How To Launch & Market An App To Reach Millions With Sean Casto Of PreApps

For business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Alright, welcome back to the show. This is Brad Costanzo and as always, I have got a killer show for you today. I have oftentimes bragged that I have the most selfish podcast on all of itunes because the only people that I invite on this show are folks that I have real legitimate, authentic curiosity about what they're doing, how they're doing it, so that I can personally deploy some of the strategies myself. I like to think of this as my way of letting you eavesdrop on conversations I'd be having anyway. And it is my goal to make sure that every single one of these episodes, or as I call them, epicizzles, because we are a lot hotter than other podcasts, that every single one of them is something you're going to want to take notes on, you're going to want to listen to two or three times and walk away with really actionable ideas or inspiration for yourself. And with that being said, today is no different. I invited Sean Casto on the show today. He's the founder of the premier app marketing agency called Pre Apps. He's helped thousands of apps reach millions of downloads and that's no small feat. He's also the creator of the App Marketing Academy, which is the world's best online mobile app marketing program. And today he's one of the most in demand experts on mobile app marketing and growth. His reach has expanded to over 80 countries across 24 different app categories where his clients create, launch, market their apps, taking each app from zero to millions of downloads and sales. And he's worked with million dollar apps like Flip and Overkill 2, Gadget Flow and even billion dollar apps like Cheetah's Mobile Security Master which has over half a billion downloads. So Sean, welcome to Bacon Wrap business.

Excited to be here?

Yeah, I'm excited to have you. I mentioned I've got some selfish reasons. I am currently an investor and advisor to a really cool app in the financial tech space and been exploring all the some of the avenues in the craft beer space. I know you've got some experience in that as well and to be honest, my background really comes in with marketing strategies for a lot of traditional businesses and I understand at a very 30,000 foot view a lot of what it takes to help grow an app. In fact I actually have a client who has a really amazing app right now. He's had it for years and I'm helping him create more monetization capabilities through it. But the growth of apps differs from traditional marketing strategies is not something that I've got a lot of familiarity with. So I'm really looking forward to diving in and finding out really what's working, what's working now. But take me back a little bit. I mean, how long have you been working in the app space and what were you kind of doing before that? Like, what's your basic history there?

Yeah, so I've always kind of been an entrepreneur, entrepreneur in various capacities ever since I was really little sort of company back in high school and then sold that and college sold another one. It was really in college when I really sparked my interest in mobile apps in particular, started building apps on my own, worked on half a dozen apps and then worked for an app development company then. It was through that journey that I realized that there was a really huge need when it comes to really supporting the community to be able to help them create, launch and market very successful app businesses. Not when it just comes to, from the development side because it's become easier and easier over the years to develop apps, but actually to be able to turn them into successful and profitable app businesses. And so that's kind of what we've been focused on. And we've had the privilege now over the past eight and a half years now to work with some of the top, most successful apps in the world, Netflix and Candy Crush. And right now we're working with two huge apps that unfortunately can't say the name of it.

But we're able to work with all.

Different types of clients from billion dollar entities, all the way from mom and pop situations where they're just looking launch and create something, put it out there and to be able to impact millions of people. But they're just a team of two. And so we're able to support people in all different manners from a full service kind of marketing agency standpoint. And it's just a very exciting time for the mobile industry as what worked last year doesn't necessarily work now, but the fundamentals are kind of still there. And as you mentioned before, marketing a mobile app is a little bit different than marketing pretty much any other type of product, just because they're just a unique way to be able to go about getting yourself out there and connecting with the right consumer at the right time and getting them not only to download the app, I mean you can get someone millions of downloads, but it's all about exactly getting them back to the app as well.

Okay, so years ago, and I remember when iPhones and Androids first really came out and apps were really all the rage, I know a lot of people were talking about it, it wasn't as saturated and it feels like it's a little bit more saturated now in the fact that it's. There's so many apps, like just so many apps out there. Like, I can't even. You probably have better idea of how many there are. And I know that when I've talked to some other colleagues of mine, they kind of poo poo the idea sometimes. Like, I don't know, just another. Do we really need another app? Is it. I mean, have you noticed much of a trend there where although it is saturated, that obviously there's still tremendous opportunities. But what have you noticed from the trend aspect of this and both the positive and the negative?

Yeah, as you mentioned, it has become somewhat of a saturated market. But I truly do believe there's still no better time in history to be able to create an app than now, just due to the fact that there's just so much opportunity. One, it's become easier to create an app than ever before. However, at the same time it has become more difficult to market it. Like you mentioned before, back in the day in the wild, wild west of the App Store when it first launched, you could literally have a very poor quality photo editing app or a fitness app and just get instantly millions of downloads just in the first day. Just because there's not much competition out there. When they see, when they look for photo editor, you're just going to be there in the top 10. Now there's over 3,000 new apps introduced every single day. 3,000. And unfortunately, about 95% of all new apps that launch within the first year failed to be discovered just due to the competition that's out there, that there's only so much limited space and capacity to be able to get people's attention on the App Store. And so that's why in today's market, marketing is the lifeblood of any successful app business. And so there are again, certain fundamentals that are just kind of now required. Before they're kind of optional. Now there are certain marketing fundamentals that are just required in order to be able to make your app successful.

