Let's Talk Marketing
Nice little app you've got there. What are you going to do with it?

by Steven Crighton

The LiveCode product is excellent for building and creating apps but once that app is built what comes next? How do you take your app from being files on your computer to being an online success?

We encourage you to keep building great apps. As a community you continue to surprise us with the great apps you build. However... building an app is only step one. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but step two requires just as much work, if not more.

What is step two I hear you ask? It's taking your app to market and making sure you and your app have everything you need to be successful.

Lets be realistic here. The best marketing in the world isn't going to save your app if its rubbish. But what if its not rubbish? What if you have a decent app that really solves a problem for people? Surely people will just beat a path to your door (or website) and beg you to sell it to them?

Well. Not really.

You can create the world's greatest app tomorrow, upload it to an app store, but if nobody finds it then its the world's greatest app with 0 downloads. Finding out your app has not been accepted to the app store or seeing you have the same amount of downloads you had last month can make you doubt the strength of your app, but have you done enough? What else could you be doing to give your app the very best chance of connecting with the people who really want it but just don't know it yet?

Stand Out
What makes your app stand out? Are you shouting loud enough?

For the purpose of this article let's assume we have created an alarm clock app. What makes our alarm clock app different from the many other alarm clock apps out there? Why should anyone choose our alarm clock app?

Let's assume our app is an alarm clock app that wakes you up with music and that music relates to the live weather. It checks the weather and at 7am when the alarm goes off it will play songs such as “I'm singing in the rain” or “here comes the sun.”
Neat. This app is no longer an alarm clock app, it's the Weather Man alarm clock, the alarm clock that wakes you up with the live weather, and this is our unique selling point (USP).

Once you have identified your USP you need to consider how to make your app stand out from the crowd. You need to write a great description of your app, so that once people arrive on your page in the app store they instantly get what your app is and what it does. This is your opportunity to close the sale so it's worth taking time to make sure you get this just right. In this situation, grammar matters. Spelling mistakes give your app an unprofessional air. Proof read your copy carefully.
Include accurate and attractive screenshots and an app store icon that tells the story and stands out from the rest. Your icon is your very first communication with your potential customers. A picture says a thousand words, so make sure it's saying the right ones about your app.

Sticking with our alarm clock example the app icon could be a rising sun with the 7.00 AM alarm clock showing in the sun. We could try to fit more detail into this icon but we need to remember the size it will be viewed at and smaller details may not be instantly recognised. Try showing your finished icon to your friends and family, ask them what your app does and see if they can guess.

Get Social
Having a presence on Social Media can be very important, especially when trying to get your app noticed. Having a daily presence on Facebook and Twitter is a great way to reach and grow a customer base as well as reaching out to possible reviewers and influential people in your targeted area.

Make the Right Friends
As I have mentioned we all have the opportunity to make the best app the world has ever seen, however if nobody stumbles across our app then the best app in the world will never be downloaded.

Success means different things to different people. For some it may be 50 downloads, for others it may be 500,000 downloads, but whatever the goal we all want to experience that winning feeling and to get there we need our app to be seen.
Finding the people with influence in your market can be tricky but often these people will be used to being approached and will be happy to share something so long as they feel it's worth sharing. If you don't ask, you won't get, and the worst that can happen is they do not feature your app... which is what will happen if you don't approach these people. So don't be shy, contact as many movers and shakers in your market as you can find. Be polite, be interesting and above all, on first contact be short! These are busy people. If you can't communicate your USP in one paragraph or less your chances of them reading your carefully worded full page essay and life history are slim to none.

The people you are looking for are the ones people listen to when they talk about your topic area, people whose pronouncements get shared, quoted and used as references. Try searching Twitter or use Klout.com to find and engage with the influential people in your relevant field.

As well as trying to connect with these people you need to get your app reviewed. Search your apps topic in Google and find the relevant blogs or online magazines. At this point you can choose to approach the relevant press contact on these sites directly or why not create and submit a press release around the creation and launch of your app?

Try to avoid paying to have your app reviewed. The sites that are generally worth being reviewed from will not charge to review your app, they will review your app because they think it will be beneficial to share with their readers. If you have to pay, its advertising, and advertising on a limited budget rarely works.

Build Your Online Presence
Confidence is everything. It's very important to have a focused, professional looking online presence outside of the app store. When you are running press releases, or doing social media marketing, people will look for and try to contact you through your website. If you don't have that online presence these people will assume you are not professional. If you have not bothered to build a website for your app, maybe you have not bothered with your app also. Your potential reviewers may decide that they don't want to share this with their readers, and your potential customers may decide that they don't want to download this app.

Get a nice professional website making it very simple for people to connect with you about your app, to find your app and a place where you can blog about your app.

We can help
Anyone can write a website.

http://www.globalwebfx.com/10-worst-websites-for-2013/

Its slightly harder to write a website that looks great, is easy to navigate, and sells your app successfully. You may have this talent. You may not. After all, you are primarily an app developer. If you do write your own website, before going live, sitting back, and calling it done, get some strangers to look at your website (beer and pizza is useful to achieve this). Watch them use it. Get their feedback. Did they end up where you expected?

At LiveCode we have an incredible team of people with excellent skills and experience in a variety of areas. We have web development experts, design experts, marketing experts, app store management experts, analytics experts, SEO experts... to name but a few. When we pull all these skills and years of experience together we have everything to make sure our community can thrive in “step two” and we need to be sharing this with you.

We have created what we feel is the complete package to arm you with all the tools you need to succeed and we have named it the App2Market Kit.

With the App2Market Kit we will submit your app to the app stores for you, we will build you a fully responsive website (including free hosting and domain setup), we will supply you with everything you need to make your app stand out, we will share our custom reporting analytics knowledge to help you track usage, we will help boost your online presence with SEO and we will talk you through the marketing of your app.

Why have we created this app success kit? We want LiveCode Apps to be the most successful apps in the app store and we have the skills to help you get there. Yes, there is still work for you to do, but there is no need for you to re-invent this wheel. We've been working on this wheel for some time now, and we're pretty confident we've got it rolling.

You believe in your app. We believe in you. Lets get it done together and show the world what LiveCode is capable of in the right hands.

For full details on what is included in the App2Market Kit click here.

About the Author Steven Crighton is the Digital Marketing Manager for RunRev Ltd. In his spare time he loves to play golf and table tennis. He has recently taken up cooking.