainly want to have some standard promotional stuff that you can make available to app reviewers, but you also want to potentially put some custom stuff together; unique things — unique banners, unique screenshots. If you have got to be approaching traditional media outlets, have a full media kit? Talk about the story, talk about how you came up with the concept, how it got out there. Give them as much meat as possible, and make it as easy as possible for them to go and promote your app and talk about it in a positive way.
Matt: That’s great. I want to jump in, because you said something that sparked an idea here. First of all, great ideas, and yes I agree with those being some of the high-level things that people should absolutely do. I haven’t fleshed this out because literally, when you talked about the affiliate marketing side of things, and that’s where both Len and I come from the JV affiliate world as well. What I think would be a cool tactic, which we’re going to figure out how to do this, is basically do a cross-promotion affiliate launch, and offer prizes and incentives and things like that. You get like three or four really big apps that have millions of people in their network. I don’t know the whole tracking behind this yet, but you can bet that there’ll be a way to figure this out. It might just be based on affiliate links.
Len: The same launch model moved into this space, basically. They did it with books, they did it with products.
Matt: Do it over like a ten-day period and offer daily prizes, like, “Hey, whoever gets the most on this day wins an iPad.” Or wins whatever. Then you just ship it to them. As a result, you walk away with a million downloads, and you’re featured and all of this other stuff. That would be a huge explosive launch tactic.
Len: Look at the book promotions that they did also had the bonuses. It got ridiculous after a while, because there was like more bonuses that you could never go through. You know, nobody is really doing that in the app space at all; they’re not really giving any extra bonuses away for downloads that really follow that same methodology.
Matt: You can hit it with both ends. You can hit the consumers or your customers, as well as the people that are helping you promote, your partners. Incentivize them as well to just keep sending out notifications. That’s one of the things that, in my opinion, I was pretty good at when it came launch time is fanning the flame. I kept our partners so engaged because I was giving them updates, like, “Hey, man, you are one mailing away from taking the lead for the day. If you take the lead for today, you get a spa package.” People would be like, “Cool, man. A weekend away with my wife? Yes, I will mail again.” It was stuff like that. I would do that for about two weeks straight. As a result, one of our best ones, we got 70,000 opt-ins. That is a good number.
Len: Those are e-mail opt-ins, too.
Matt: E-mail, yes. My point is, take that model, figure it out. Reverse engineer it and build it into your next app launch.
Len: That’s excellent.
Brad: One other point I wanted to make in talking about app review sites and using those to leverage your promotion. This is the one thing that people might not know about the Apple app store. I’m not sure if it’s changed recently; I haven’t grabbed any promo codes for a short while. But every time you publish an updated version of your app, Apple allocates you 50 new promo codes for each version of the app. When you’re engaging app reviewers, obviously there is a strategy of using one promo code that they can use to evaluate the app themselves if it’s a paid app or something like that. Why not give them multiple promo codes? You can always get more, you can always find some reason to iterate your app and push a new version out there. I think some people don’t even know that you get the promo codes, let alone how you can actually use them to your advantage to get more exposure for your app.
Len: You could also run little contests and stuff like that as well for promo codes. If it’s a paid app, “Do you want your app for free? Do this, this and this.” A survey, whatever as well. More hoops.
Matt: Especially if you have something built-in in the backside to monetize them further, like in-app purchases and all that stuff. You don’t really care about – really, you’re seeing the freemium model kind of take market share anyway. That initial one, you shouldn’t look at that like your payday. You should look at it like, “Okay, I need to build things into the backend anyway.” The point is, yes, give it away now. That small investment in the beginning – really, it doesn’t cost anything, but “that small investment at the beginning” can pay off in spades later on. It’s just about getting people into your funnel.
Man, I think we covered a lot of great stuff. I want to do one last thing if it’s okay, Brad, and basically kind of talk about…this brings it back to you and what you are doing a little bit. Basically, talk about the Appreneur crowd and how they can benefit from working with you, versus going it alone. What are the differences and benefits? This is your chance to kind of toot your own horn a little bit. But really, basically talk about the leverage points and how working with a consultant like you is a great way for the newbie Appreneur to get involved.
Brad: Thanks for that, Matt. I would like to think that the type of conversation that we have had on this hangout today is demonstration of the type of work we do, and how we want to guide the app creators that come and partner with us. It is about taking that holistic approach, about making sure that people have an understanding of what their options are, and what the pros and cons are of going down that path. That’s really the key to it all. We differentiate ourselves from traditional developers, because we understand that developers have specialties. It is absolutely a thing about horses for courses. There is no sense going to a developer that has only ever developed business or utility apps and asking them to develop a complex 3-D gaming engine solution. They’re just not going to be able to do it. They’re going to tell you that they’re going to be able to do it and let’s just work out how they do it on the way. That’s certainly how you end up with cost blowouts.
It’s very much about helping the app creators succeed and have a good experience. If all the people that wanted to develop an app only ever developed one because it’s such a painful and difficult process, you end up blowing a boatload of cash, and you’re just sitting there going, “Why on earth did I do this?” If everyone ever only built one app, like a will build lots more apps. Again, coming back to the fact that you should treat what you are doing as a business. If you are going to treat it as a business, it’s a long-term thing. You’d like to think you’re going to do more than one, that you’re looking at the lifetime value, and that you’re thinking about all of these things. If you have a good experience and you understand and you learn along the way, then that makes you want to come back. It certainly gives me some more customers, but it’s not just turning people off the technology.
Jeff: You know, Brad, I just want to add that. Even if you feel like you know some of these answers or you don’t feel like you are learning much, just wait until you build an app and actually try and execute on what you think you know. It is a completely different thing. That, I think, is the biggest value is to have somebody like Brad keep you focused on the things that you should be focused on, making decisions that you should be making. It’s hard to do, even if you know the right answers.