Okay, so let's talk about some of those things. Like let's assume, I mean, there's so many different apps and categories, et cetera. I Don't really want to go into like what makes a singular app successful. Obviously it's, it should be something that somebody wants to come back to more than once. Right. Otherwise you're not going to download it on your phone to just use one time. And it should ideally either solve a problem, make something more efficient, be fun, et cetera. Let's dive in really to the growth strategy. What is working? What have you found isn't working? Like, what would you tell if I've got an app right now, that it's all ready, it's a great app, but we haven't done a marketing push. What would you say are the real steps that I should start to look at? Especially like if I was to work with somebody like pre apps?

Yeah, totally. So it really depends on kind of what stage you're in. Obviously you know, the type of marketing done for an early stage app that's about to launch. The App Store is going to be very different than an app that already has 10 to 100 million downloads.

Let's talk about early stage. Let's say it's a great app and let's imagine because it is in the financial tech space, it's a really good fintech, like not a banking app, but you know, kind of cool financial app. And it's just brand new, it's just launching in the App Store, it's got a handful of beta customers, but it's very innovative, et cetera. What are some of the things that you would look to do early on?

Yeah, and so when it comes to an early stage app, again, there are certain kind of fundamentals and what we're going to talk about right now will be more of the organic traffic, organic growth of that as opposed to paid advertising and whatnot. And so you might be surprised actually that a majority of downloads in the world don't come from Facebook ads, don't come from even word of mouth or Google Ads. Majority of all downloads in the world come organically based on how people search the App Store to find apps they're looking for via what they call App Store optimization. So if you're familiar with search engine optimization, very similar high level avenue would be App Store Optimization, which in which you know how people naturally discover and download your app on the App Store. And so that's why it's a critical piece to be able to start off with because again, why would you start off with a marketing strategy that only a small fraction of people end up downloading apps from? And so the first approach by far is very Advanced App Store optimization and just again, launching the app on the App Store without having it optimized just means it's going to be ranked at the depths of the App Store and people won't actually naturally discover and download it. I couldn't tell you how many people come to us and they're like, oh yeah, we launched two months ago, yet the app is nowhere to be seen on the App Store or Google Play. And so that's kind of the key component. Obviously the goal is to be able to ensure that people can naturally discover and download it not just from searching the app name, but various different search terms that are relevant to what they're looking for. So they're able to get the perfect users come into their app, download it every single day and in the masses. And that comes through advanced App stormization.

In SEO, I mean there's link building and there's all of these other things like off site SEO, things you can do. Obviously there's on site, so there's in store optimization making sure that it's a very searchable name, that you got great keywords, et cetera, and that you adhere to the best practices there. Are there any things that can be done to like an SEO? There's link building, external things that can do to help raise the awareness in the App Store?

There are absolutely. And so here at Pre Apps we've actually coined this term called the skyrocket downloads method, which is like a 10 step method that kind of goes through the 10 major factors that are all around advancing your App Store optimization. And so, you know, we actually have meetings with Apple and Google on a monthly basis. And the thing is with the App Store, Google Play, their algorithms change very frequently. And so we need to be able to understand what's working, what's not working. So one factor may change that we need to then adapt later down the road, which could affect in many cases, you know, tens of thousands, if not millions of downloads. And so it's important one to be able to stay up to date on what's going on and how things are factoring into the algorithms to rank in this particular app. But from the high level standpoint we can just go over those 10 steps and it's the first one's obviously having creative and searchable app name and subtitle and those are going to be huge factors and really overlooked for most apps. Obviously eye catching icon is actually a big factor as well. Specific and searchable keywords videos have now become a standard in the industry and something your potential users will expect. And so launching without having the right videos for the app really be at a disadvantage. And we found that Apple now actually prioritizes apps with video because they understand the impact and power that it has to drive downloads. And so I'm talking about specifically the, you know, videos on the App Store. So before your screenshots, Apple like prioritize by default will have your video displayed before your screenshots. And then same with the App Store as well, except Google doesn't prioritize your video. You can actually choose where the video can be displayed, whether it's before or after your screenshots. And obviously the next component there is actually crafting captivating beautifully designed screenshots that's going to be able to have an impact on the consumer. Next is going to be having a compelling description that is going to be able to captivate their attention and spark interest and desire and be able to have that call to action. And you also want to incorporate, you know, keywords within that description as well. We found that, you know, getting third party recognition and market validation is going to be key as well. So getting that press and media exposure to be able to validate the app and getting those third party links to the app are critical. Making it international has also helped in various capacities. User reviews on the App Store and Google Play play a huge, huge factor. And then social media components as well. We can actually found that by doing social media trending and promotion can actually have a great impact. If something's trending on Twitter, for example, will also trend on the App Store, which is interesting. So they have a direct correlation there. And then on top of that, the biggest factors, those are just the factors involved with things that you control directly within the App Store. And then the biggest by far factor when it comes to a dramatic increase in rankings is going to be number of downloads you're going to get within a very short period of time. So you can do these burst campaigns to be able to just dramatically skyrocket your rankings.

