You may remember we ran a small promotional competition in late January of this year. To help celebrate the release of 3D Bookshelf for iPhone and iPod touch, we gave away an Apple iPad. We announced the winner at the close of the competition and waited patiently for the iPad to go on sale.
Our competition winner hails from the UK, so on the 10th of May (the day Apple started taking pre-orders there) we placed an order with Apple and were lucky enough to nab one from the first batch of iPads to make it into the country. Later that month, our prize winner got her iPad!
Recently, she very kindly sent us a photo of herself and her competition prize.
Congratulations Giverny! We hope you enjoy your new iPad!
We look forward to the release of our next App, so we'll have an excuse to run another competition! Stay tuned..
If you want your iPhone app (or any other product for that matter) to succeed, you'll need to market it. In this post I'll describe the different forms or promotion and advertising we used for 3D Bookshelf, currently in the top 100 Paid Apps in the US App Store. It's also currently the #1 Paid Book app in the US App Store (among others) and featured in "What's Hot" on iTunes.
The Basics
There are some obvious points to note about marketing your app successfully.
You've all heard this before, but I'll say it again. A nice app icon is an absolute requirement. We spent about 2.5 weeks designing the icon for 3D Bookshelf and continued to refine it throughout development.
Also, there must be something special about your app. For 3D Bookshelf we aimed pretty high, stating up front that we had created the world's first fully 3D eBook reader. We didn't copy the page turn animations from existing eBook apps and so on. Instead we focused on producing something that we hoped would 'wow' people when they ran the app. From the feedback we have been getting, it looks like we have succeeded in achieving this.
Aside from the two points already mentioned there are other basic points worth describing. Here are the basic aspects of our marketing strategy for 3D Bookshelf.
It all started with the domain name.
Domain Name and Web Site
We registered 3DBookshelf.com as soon as we decided that was the name for our eBook app. Having the domain name for your product is a big help when it comes to presenting a quality brand. This isn't always easy to arrange, since domain names (at least the good ones) can be hard to get hold of.
~ 3D Bookshelf ~
3D Bookshelf is the world's first fully 3D eBook Reader. Available now on the AppStore for iPhone & iPod touch!
We put a lot of effort into the 3D Bookshelf site. Our goal was to keep it simple and consistent with the overall look of the app itself in addition to making it as welcoming as possible. Also, the site was created with a series of configurable switches. So, as soon as the app appeared on the App Store, we just flicked a switch and all of the relevant links and images appeared. Likewise, when we announced the competition, we flicked another switch and that aspect of the site became visible and so on.
Most of the traffic we get appears to be coming directly from the 3D Bookshelf product page on iTunes. The daily hit count correlates consistently with the daily sales. For example, on the 27th of Feb we saw around 172 visits from the US along with 1226 sales in that territory alone. The ratio of hits to sales has been consistent for the last few weeks. We're able to predict our daily sales to a good degree of accuracy based on the site analytics from the previous day.
Blogging
From the very beginning of the project, we made a concerted effort to blog about the production process. As soon as we had the app prototype running and content for the web site, we had enough good quality material to use for blog posts and screencasts. This also helped keep us focused on the goal. Each of the posts was submitted to various aggregators like iPhonekicks.com and DZone.com to further promote them. The post on the behind-the-scenes screencast pulled in a huge spike of traffic (around 800%). It was at this point we got our first sense of how the market would react to the product. Here is a list of the development blog posts.
Press Release Sites
We wrote an initial draft of the press release early on and refined it throughout the development of the project. The press release was based on a standard template and we made sure to keep it as clear as possible and include all of the main points regarding the app. You can read it here.
We then identified about 40 highly ranked global and local press release submission sites. This list grew throughout the development of the project. As soon as the app appeared on the App Store we emailed the press release to each site we had enumerated.
Review Sites
We identified around 80 blog/forum/review sites and sent preview details to each. We used Alexa to order the sites, submitting to the highest ranking ones first. We prepared screenshots, icons, a promotional video and other marketing materials such as a company overview and a product overview document. This became our press pack.
We were reviewed by several app review sites. In general the reviews were very, very positive. Quotes from these reviews were added to the iTunes app description text along with the 3D Bookshelf web site.
