Pitch Perfect: The Art of Promoting Your App on the Web

Pitch Perfect: The Art of Promoting Your App on the Web

Released April 2013
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780133389449

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Book description

The Must-Have Promotion Guide for Every App and Hardware Developer!

Developing your product took lots of hard work over months, nights, and weekends filled with blood, sweat, and tears. Don’t abandon it now. Shower your app with the quality promotion it deserves!

Erica Sadun and Steve Sande help you earn strong app reviews that can transform sales from lackluster to blockbuster. As leading tech bloggers, they know exactly what reviewers are looking for.

Now, they deliver simple step-by-step advice to position your product, build key relationships, and sell your story. Packed with real case studies from their overflowing inboxes, they reveal where developers can go wrong and when they’ve gotten it right.

Great tech promotion doesn’t need to cost a lot. You can do it yourself, even if you’ve never marketed anything before. It just takes a little time, thought, and the skills you learn in this book.

• Peek behind the curtain to learn how web review sites really work
• Get your product into shape and ready for your marketing push
• Craft great pitches that sell your excitement and explain your product’s key features and appeal
• Lead reviewers “by the hand” with simple, succinct language
• Avoid common mistakes that kill your chances for a review
• Create the essential PR support material your product needs
• Respond productively to both good and negative coverage
• Keep bloggers in the loop about what you’ll be doing next

Includes exclusive worksheets and checklists for:
• Profiling potential customers
• Evaluating competitors
• Estimating market size
• Writing and checking your pitch
• Tracking and targeting bloggers

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. Praise for Pitch Perfect
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. About the Authors
  8. We Want to Hear from You!
  9. Reader Services
  10. Foreword
  11. Preface
    1. Who This Book Is For
    2. Why Pitch Perfect
    3. How This Book Is Organized
  12. 1. How Blogs Work
    1. A Typical Day at a Major Blog
    2. Making Sausage: How Reviews Happen
    3. Performing the Review
    4. Elements of Review
    5. How Much Time Is Spent Reviewing Each Product?
    6. What Kinds Of Reviews Do Bloggers Write?
    7. Choosing a Review Type
    8. Why Blog Reviews Matter
    9. Marketing Realities
    10. Wrapping Up
  13. 2. The Attractive Product
    1. Product Definition
    2. What Makes a Good Product?
    3. Why Good Interface Design Matters
    4. Refining the Product
    5. Falling in Love with Your Product
    6. Nondisclosures, Embargos, and Exclusives
    7. Competing Against the Big Guys
    8. Building In Self-Promotion
    9. Wrapping Up
  14. 3. Crafting Your Pitch
    1. Designing the Pitch
    2. Essential Pitch Components
    3. A Sample Pitch
    4. Remind Us Who You Are
    5. Capturing Attention Through the Subject Line
    6. Promo Codes
    7. Differences Between Hardware and Software Pitches
    8. Hardware Pricing
    9. Video Gold
    10. Hardware Review Logistics
    11. Benchmarks
    12. A Word About Kickstarter
    13. Common Hardware Product Categories
    14. Hardware Pitches
    15. Wrapping Up
  15. 4. Pitching Do’s and Don’ts
    1. Know the Site
    2. Scheduling Out
    3. Leverage Personality
    4. Communicate Well
    5. Checking In
    6. Watching Your Timing
    7. Gaming the System
    8. Avoiding Offense
    9. Submitting Through Channels
    10. When to Pitch
    11. Wrapping Up
  16. 5. Case Studies
    1. Case Study: Short but Sweet
    2. Case Study: The Solid Query
    3. Case Study: The Professional Pitch
    4. Case Study: The Lost Holiday Opportunity
    5. Case Study: The Meh Pitch
    6. Case Study: The Completely Inappropriate Pitch that Made Us Smile
    7. Case Study: Winning by Charm
    8. Case Study: Completely Missing the Mark
    9. Case Study: The Perils of Autocorrect
    10. Case Study: Buzzwords
    11. Case Study: Not Enough Detail
    12. Case Study: The WTF We Don’t Even Pitch
    13. Case Study: The Pitch that Got Away
    14. Case Study: Don’t Submit Multiple Products All at Once
    15. Case Study: Machine Translation
    16. Case Study: Avoid Unspecific Bullets
    17. Case Study: The Excellent Response
    18. Case Study: The Pitch Rewrite
    19. Case Study: Remembering that the App Is the Hero
    20. Case Study: The Twitter Pitch
    21. Final Tips: Avoiding Grandiosity
    22. Wrapping Up
  17. 6. Preparing For PR
    1. Get Your Product into Shape
    2. Prepare Your Marketing Text
    3. Choose Strong Branding
    4. Website Essentials
    5. Creating a Reviewer’s Guide
    6. About Press Releases
    7. Preparing that All-Important Product Video
    8. Preparing Review Materials
    9. Social Media
    10. Wrapping Up
  18. 7. The Care and Feeding of Your Blogger
    1. Establishing Relationships with Bloggers
    2. The “Be a Decent Human Being” Rule
    3. Responding to Reviews—Both Good and Bad
    4. Why Wasn’t My Product Reviewed?
    5. Wrapping Up
  19. 8. Worksheets and Checklists
    1. Know Your Customer: Developing a Customer Profile
    2. Competitive Analysis
    3. Potential Market Size Calculation
    4. Pitch Checklists
    5. Reviewer’s Guide Checklist
    6. Blogger Relationship Database
    7. Wrapping Up

Product information

  • Title: Pitch Perfect: The Art of Promoting Your App on the Web
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: April 2013
  • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
  • ISBN: 9780133389449