Okay, that's fantastic. And by the way, I was on your website and I downloaded your how to reach explosive growth and downloads and with the skyrocket downloads method. So I was reading along with that, as you said, and I'll make sure that people have a link to download the similar thing in the show notes.

How wonderful.

So obviously you talk about making sure the optimization is all on there. A couple of the things you said here I want to kind of go into a little bit deeper. You mentioned press and media exposure, so there's Obvious reasons that that's one way for people to discover it. So getting written up on all the, like the industry, the relevant industry publications, getting influencers to talk about you, et cetera. You talked about third party links. If there's third party links, just like for normal SEO, but if they're ever linking to your app, like on the, let's say the Apple or the Android App Store.

Yes.

Do those actually help the App Store optimization or does it not really have an effect on that?

We have found that it has an effect. And so that's why, you know, we also have one of our services that we offer our clients is something called our App Celebrity Campaign. And the intent there is to really make, you know, our clients app into an app celebrity. And we do that by so you carry massive media exposure within a very short period of time. And so that we're getting multiple different outlets, all writing and promoting about the app all at the same time for about the same week period, talking about 10, 20 different outlets, all promoting it via social as well as through their community. And the reason why that's it's really important from not only just an App Store optimization standpoint to, as you mentioned, get those links, which is definitely helpful because think about it and if Apple and Google can see that a lot of people are linking back, they can see that, oh, people actually are interested in this product. And so that's kind of just one factor that they're able to look at. But with so much competition out there, there's again 3,000 new apps introduced every single day. And so there's really no such thing as an original app anymore when it comes to solving a particular type of need. And so that's why it's critical now to be able to get that third party market validation and brand exposure. And so people are looking at apps, there are just so many options for them to choose from. And so if they're able to go to the App Store and they're seeing like within your description they're saying ask featured on App Advice as the number one fitness app on the market, they're more inclined to download that app as opposed to one app that has no mention or no credibility or you never heard of. And we're finding when it comes to marketing now, you need multiple touch points to be able to get that consumer to actually download a particular app. And so the more recognition, the more validation it has, the more chance of success.

Okay, so in your service there, the App Celebrity Campaign, I'm guessing that one aspect of that is really from a PR standpoint, like understanding how to tell the story in a way that these publications are going to want to write about you. Right, there's that aspect. And then what other things does pre apps bring to the table that like the average person couldn't do it? Like, you already have a lot of connections with various writers on a lot of these outlets that you've worked with before. So it makes it easier for you to get stories placed than it would be if somebody just tried to do it themselves.

Yep, that's absolutely right. And so, yeah, the first step is obviously crafting the right marketing and messaging, how to be able to separate this app from others and to be able to position it as the hot new app and a million dollar app in the making. And so that comes down to obviously having the right branding, the right marketing assets, Screenshots, description, video is again a critical piece of that. Not just the video for the App Store, but actual promotional video, promo video that people want to share and it's going to excite them. And so it all comes down to leverage relationships 100%. And so for the past eight years now, we've built strategic relationships and partnerships with various different publications in the online tech and mobile app space. And so with our clients, we're able to leverage these relationships that we built to be able to get our clients featured regularly on various different outlets. And so a lot of these publications that are out there that get a lot of buzz and a lot of excitement, a lot of visitors, these editors at these publications, I mean, they get 200 or 300 inquiries every single day from app developers and app marketers trying to get their app promoted. And so because of these leverage relationships, we're able to kind of cut through that and prioritize essentially our clients in that capacity. And so because they know that a lot of these publications, they publicly have people's contacts. So getting a person's editor's contact details is fairly simple in today's technology. You can go to LinkedIn, you can go to various different outlets, but again, just getting their contact details doesn't mean that someone's going to write about you. And so it's all about leveraging those relationships to be able to secure that exposure and visibility. Various different publications now have a little different requirements. So for example, for our big clients, we're able to get them in Forbes and Inc. And Huffington Post and the next web and TechCrunch and those types of outlets. But back in the day, those used to be fairly easy to get into. Now because there's just so much competition and so many different types of new apps. These types of outlets really only write about vanity metrics. They write about an app that just reached 10 million downloads or just reached a certain capacity in sales. Maybe they got acquired for 100 million, maybe Google or Apple bought them out, or maybe they got some celebrity investor, some of that nature. So for those types of high profile outlets, it's become more vanity based. Whereas there's still a lot of many very selective and really exciting publications that are more specific to apps. Like they have directories and lists of the top health and fitness and top photo, et cetera, et cetera. All they do is review and write about specific apps. And that's kind of what we can target early on, if you're just launching, to be able to validate that. Because the goal is to be able to have someone search your fintech app, for example, search the app name into Google and hopefully have 10, 20 different sources all promoting and writing and validating that app as opposed to people not even finding a link to download it.

