Karelia Software

Some of the comments in my previous post about "The Source" got me thinking about ways to market an iPhone application. Even though Karelia Software doesn't currently have an iPhone application on the market, I realized that many of the suggestions that I've been making about the marketing a Mac application also apply very well to iPhone applications. Since many readers of this blog are both Mac developers and iPhone developers, I thought I would come up with some suggestions for marketing an iPhone application, geared toward the small developer.

This is a long post with a lot of ideas; it's not something you can do all at once. So bookmark it and come back to it a few times. I think that if you start applying these suggestions, perhaps one per day, you should start getting more people finding your app.

Disclaimer: Apple is very picky about what iPhone applications do and how they do it. Please exercise caution in your marketing activities so that you do not find yourself in violation of your iPhone Development agreement.

One great way to get some exposure to your application is to get it in front of as many Apple employees as you can.  Ideally, give your program away!  Apple employees would include, say, engineers or administrative assistants or in Cupertino, who might enjoy using your program but were probably not going to be buying it anyhow. (But if you application is cool, they will talk about it inside and outside of Apple!)  Other apple employees who might pick up your program are the sales engineers, whose job it is to help clients set up their Macs. If they are familiar with your software and it will solve a problem for their clients, you might get a recommendation — maybe even a big one. And of course there are hundreds and hundreds of Apple employees who work at the retail stores.  These people are talking to Mac-using people all day, and if they happen to know and like your software that can help the customer do what they want, of course they will recommend it!  We've gotten plenty of notes from people, for example, who wound up buying Sandvox because somebody at the Apple store suggested they check it out when they discovered that iWeb wasn't powerful enough for them.

(Apologies for the title of this post.  My kids are working on a production of The Wizard of Oz so we're hearing a lot of songs about the Yellow Brick Road in our house these days! Since today is Friday, traditionally cat-blogging day, I thought I would feature a picture of a bundle of little cowardly lions.)

Photo by abcrumley

Bundles

In yesterday's post, Jacob Gorban raved about software bundles. Anybody reading this post is probably well aware of bundles and the controversy surrounding them. Let me see if I can sum up both sides of the issue:

First, the bad impressions of bundles:

• Bundles cheapen the value of your software — and Mac software in general. People expect to get it for 10 cents on the dollar so they won't buy it at full price.
• It's making the bundle-makers filthy rich, even though the developers do all the work.
  
• The developers are exploited, making peanuts per license.
  
• Having to support thousands of new customers with so little income makes bad financial sense.
  

On the other hand,

• Bundles do a great job in exposing your software to an audience that may not have found out about your app.
• The bundle companies often give a lot of money away to charity.
  
• The developers that participate are going into the deals willingly and with their eyes open.
  
• Many people only use a few of the applications, yet the developer still gets paid for each bundle sold.
  
• It gives the developers a chance to offer their upgrades and other products to their new customer base.
  

I've been on both sides of the fence, so although I may have missed some of the positives and negatives, I think that covers the basics.  Really, I think the answer to the question "Is a bundle right for me?" depends on a lot of factors.

Where I think a bundle has huge advantages is the last point in my list of positives. If you have more than one product, and you can get people exposed to your company by selling bundles for product A, then you can now help these new customers know via your email list about product B and product C. This is key. It's way easier to sell your products to people who have already bought a product from you.  They know you and trust you. So if you have more than one product, it could be a real win for you to participate in a bundle, as long as you are able to apply some leverage to the bundle sale.

My last post here interviewing Jean MacDonald, and a conversation with Seth Dilingham, who is cooking up a project that is related to Macs and marketing, got me thinking about a frustration I have had for a while, in that none of the major advertising networks allow you to only show your advertisements to people using Macs.

If you are going to be showing an ad for your product, and it costs money to put that ad in front of people, clearly you want to target people as specifically as you can. So if you have a local business, you want only the people in your geographic region to be exposed to the ad.  If your product only appeals to people who speak a certain language, you want to restrict your ad to only viewers who have that as their browser's preferred language. If your product is only sold in certain countries, you would be wasting your money (and people's attention) if your ad was visible outside of those countries.

And if your product only worked on Macs, you would want to only show your ads to Mac users, right?

I thought it would be educational for Indie Mac Developers, myself included, to interview fellow developers, over email, about how they do marketing. I am starting with Kevin Hoctor, whom I met in person at WWDC about two or three years ago. He is the President and Founder of No Thirst Software LLC, a software company started in October 2006 to help individuals improve their personal finances. Mr. Hoctor has a background in Computer Science and has been creating software for over 28 years. He is also a serial entrepreneur having started four other companies (!) prior to No Thirst Software. He writes about marketing and company design on his own blog, Entrepreneurial Seduction.

DW: Can you tell us some of the marketing activities you do?

KH: In previous companies I've owned, marketing meant a big budget, four-color trade magazine ads, bingo cards and cold calling for leads. Now, with the Internet as everyone's primary source of information, my marketing is much different. First and foremost, maintaining a clean website with a clear message is my priority. Almost any other marketing activity is going to lead people back to our site and it better not disappoint.

One of the thoughts I had in starting this blog was to discuss what other indie companies are doing in the realm of marketing. Some companies are very much "into" the concept of marketing; others tend to treat marketing as an annoyance that they can't be bothered with (even though they are at least doing some minimal marketing by having a website).

Today, Connected Flow launched Viewfinder. With all the material fresh, I thought I would point out some of the cool marketing things that I noticed Fraser & co. do. Also, Fraser is a great guy, so I'm happy to shine a bit of attention on his app.

Salting: This is the pre-launch phase where you build up excitement (thirst) for a product. Fraser has been doing this for a while. On Twitter, Fraser (as himself and, occasionally from the @connectedflow account) was mentioning "[FLOWDACTED]" for quite a while, at least since August if not before. That built up curiousity in the developer and power-user community. Just before Halloween, he leaked (again, via Twitter) the name of the app and hinted that it would be launching soon. Early this week, he created a twitter account @viewfinderapp and started tweeting hints about what the application does. By launch day today, a lot of people in the developer/power-user community had heard about Viewfinder through Twitter.

As you know, I've been trying to convince indie developers that marketing is an important component of running a business. There are just too many Mac apps out there, and most of the twenty-something-million Mac users out there have no idea that your application even exists!

Yesterday, Seth Dillingham mentioned the idea of a three-legged stool. The pieces you need are Engineering, User Interface, and Marketing. I was intrigued by that idea so I dug around and found that the metaphor was discussed in Chapter 2 of the 1998 book The Invisible Computer by Donald A. Norman.

Human-centered development requires three equal partners, three legs to the triad of product development: technology, marketing, and user experience. All three legs provide necessary and complementary strengths. Weaken one leg and the product falls. The three legs stand upon the foundation of the business case and support the product itself. Weaken the foundation of sound business practices and the company may not succeed. And finally, the product must be appropriate for its position in the technology life cycle. An emphasis on technology is inappropriate for products in the consumer cycle of a technology.