App Savvy

Chapter 8. Building Your Marketing Crescendo

An area where the majority of developers fail is either not marketing their app or believing that marketing doesn’t begin until an app is approved for the App Store. In many ways, the reality is that getting your app approved by Apple should be a climax of your marketing efforts. To be more than just another developer on the App Store, you’re going to need to embrace the idea that marketing evolves along with the development of your app.

In this chapter, you’ll explore:

• The five phases of your marketing crescendo

• Developing your app communication channels (Phases 1–3)

• How to find and successfully engage bloggers and press outlets (Phase 4)

• Launching your app once it is approved (Phase 5)

Changing Your Marketing Mindset

Hopefully, you’ve been paying attention and you arrived here from Chapter 1 or Chapter 3 and not from the preceding chapter. I placed this topic near the end of the book because your marketing-related activities will hit one of their first peaks when your app finally launches—but this will occur only if you began your marketing efforts at the outset of your development process.

“Process” is a critical concept, and it’s fair to apply it also to how you will approach marketing. This implies that marketing is not about one or two magical actions that will somehow shoot your app to the top of the App Store charts. Instead, it’s an ongoing investment that parallels development; like the building of your app, marketing incorporates your ...