Yeah, absolutely. The PR side is very critical. Especially I like how the velocity and the volume, you get them all going at the same time. I've published a lot of books on Amazon and in order to kind of gain this Amazon system, you definitely want a lot of the sales coming in during a specific period of time so you can hit those rankings and people see that it's better than trickle in traffic. When it comes to the paid side of things, do you typically go organic first and then just make sure everything's good before you start to put money in the paid or do you start to test that out early stages as well?

Depends. Obviously in the stage the app is in. If it's early stage, yes, then we have to focus on organic first. Reason behind that is because there's a lot of correlation between organic growth and paid advertising. So paid advertising, we see it as a phenomenal way to be able to accelerate your growth, so be able to double down what's already working, particularly when it comes to your marketing and messenger, things like that. Every app is different, but for a lot of our clients, what we focus on is, I mean, we do standard Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat ads and et cetera. But what we kind of specialize in the most is really going to be through Apple search ads and Google search ads specifically on, you know, the app stores. And so the reason why that's important is because there's a direct correlation to organic growth, meaning that Because Apple owns the App Store and they also manage the Apple Search Ads component. The more that you spend with Apple Search Ads, the more your organic growth and rankings will increase as well. So you can essentially double your downloads in half the cost. If you again start correctly with the organic components and you're already ranking, you already have keywords that are focused and optimized and you can kind of double down that growth. Whereas Facebook and Snapchat, for the most part, it's kind of a one to one exchange. You spend $3, you get one download back. Whereas Apple Search Ads and Google Search ads, again, you can kind of double your downloads at half the cost.

Yeah, I'm writing that down. Double your downloads at half the cost. I love that. I found oftentimes that, you know, social media advertising for a lot of this stuff can be much more effective when you're doing it as retargeting. Once you've kind of found the audience, et cetera, and you get a lot more of that. Unless, I mean, granted, if you have a tremendous viral video that you've created that just really paints a picture and builds the demand up, that can be really great to create awareness where people are stumbling across it, like, oh, wow, this is super cool. What about things like Product Hunt? Have you had much success in submitting to Product Hunt and getting any traction out of that?

Back in the day? We did when Product Hunt was in its peak. Not as much anymore. We do it personalized clients now just because if they want it, we can do that for them. But no, it's not like you post a Product Hunt and you're going to get a ton of downloads, but not really a necessity.

Yeah, it's gone down a little. Yeah. Like you said in the popularity. I remember I used to search it all the time and I brought that up. I hadn't even really been back there in a little while, so I don't really know what's going on there. And if that kind of moves the needle.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you recommend that when people are doing advertising that they're sending to and. Okay, so let me take that back. When you're doing App Store advertising, that's a different story because it goes right there. But if you're doing advertising on things like let's say Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, do you typically recommend it? People send them to their webpage that describes what this is and then they can click a link in order to go to the App Store that they like. Or do you typically try to direct them via the Link on the ad directly to the App Store instead.

Yeah, you want to remove as many barriers as possible getting from the consumer to actually download. And so the easiest that they can download, the better. And Apple, Facebook and Google, every platform definitely recommends going directly to the source of the App Store and Google Play. And that's why it's also critically important to be able to have a really powerful App Store presence and profile where you got those videos already there, you got the right description, you got the right screenshots, etc.

Okay, what about email list building in the early days? I mean for the type of work that I typically do, email marketing is super effective. What about in the App Store world? Like utilizing various resources to start to build up an email list, whether it's a pre launch list, whether it's other resources, et cetera. And is that one of those things that it could work, but it's just not. It may be more work than is necessary for an app or what's your opinion on that?

It's a nice to have, but not really a requirement. I mean you could spend a lot of time and money doing pre launch exposure and having that landing page and building that list of coming soon. But as you know, with your list, I mean, only a small fraction of people actually open the email and even smaller fraction of people actually click on the email. So best case scenario, you're looking at what, 20, 30% open rates. You have a huge, huge list. And so just from a numbers game, it just doesn't make sense to spend your time, money and resources on doing that when you should be focusing on where a majority of all downloads are going to be coming from later on. And also in today's environment, people's attention span are so low and so something that they opted in for six months ago, they might already forgot about. So you email them today, they're like, what is this? I already forgot, I don't care. And so that's why it's really important to really focus on the fundamentals. And so what we talked about before is first focusing on that organic growth and those mechanisms to be able to check off to be able to launch the app successfully and maximize the organic growth through various different strategies, not just one strategy, but a number of different initiatives as we discussed, through video and PR and app store presence. And then once you have that, you can then accelerate growth through paid advertising. And then another factor of course is going to be through virality and having that growth engines within the app, where you have referral systems within the app and other components where the more downloads you get, the more people are actually going to share it and drive that organic growth throughout.