We arranged to have 3D Bookshelf reviewed on the Daily App Show. This site is run by Jerad Hill, who provides an interesting take on reviews. Rather than deliver his own view on the apps he features, he presents the app in a general way by showing the viewer how the app is used and what it's all about. This allows the viewer to make up their own mind. The videos he produces are pushed out to several channels including YouTube. Like most good app review sites, the Daily App Show gets a lot of review requests, so my advice would be to try and organize your review as early as you can. This will help get you some good exposure as close to your release as possible. There is also a small charge, but it's quite reasonable.
Competition Sites
To kick-start interest in the app release, we ran a small competition. We identified around 30 competition promotion sites and as soon as we announced our competition, we fired the details to each of these.
What's After The Basics?
With the above basics in place, we focused on a way to generate as much exposure as possible around the release date. We used Google Ads to get the ball rolling with this, but we didn't advertise 3D Bookshelf.
Google Ads
We ran a small advertising campaign with Google Ads for our first iPhone app, Gravity Wave. Although we noticed a large spike in traffic to the Gravity Wave site at the start of the campaign, our sales only increased very marginally.
There are many different ways to approach using Google Ads to promote iPhone apps. The simplest is to just advertise the app directly in each advert. The hope here is that each click on the Google Ad will result in a single sale of your app. That's the best case scenario and in reality this approach is more likely to give a 10% return from what I've heard from other developers. That is, for every 10 clicks on your Google Ad, you'll get one sale. This implies that you'll need to cap your CPC (Cost Per Click) bids at a value that is less that the amount on money you'll make on each sale. For example, if your app sells for one dollar, and your share of that is 70 cents, you'll only make a profit from advertising if each click costs no more than 69 cent. This doesn't account for various taxes or the fact that 9 out of 10 clicks wont produce a sale, so you'll have to lower your maximum CPC bid even more assuming a 10% return.
Given the figures above, it seems that a straight-forward approach to using Google Ads to advertise an iPhone app is not going to provide a reasonable return, unless the sale price of your app is significantly greater than the maximum CPC bid you're prepared to pay.
On the other hand, the potential loss shown in the figures above may still be worthwhile. For example, if the approach above is used to build sales momentum, this could cause your app to rise in the charts. If it gets listed high enough, the momentum generated may well be enough to sustain further sales due to dramatically increased exposure on the App Store. At this point, you could stop using Google Ads and let the sales momentum take over. If the app begins to drop off the charts, you could consider turning your Google Ads back on to try and build more interest in the app.
Slingshot Marketing, What's That?
The approach we chose to use was based on our experience so far with Google Ads, and from observations of alternative forms of advertising. We knew that using Google Ads could definitely increase traffic to our product site. We also knew it would be difficult to target only consumers that were highly likely to buy our product. So we decided that instead of using Google Ads to advertise our product directly, we would use it to advertise something we knew everyone visiting our site would be interested in, a competition to win a brand new Apple iPad.
To enter, each participant was required to tweet a promotional message. It's this promotional message that advertised our product. We developed a simple Twitter competition service hosted on our VPS and published details of how to win an Apple iPad by first, following us on twitter and then second, tweeting a competition message.
We then prepared a Google Ads campaign to advertise the competition rather than our product. Assuming 10% of the consumers visiting our site entered the competition (and possibly purchased 3D Bookshelf) we had the further prospect of anywhere from 10 to 100 or maybe more times that again in viral twitter advertising.
The idea was to use the huge momentum built up by Apple and the iPad announcement to help advertise our own product and hope this would slingshot us in to the charts.
This advertising campaign was run in the US and UK only. And thankfully, within a day of starting the campaign we had appeared in the book chart in both of these territories. We instantly started climbing the charts, covering 30-40 places a day until we hit the top 20 in the US Paid Book chart. We peaked at around #3 in the UK Paid Book chart. Not long after this we started to appear in the Paid Book chart in many other territories.
The total spend on Google Ads was 300 euro (around $400 US). That's less than our current average daily revenue by about $100.
What's Hot? 3D Bookshelf!
The exposure we had generated had helped get us to a place in the charts that people started to take notice. And not just any people. A major hardware vendor approached us asking if we would be interested in porting the app to their platform. And, of course, Apple decided to feature us in the "What's Hot" section of iTunes in several territories, including the US. Below is our sales graph for February.
Notice on the 16th, things really started to take off. Within hours of being featured in "What's Hot" we hit #1 in the US App Store Paid Book chart. A few days later, we hit the top 100 Paid Apps in the US App Store. We're currently around #79 in the overall Paid chart, which gives us between approximately 900 and 1400 downloads a day, with the weekends bringing in the highest sales figures. Below are the sales figures for the last 7 days in February.