Matt: I think in this short conversation — we have been talking 30 to 45 minutes, whatever it has been — if you have learned a couple of things, just imagine what the one-on-one experience with a mentor or coach or consultant like Brad can actually do for you. This is just kind of a loosey-goosey conversation where we have covered some top-level stuff, but diving into the nitty-gritty and having someone help you, again, it’s just going to help you shortcut your learning curve. It’s going to help you get your app to market quicker and more successfully, and it’s going to help you get on to your second app so you can start building that app empire. I think that is important.
Len: I think it’s important, too, because of the fact that what we’re doing in this wave. There’s a time period here where, as you mentioned before, sloppy and successful. You have a time period here that is very, very valuable. For us at AppClover, we look at it like we don’t want to waste this time period. This space that we’re living in right now where you can actually have an opportunity to go right up against big companies or whatever, and the small app developer can just do, I don’t know if that’s always going to be. Right now is the time to be able to do it to get on with it. If you put it off, it’s going to be like Mary Meeker said in the 2011 think tank conference for Google. She said, “Some people during this time are going to win big, and others are going to be left wondering what happened.” On that note. I think, Brad, a coach, every high-level player out there in every niche – sports, business, whatever it is — they have mentors, they have coaches, they have advisors that help them along the way. This just makes total sense.
Brad: We will help them with the complete end-to-end project from just in their head and working out how to get it onto paper, and complete management all the way through, or just to be there as that trusted advisor. They might go off and manage it themselves, but if they get to a point where it’s like, “Oh, hang on. I’m just not really sure if this guy is pulling my leg.” Just someone to bounce some stuff off. That is how we work with new app developers or first-time app developers, but we also have a process that we work with people that have already got an existing app out in the marketplace. We offer a review service where we will sit there and look at what you’ve done, look at how your app is functioning, look at how you market it, look at what results you are achieving, and then make some recommendations with you, whether it’s a re-launch or a new iteration of the app that includes some different strategies. Basically, if you have an app that isn’t achieving the success you wanted, we can work with you and make some suggestions as to how you can get that back on track and start to reinvigorate that business.
Matt: I just had a few last little questions and then, Len, I will let you close it out. First, you had said something – actually, Len, let me ask my question to you, because you used a new word. I want to see if you can use it in a sentence. Early on in this Appcast you used “co-timelining it.” No, just teasing.
Len: I like that; we’ve got to come up with something that we can use that.
Jeff: That sounds multidimensional.
Len: I know, I like it.
Matt: Also, Brad, you used a phrase that I am not entirely — I think it’s similar to apples to apples, but did you say horses to horses?
Brad: Horses for courses.
Matt: Horses for courses. Okay, I totally missed that one. I wrote that down because I was like, “What does that one mean?” For us US-speaking people.
Brad: It’s basically the right people for the right project; it’s no use riding a donkey in the Belmont Stakes or something, you know? If you’ve got a sprint race, don’t take a donkey with you.
Matt: Fair enough. I like it, and I am going to use it. No, I just like to learn new things. Then my last question for you is, I notice you have a slight accent. Is that a Jamaican accent? I’m not sure where you’re from, exactly.
Brad: I am Australian born and bred.
Matt: I was just teasing.
Len: I was hoping that I could actually segue that donkey statement into a closing. I was looking forward to that one. That last question was just…
Matt: That’s one of the things I love about doing this, really quick, is the fact that we are literally right now spanning four different countries.
Jeff: Isn’t that awesome? I love that.
Matt: Canada, the US, the Philippines and Australian. We talk to people in so many other countries. This is just such an amazing market that we’re in right now and it’s such a global market. If people are not localizing your apps, you’re crazy. Anyway, Len, I will let you go ahead and take it away.
Len: That was definitely a better segue than the donkey one, so that will work great. Guys, we had another great podcast. I hope everybody is enjoying it out there. You’ve been listening or watching another Appreneur Appcast with AppClover.com. Today we have a special guest, Brad Davidson. I urge you — not just suggest, I urge you — to check out AppConsultants.com.au. Check out his services. We talked a little bit about the value of having a coach, but really it goes down really deep, because it’s the support, it’s the mentorship, it’s the going it alone versus having somebody there pointing things that you are not seeing. It can definitely save you a lot of money. We all here today urge you to be able to check them out.
We’ve also had Jeff Williams from Weblance.com today. Thank you, Jeff, for being with us. I think you’ve still got that deal running as well for the AppClover community. If you go and sign up for the beta on Weblance.com, which I suggest and urge you to do, you’re going to get a premium membership free. That’s roughly, what?
Jeff: $240 per year.
Len: That’s nice, man, that’s awesome. Go check that out from Weblance as well. He will be launching very quickly, won’t you?
Jeff: Actually, January 1, I think, is when we are going to be launching.
Matt: We should probably mention that this offer is good until you launch. Just so people don’t watch this and say, “Hey, man, I want my free…”
Jeff: Yes, exactly. I would probably give it to them.
Len: Again myself, Len Wright, CEO of AppClover and my friend and cofounder, partner, copilot for this — I’m glad we’re ending this, my tongue is all of a sudden not doing what it should – Matthew Lutz. There you go. Again, check out AppreneurMagazine.com for your latest information on the tactics and strategies to be able to get you and your app more successful. Today, thank you again for being with us, we appreciate it, Brad. Thank you, we hope to do this again.
Brad: Thanks, Len. It’s been a pleasure.
Len: Definitely. For everybody watching, thank you for being with us today.