That's a big piece I want to talk about too in just a moment is the what happens inside, like kind of the engagement and activation of the people and creating that virality. But speaking of virality, kind of back to the viral video example. So obviously there's videos you can put like on social media, where it's introducing people. I would imagine that video or some version of it that goes on in the App Store, where it's demonstrating the use of it, et cetera. What is this, first of all? So on the videos, I want to kind of find out qualitatively, like what works best. And then is this something you guys also help produce and script out?

Yeah, exactly. So we have a whole production team and team has produced more app demo videos than really any other company out there. And so for our clients, again, one thing that's fundamental is really having the right videos. And so what I mean by that is you need to have the video specifically for the platforms that they're going to be on. Whereas, for example, the App Store, Apple has very strict requirements and all this kind of red tape as to what can be approved as to what they call an app preview Video, for example, can't be more than 30 seconds long, can't have any actors inside. And it has to be produced for each file format. So iPhone 8, iPhone X, iPhone 11, et cetera. And so we have to produce those for each file device, each format. So that's for the App Store. Google Play has their own restrictions requirements, and then Facebook as well. But what we're finding, I think what you asked about was, you know, what do these videos look like and how are they different? What we found is what worked last year doesn't necessarily work work this year as well in terms of people's attention spans and what they're looking for. But the biggest thing is people want to see the app in action. They don't want to see some actors or some feature text or whatever. They actually want to see what's the user interface, how does it look like, how easy is it to get that benefit or that value that you're proclaiming, how are you able to use the app and how easy and fun is it to be able to engage with? And so that's what we're seeing more recently, as well as people's attention spans being less and less before. The optimal promo video time period was about a minute and a half. That was like two, three years ago and now we're looking at like it has to be less than about a minute long. So we're looking at 45 seconds to a minute max for a video. It's going to be on Facebook. Again, you'd have to kind of work with people's attention spans to be able to. All of our videos are designed to educate, excite and inspire users to take action. And you want to use different realms of communication, things like having a voiceover feature, text, music background, all while at the same time demonstrating the impact of and benefits and features of the app.

Oh, that's great. Let's kind of move into the. Well actually before I get into the engagement and activation, let's talk about reviews. So obviously some people are going to review the app no matter what they are review. Happy, I probably only reviewed apps before that are friends of mine who've created apps like are there various campaigns or initiatives to get reviews that are compliant with like Apple and Google, et cetera. What are some of the better ways to start to really encourage those?

Yeah, so there's third party companies and businesses out there that kind of specialize specifically in that and helping you incorporate that within the app. So you just download or incorporate this SDK within your app and now you can able to send out these push notifications and these right messaging at the right time. And that's really what it comes down to is sending that push notification at the right time to that consumer. Maybe it's the second time they download the app or you know, a week later, or maybe it's the third or fourth time and you can continue kind of refining that message until they end up clicking that button to kind of review it. But a lot of it comes down to doing what works. And for a lot of those people that are early on and starting this app, I always tell them, hey, save a ton of time and money and do what works. Success leaves clues. Just literally download some of the top 10 most successful apps out there and see how are they getting people, what are their messaging and timing to be able to get people to review the app. You'll be able to learn a ton of why they do what they do because they spent millions of dollars to on research to find out what is going to be the most optimal way to be able to get the most reviews. Again, we can work with, we have app growth consultants that work with a lot of these billion dollar clients and so we're able to support our clients in that capacity as well. But it all Comes down to just doing what works.

Yeah, that makes sense when it comes to getting people in, getting them engaged, activated beyond just the download. Because I think every single person out there has downloaded an app, looked around, said okay or I used it once, got bored of it, et cetera. And I know this all depends upon the app, but let's say it's a functional app, not like a game. What are some of the best ways you've seen to really encourage the continued use of it and get people to take those actions to where it's not just download, look at it and then ignore it.