So how do you get featured in "What's Hot"? This is the million dollar question. As far as we know, getting a slot in "What's Hot" is down to your app standing out from the crowd in one way or another (no surprise there). As I mentioned above, this was something we were aiming for with 3D Bookshelf. Thankfully, it worked for us.
Update - Since I posted this article, we've been featured in "New and Noteworthy" in the Australian and New Zealand App Stores. Shortly afterwards, we entered the Top 100 Paid Apps in both territories (currently #70 and #74 respectively). 3D Bookshelf has also been featured in "What's Hot" in the South Korean App Store.
Regular Updates
From the day the app was released we've been working on updates in response to user reviews on the App Store. We've already released two and we're about to release a third. We've added social connectivity to the app so you can let your friends know what you're reading or how you're progressing with a book, on both Twitter and Facebook. We're hoping to see an increase in sales due to the exposure generated by people posting their progress on their Walls in Facebook, or to their timelines on Twitter.
We have many more updates planned with some very cool new features and many more books.
This commitment to updating the app has been very well received by users and we fully intend to support the app well into the foreseeable future. Providing regular app updates is a great way to keep genuine interest in the app alive.
Until Next Time
It's been around a month since we released 3D Bookshelf. In that time, we've sold over 16,000 copies of the app. If we notice anything interesting with the numbers over the coming weeks, we'll post the details here.
As always, for more updates you can follow us on Twitter!
As soon as 3D Bookshelf is released, we're planning on running a small promotional competition on twitter. In this post, I'll briefly describe the architecture we put in place for managing the competition and providing a real-time view of the number of people who are participating.
Overview
~ 3D Bookshelf ~
Robin Hood Edition
Free Download!
3D Bookshelf - Robin Hood Edition uses the world's first fully 3D eBook engine.
Download it for free now!
There are many different ways to run a competition on twitter. Some companies have used hashtags to draw attention to their brand. Others use retweets to put their brand message in front of their followers' followers virally. Each method has pros and cons associated with it.
For example, the hashtags method can work well because it allows the participant to tweet what they want so long as they include the hashtag. On the other hand, it means that a valid participant may well be tweeting about the competition owners' brand in a negative way.
The approach we're favoring at the moment is to require each participant to follow us and then tweet a specific competition message.
Management
Regardless of the competition method, participants must be identified and remembered so that at the end of the competition each participant has a fair chance of being chosen as the winner (or one of the winners). For the type of competition we're favoring we have two choices. We can use the twitter search API to identify participants, or we can use the mentions timeline.
Using the twitter search API appears to be the best choice at first. It is subject to some limitations regarding the volume of results you can expect to receive. It is also subject to some date range restrictions. However, if it is polled often enough (within the rate limitations), these restrictions shouldn't be a problem.
Using the mentions timeline is slightly more complicated in that you are required to implement a little more management code, but it offers more reliability in helping enumerate valid participants.
The reason the search API is less reliable is due to a known issue with the API. Apparently, this issue does not affect the mentions timeline. As described on the twitter web site, "if you post an @reply to a specific user, these will be delivered to that user. If we're not experiencing issues, your account is public, your tweets have been posted for more than 24 hours, and you're still not listed, your tweets have most likely been filtered out of our search index for quality reasons."
Implementation
To manage the twitter competition, we wrote a simple service that polls the mentions timeline and harvests valid participants. It remembers the last maximum TweetId encountered and only requests tweets back as far as this TweetId on subsequent requests. It also honors the rate limiting guidelines.
For each valid participant, we fire the participant details to a very simple local web service for storage in a database. The 3D Bookshelf website then requests the number of participants from this web service.
We deliberately decoupled the database access from the web site and service so that both of these components can talk a simpler language to the web service. This simplified both the web site and the service and also meant we only ended up with one ORM cache running behind the web service. It also made system testing and unit testing shorter and simpler.
Strategy
Having a reliable engine in the car is only half the battle. We're learning as we go so we're not sure what to expect, but we do know that without a good map for directions we wont get very far. In a follow up post, I'll describe the strategy we're working on to push the 3D Bookshelf twitter competition as far as we can.
Check back soon for more. Or, you can sign up to my RSS feed or follow me on twitter for updates.
