This is a guest post by Scott Lorenz, President of Westwind Communications.
Creating, developing and selling iPhone apps is one of the hottest entrepreneurial opportunities out there. By the latest count, there are 200,000 iPhone applications alone available for sale at Apple’s App Store since its June 2007 debut.
This equates to an astounding pace of 182 new apps a day. Experts now conclude the explosive popularity of iPhone and iPad will dramatically expand this number even more in the years to come.
“For every iPhone developer who surges to success, there are thousands with their apps who do little more than gather ‘digital dust’ on Apple app shelves, these developers need to rise above the clutter and get noticed. To get an idea of the depth, width and height of that clutter, just go to the Apple App Store and see all the apps available. Pay particular attention to competitor’s apps and take some time to dig into the options the App Store offers to promote your product.”
Some developers rely upon word of mouth to market their apps. Word of mouth is a great tool but you need PR to fuel up word of mouth. What is really needed is a PR plan that reaches both the end users – the consumers – and the media who can reach those buyers
Developers of technology of any kind tend to speak to other tech people in their own world. And that makes sense. They trade ideas, swap insight, discuss roadblocks, and share code. But to market and ultimately sell their iPhone apps, developers must reach out to the people who talk to their end users. They need to reach non-technical journalists who can mention an app on a TV newscast, write a newspaper column that reaches a few hundred thousand readers or a syndicated radio show with 100,000-plus listeners across the United States.
A public relations firm or publicist has an extensive list of media contacts with whom he has developed a professional relationship and history that can be pitched. The contacts and relationships a PR specialist has are 1000 percent more apt to gain a radio interview or inclusion in a newspaper column than the technology developer who cannot be expected to have these kinds of contacts. That’s why an iPhone app developer needs to invest time and resources with the publicist best equipped to make the app well enough known in the right places that it will become a popular seller.
When I work with an app developer, he or she begins by assessing what he or she thinks the media potential is for the app and asks these questions. Would the media even be interested? Is it a niche app or is it an app that would be of wide consumer interest? Then he or she determines which journalists, columnists, television, bloggers, and radio and TV producers would be interested in that app and pitch it to them.
We go beyond traditional media and include product reviewers at major media outlets as well as bloggers and those with large followings on @Twitter, @Facebook and @MySpace.
We start to create a buzz on the Internet and generate traffic to the developer’s website or and the iPhone App Store. If appropriate, I’d get celebrities to use my client’s app and then get a testimonial from the celebrity to talk about how great the app is and its use. With one recent iPhone app promotion our YouTube views increased by 13,500 from 11pm to 6am after an interview on Wall Street Journal Radio and a couple of highly trafficked review sites.
Reviews matter. PR matters.
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