Yeah, so a lot of that comes down to really building a product that people can't live without. I think that's probably the biggest factor there's. Because if they download it and they're like, eh, chances are they're not going to come back. And unfortunately the latest status, like 70% of people who download an app don't use it for the second time, like within 30 days. It's crazy just because again, they're just onto the next one. There's just so much competition and a lot of that comes down to understanding the core mechanisms of innovation and design and solving that user's need better than anyone else on the market. And that's a huge, huge factor when it comes to onboarding and things like that. But I do want to note though, is you don't want to become too product focused. And I think it's one of the problems that we have in today's environment in the mobile app industry is people just become obsessed with their product and not necessarily the business of the app itself. And so although it's incredibly important to innovate and create something that's new and unique, you also need to understand the business side of it as well. And so many apps that we get approached and people that we talk with, they have a great idea and something they believe could have a huge opportunity, but it's something that again, they believe has huge opportunity. They're not consumer focused and they're just focusing on what they think is going to work. And so that's something that's very, very dangerous in this environment. And we get pitched every single day, probably 10, 20 different pitches a day, just on various different apps that people are working on. And mostly people want, they're looking to build a better product, right? They're looking to, oh, we're the Uber for this or we're going to create a new type of Tinder, a new type of Airbnb, a new type of Snapchat. But being a better product really is the easy part, to the most part. What most people don't understand is it's not about necessarily creating a better product, it's about creating a better business. And what I refer to there is when people are very product focused, I can kind of see these signals. And so what I usually respond with and trying to have them look at in a different perspective is I ask them, I say, do you think you can actually make a better burger than McDonald's? 100% of the time, people say, yeah, I can make a better burger than McDonald's. And then I ask, okay, well, can you personally create a better business operation than McDonald's? You see, there's a billion people out there that can make a better burger than McDonald's, but only McDonald's has created the system and the business that can serve a billion people. And so it's really understanding the difference between the business and the product itself. And so many people get lost and they're, oh, that's a great idea. Does X, Y and Z. It's going to be amazing when we launch. It's going to get millions of people coming just because it's the best next thing since sliced bread. But the reality is they don't understand the core business aspect of it when it comes to sales and monetization and user acquisition and being able to understand lifetime value. And so here at Pre Apps at our agency, we're able to break things down with our clients. That's why we have our app growth consulting component to it, because we have to understand different variations of where the business is coming from. What are those goals? Are they just users so you can sell the app at some point, or are you looking to actually make a business and profitable and to be able to use those profits to be able to drive marketing and acquisition? Because if you're just looking for launching and hoping that you're going to get a bunch of downloads and hoping that you're going to get some sales and then reinvest those sales, chances are you're not going to be able to be that successful unless you understand all the different mechanics that are needed from a business standpoint and an operation standpoint to be able to get there.

This is fantastic. And I didn't know you were going to go that way, but I totally agree with everything you've said. Are there any examples that we can walk through of, let's say, an app that really did? I mean, they had their business model dialed in and they did things right Is there anybody? Top of the Head I think serves as a really great case study for illustrating this point.

Well, I mean, yeah, I mean again you just model what works. I mean any top $10 billion apps you can think of. Snapchat, Evernotes, let's think of the one.

Because I mean to a lot of people who are either have an app or thinking about it, that probably seems like climbing Mount Everest, walking on your hands to create something of that nature that big. But let's take some of the small to mid size ones that are just have done stuff really right. Whether these are former clients of yours or former current clients of yours or, or anybody else who's got kind of a business model. Because I know there's a lot of apps out there. Oh you download it free and yeah, they offer some in app purchases. I've always wondered many times like how are these guys making any money? But I'm just, yeah, I'm just curious if there's any anecdotal things that you see behind the scenes that we don't see and if there's anything that stands out as like a company.

There's not one particular example that comes to mind. I mean all the apps that I use are all very, very successful and they have things going for them. But one thing that might be beneficial for your listeners is we have actually a best selling book called App Secrets. In that book we actually cover the seven pillars that all the top most successful apps incorporates to be able to get them to where they are today. And that breaks down through having the right team. Because if you have a big dream, you gotta have a badass team, right? And so that's just one of the pillars and we break through and give examples of what the team for Square or what team at Uber looks like. Early on I'm not talking about now, I'm talking about when they first started, before they launched and things like innovation, growth, marketing. It's all different pillars and all based by different case studies and examples that we outline in detail in that book. So I think that would be definitely beneficial as well.

Nice. What realistically this is another like kind of, it depends, loaded question. But somebody's got a good app they're really proud of. I think it's like I'll just use this fintech app or whatever. But it's a really good app. What realistically should they kind of budgets should they have for marketing and growth? Because some apps are self funded. Some people are out there trying to raise funding for this and I know it's like, you know, if you throw more money at it, you can get more results. But is there a realistic budget that somebody should kind of come to the table with if they want to achieve a good amount of growth?

It's a very difficult question to ask. And we get that, you know, asked all the time. And the answer is, it all really depends, of course, on the type of app that you're building. You know, the category the app is in, the goals that you're looking to achieve and how quickly you're looking to get there.

Right.

And so it all depends on various different avenues. But like, from a rule of thumb standpoint, one thing that we, from a high level standpoint would recommend is we would recommend spending equal, if not double, the amount that you spent on development towards marketing. Again, truly, due to the fact that you could build the most innovative, beautifully designed creative app in the world. But that all becomes useless if people can't discover and download it. I couldn't tell you how many times people come to us and they're like, we spent over a million dollars in this app. And yeah, it looks great, it's beautiful. And they launched like six months ago. I'm like, how many downloads do you got? And they're like, we got like 10. And again, they think that just because you spend all this money on development, just because you create this innovative and beautifully designed app, you're going to launch it and people are just going to naturally know that it exists and get it out there and download it. But that's just not the case in today's market anymore. That's why we recommend spending equal, if not double, the amount that you spent on development. I know a lot of people will be frustrated with that because people really get fixated on the development side and they spend all this time and money on the developments. But again, it doesn't necessarily come down to the development of the app in today's market anymore. What we recommend is really having that minimal viable product and then innovating along the way. So to be able to launch it, get user feedback, make real time iterations. But the first and number one priority is get people to use the app. It's not to fix a specific bug or add a specific feature. Number one priority is getting feedback, getting users, getting an iteration on top of that. And that's how all the top apps in the market have been able to get to where they are today. None of them were obviously where they are now when they first launched. They even had different names. Snapchat wasn't Snapchat, Instagram wasn't Instagram. And so they all iterates and change along the way. And that's what a lot of people don't think. They kind of get too obsessed over the development and the product itself before even launching.

Yeah. Speaking of getting the early feedback, do negative reviews last forever? So for instance, if you launch something with an mvp, minimally viable product, and it's never perfect when you come out of the gate, but you want to come out and iterate and improve. But if you come out and you know, you get your first thousand downloads or whatever it is, you and people just getting on the App store and saying, I don't like this, et cetera, and then you go to update it and you create a new and better one. Are those reviews on there forever? Are you kind of stuck? Are they like herpes?

No, they changed so recently Apple and Google kind of changed their setup for that. And it's kind of good and bad. It's good because like you mentioned, you can update to your app and relaunch it essentially and have a clean slate. You're going to be starting from zero, while at the same time that kind of sucks. If you already had millions of reviews, now you're starting from zero, that every.

Time you make an update, you lose all your reviews.

There are kind of tweaks around it, but yes, to a degree. So if it's like a new launch, it's a new app. There's difference between a new launch, new app, versus just a general bug fix. And so there are some ways to keep the reviews, some ways to kind of remove them. Again, that's why you want to kind of work with the experts field to figure that out. But I wouldn't honestly worry about too much of the reviews aspect. I mean, yeah, I'm not saying launch a poor quality app that's going to be broken. You definitely want to launch an app that has value and that's going to be easy to use, not going to have too many bugs. But if you get a few negative reviews, that's not the end of the world. Even if you had the most amazing app in the world, you're still going to get negative reviews and you're not going to be able to please everyone.

If you don't have negative reviews, people might think you game the system.

That too.

Exactly. That too. But again, the focus there is to be able to get just a bunch more reviews to outweigh the negative ones. And that's just the way to look at it.

Perfect. Well, and that's good to know that it's not like way worst case scenario, you come out with something, it's not quite ready and you got 50% negative reviews. If you update and kind of relaunch it with new and improved, I mean, you start, you start over from scratch, but you lose a lot of those bad ones. So that's, that should be really empowering for anybody who's putting something out there thinking it has to be perfect because you get review herpes and they don't go away.

Exactly.

Feel free to use that term that I just coined, review herpes. I don't know if I coined it. Maybe you guys use it a lot.

I don't know.

So what does it look like to work with pre apps? Somebody's got an app, whether it's an existing app and they've got a few million downloads and they want to get a few hundred million, versus somebody's in the early stages of they've got an app developed, they're ready for marketing. I mean, you guys don't do app development. That's not your specialty. You guys are marketing engine, right, not development.

That's correct. That's correct. And so that being said, you know, so we work clients, all different capacities. We do have some partner development companies happy to recommend. But yeah, our specialty is really working with you to be able to really achieve your goals. And so what we offer if you go to preapps.com is free 30 minutes consultations. So 30 minute app growth consultations. To be able to really understand exactly where you're at right now with your app and what your goals are and what your resources are to be able to achieve those goals and then discover if it's a good fit for our type of initiatives. And so we work with all different types of apps. We work with clients very early stage and all the way to already having hundreds of millions of downloads. I would say probably about 65% of our clients are early stage now, even pre launch. The other 35% are very, very, very successful. Going from say 0 to 100,000 downloads, 100,000 to a million, a million to 10 million. 10 million to 100 million. And we want to be able to dissect and understand exactly where you're at and what your goals are and what your resource to be able to achieve that goal. And then what we do is we put together a very detailed custom marketing strategy and plan in order to be able to reach those goals. And then we kind of walk you through that strategy plan at a later Date with our team of what that looks like.

Nice. When it comes to a general budget, I believe that you probably have a range of services. People may need very little. You said you have an App Marketing Academy, so maybe there's like a. We'll teach you if you want to do it yourself, I'm guessing, or we'll kind of do it all for you. Is there kind of a range for budgets that people could spend a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars with you? Is it kind of like, is it that big of a range?

Yeah, well, it also depends of course on what you're looking to achieve. Right. So we have some clients that spend a million dollars a month. We have other clients that spend $100,000 a month. That's because they're just this engine that are looking to spend a lot specifically on paid advertising on Facebook and Snapchat, etc. But if you're just early stage, I.

Mean more with you guys, not what they're spending in media costs, et cetera, but just the overall fee structure for how you gu do it. You don't have to, I mean once more, you don't have to quote like an exact fee or anything. But I was just curious if there was a range so that people know that. Oh yeah. Wow, that's actually doable.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So I would say, you know, range wise looking at maybe 15 to 20k per month on average maybe to start off with and then kind of scale in growing from there. But again, it all depends and we don't really, we're very selective now on the type of apps that we work with and because we don't want to just work with everyone, we want to work with people that we know we can achieve results for. And so that's why we also have things like the App Marketing Academy, which is a five week online coaching program. We also have our best selling book, App Secrets and other resources to be able to support clients in different capacities. But yeah, so for those that don't have the resources yet to hire an agency like us, we definitely recommend the App Marketing Academy as well as other type of online courses and whatnot. And then maybe even closing trying to go for a round of investment to be able to get the capital that's needed to be able to make their app business a reality. Right.

Well, and I would imagine that you guys have had some success with this aspect. Like if you came up with a really robust marketing plan and go to market plan and a growth plan for this app that is out there actively looking for funding, that it makes their funding easier because they're able to show a roadmap for how they're planning to get the success they're looking for.

Yes, yes. I mean to a degree, sure. We definitely can help. And I think again, getting our book will kind of give that outline of what's going to be required to be able to launch and market the app successfully. But again, we only kind of engage with people that already have kind of the funds secured. It's not like, oh, you know, talk to us and we'll create the plan and then you go for round an investment. It's more kind of the opposite. It's more like once you've already closed the round of funding, then we understand exactly what resource you have. So we can craft the right plan and strategy based on the resources that you have. It's not like, oh, you know, we'll be able to craft the right span and budget and then you go out to SQL funding because it's all, it all changes the great distinction.

Yeah. Because if you come at it with a million dollars in funding versus your self funding with money used to buy groceries, it's a totally different gameplay.

Exactly.

For what we can do. Very cool. So let's talk about where people can get more information on this. Obviously preapps.com is your primary website. People can go there and they can download the PDF that I was just talking about. I was going through this. It's a free download. It's the explosive growth using the skyrocket downloads method. And then you said you also have a, they can schedule a call with you or one of your experts I guess there to kind of discuss the needs. You also mentioned some books you have. Is everything available on the pre apps website or would you like to direct folks to somewhere else as well?

Yeah, if you want to learn more about our services and would like to schedule that kind of 30 minute consultation with one of our app growth specialists, I think the best place would be to go to preapps.com we also have a very unique tool that we can also mention actually as well. It's a software tool for those that already have an app and your kind of growth has gone stagnant. You can go on free apps.com and there's a section there where you scroll down to the bottom where you can use our free app analysis tool. So you just actually enter your app name into that search bar and it's going to pull up a whole report of exactly kind of how to improve your app step by step in various different capacities and give you an actual overall app grade. We spent over two and a half years putting together and collects over 2.7 million data points on the App Store and Google Play, and I think that would be very valuable. And then also for the book. Yeah, you can get the book on Amazon. It's like 25 bucks. You look for app Secrets, but for those in your community, I can also recommend you can get the book for free. Free plus shipping. You go to appsecretsbook.com just go ahead and enter your shipping address and we'll go ahead and send you a physical copy of the book for free. We just request that you pay for shipping so you can avoid the whole Amazon aspect as well. So again, it's completely up to you guys. Finance in different ways.

Beautiful. I love it. Well, man, I can't thank you enough for being on the show today here, Sean. Here's an opportunity for me to. Or my listeners as well, to maybe give back some of the value you've been doing. Are there any nuts you're trying to crack right now? And by that I mean, obviously the general goal of your agency is to find new clients and that's just like an ongoing initiative you're trying to get more of. But are there any things that are like stubborn nuts that you're. Whether it's people you're trying to meet, things you're trying to. To learn, anything at all that has kind of been stubborn, that maybe I have an idea or a resource or maybe one of my listeners who listens in can shoot you an email and say, hey, I may be able to help you out there, and if not, that's okay, but this is just an opportunity for us to give back.

Yeah, I really appreciate that, Brad. This isn't anything in particular. It's just, hey, if you know anyone or if you have an app and you're struggling with growth and strategy, we're happy to help. It's kind of our passion. We live and breathe this stuff and so we're happy to be able to connect and be able to see how we can support you, whether it's through coaching or education or maybe you might be a good fit for our agency. But yeah, if you are an app business owner or you have a friend that has an app and needs support and you want them to be able to reach their dream and their goals, we're happy to be able to help them.

I love it. Well, thank you. And I look forward to connecting with you offline and talking more business. All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Sean. Okay, this episode is almost done, but our time together doesn't have to end. At least not yet. Subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next episode. And head on over to baconrapbusiness.com where you can find more bonus material. And you can leave me a voice message with your question. If it's good, I'll read it on the air. And if you have a business problem you'd like my brain on, send me an email to ask Bradbacon wrapped business dot com. Tell me more and I might might be able to give you a second opinion on what's keeping you stuck. See you on the next episode.