MBA932 Creating & Selling a Mobile App P2 + Free Ride Friday!

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Alright, let's get into today's episode. Hey welcome to the $100 MBA show. A better business is what you want. And that's what we try to give you with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net. Today's lesson is part two of our two part lesson on how to create and sell your mobile app. In part one, yesterday's lesson we talked about all the different options when it comes to creating your app. Are you going to create yourself? Are you going to Hire somebody else. How much does that all cost? That's all in yesterday's episode. So if you haven't listened to that lesson, go ahead and listen to it now. Episode 931. In today's episode, we're going to focus on how to sell this app. You have it created now. How do you get it out in the world, get people to recognize it, get eyeballs on it and get people to buy it or download it so they can buy the in app purchases inside the app? For a lot of people, this is the toughest part about having a mobile app. They got a great little solution to a problem, but they just don't know how to make it a business. We're going to focus on the dollars and cents of a mobile app today so it can make sense, so you can actually reap the benefits of creating something awesome. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. All right, in today's lesson, we're going to focus on selling this app that you've created. This is assuming you have it in the App Store or the Google Play Store. If it's Android now, putting it out there in the store is not enough. You're in a sea of apps. We're talking about millions of apps. According to Apple, in 2017, there are over 2.2 million apps. So how are you going to stand out Now? Of course, you're in a category, so people are going to look within that category. But you can't just rely on the fact that people are just going to stumble upon your app. You got to treat your app in the App Store just like a website on the Internet. You are amongst a whole bunch of websites. People are not just going to find you by chance. Speaking of website, that's the first step. You need to build a website for your app so people can find you through a Google search. You got to build this thing just like a business, just like you're selling a piece of software that would be a web app. Why? Because people are going to find you when they're not necessarily looking for you. What does that mean? That means they're looking for a solution to a problem. They don't know you exist. You're going to show up in their search because you have great content on a great website. This doesn't have to be super, super hard. You can spend a few days building this website. What you really need is some key pages, a homepage, an about page, and a blog. Really, you just need a place so you can put new content and you're going to become the expert in whatever your app is all about. So in yesterday's episode, I used the example of an app I use called tripcase. And it's all about how to organize all your itineraries when you go on a trip. So if I were Tripcase, I would definitely have a solid website with a great blog. With an app like tripcase, you can have a whole bunch of blog posts on so many great topics when it comes to travel. How to pack, how to travel on a budget, how to get the best deal on a rental car, the best itinerary for Italy or Spain or Portugal or whatever in seven days. It's endless. If you have great, great content. People are searching for this topic. They're going to find you via Google search and get to your website and know about your app. So don't just rely on being on that store. That store is just a way for you to sell. It's like your storefront, but you can actually sell it on your website, meaning that you can link to it, to your website and get people through the door through your website. You got to think bigger. You got to build this thing out like an online business. So you must have a website with a homepage, with an about page, talking about your company and a blog that publishes great content on your topic. And now I mentioned a homepage. A homepage is really important to explain very easily, very simply, what your app does, what problem it solves. You should have a clean cut headline that easily explains what it is. So in Tripp Kase's example, I would have a very clean headline, something like going on a trip, organize all your reservations in one place. A demo video would be great to walk them through what this app is all about. Now, I'm not sure for Android, but I know for iPhone, if you plug your iPhone into your computer and use Quicktime, you can actually record what's on the screen of your iPhone. So you can do a demo and record what goes on on your screen, like a screen capture, and then you can use that video for a demo on your website. Pretty cool. So build out your website, show your brand, show your product, tell them the benefits and how things will be different when they download this app. All right, so we've established it. Gotta have a website, right? You gotta get it out there on the website. You gotta build an email list. I know this is an app, but you need to build an email list so you can have that information so you can be able to market to them. Now, I know for The Apple Store. Apple doesn't give you the user's information unless they consent to it. So you would have to ask for consent an extra step. But if you're on your own website and you ask for their email so they can get more updates, when you publish a new guide or new blog post, you can build an email list as people come to your site and, and then you can tell them about launches, sales, new feature releases, and you can get them to move over to the actual app, actually buy the app or download the app. App stores have a way for you to advertise on their platform. It's not cheap, but it may be worth experimenting, especially if you're in a genre, if you're in a niche that really is not that popular and you'd really be able to stand out because the competition is not very high and therefore your ads won't be that expensive. So sponsor apps go up on top. So if I was searching travel app and Tripp's case would be using advertising in this example, their ad would go on top and they're usually like kind of blue. And we're talking about the App Store here, Apple App Store here. And it's similar with Android. So you can invest in some ads to kind of get the momentum going. That is an option, but I would not resort to the option if you are tight on cash. Another option which I highly recommend is viral marketing. That means that you want to get people that actually download the app to share the app and market it for you. So incentivize them for sharing the app. For example, there's a card game called Estimation I absolutely love. It's actually an Egyptian card game. I learned this from some of my relatives. And there's an amazing app for iOS on this game, Estimation. And if I share this app with my friends on Facebook, Twitter or email, they will give me some credits. These are like chips that you would use like in poker for example. And I can use these to upgrade my avatar or, or qualify for certain like high roller rounds. Right. So incentivizes me to share. It's not going to cost me anything to share this app with other people. So incorporate viral marketing into your app, get them to share it and give them something for that they can use right now in the app. So incorporate viral marketing into the app. That way they can share it and they can benefit from sharing easily right in the app. A great book of this topic is called Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday. I did a must read episode on this book. It's a Great book. And it talks about this concept and how a lot of companies incorporate viral marketing into their apps. But think about how you can get this embedded in your app and prompt them as soon as they download it or when they finish the first time they use it and make sure they know what they'll get if they share. Make sure you answer that question, what's in it for me? This is a great way to market the app without any cost other than the development of that actual viral marketing incentive. Another great targeted advertising option is podcasting. People are on their phones already when they're listening to podcasts, so if they hear an ad about your app on a podcast, it's easy for them to just get on their phone and download the app immediately. Now podcasting is becoming a very fast growing market when it comes to advertising in all ranges. You don't have to actually advertise on the most popular shows. So you can go to itunes and look at the genre for your app. So for Tripcase, for example, it's a travel app. I'd go to the subcategory that would be about travel and look at some of the podcasts that are out there. I don't have to approach the top five podcasts I can go to. You know, the first hundred podcasts. These are all great podcasts that get a lot of listenership and you can look them up on Google, find their website, reach out to them through the contact page, and find out what the rates are. They're already on their phone. It's an easy conversion. 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Podcast at Capella University. Learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu.

To wrap up today's lesson, the takeaway I want to give you is you have to treat your app like a business. It's not just something that you're going to put out there and it's going to sell. You have to go out there and market it and sell it yourself. You have to build a website. You have to have a marketing strategy. You have to build an email list. You have to build great content and put it out there so people can come to your website and you can attract the right people and utilize Google's amazing search. You have to look at targeted advertising and you gotta think of ways to do some great viral marketing within the app. I hope that helped. Guys, this two part lesson, how to create and sell your app was like 101. There's a whole lot more advanced stuff that we can talk about in later episodes. But, but I wanted to get you started. Just get it out there, start selling it, have it created, have it out for sale. All right, this episode's not over because it's free ride Friday. I got to announce who won this week's free ride. Let's see who won easy course, our 30 day course on how to build an online course. A $500 value. Who's our winner? The winner is Marianne1151. Marianne says, Great show. She says, long enough for me to enjoy and short enough for me not to get bored. So the topics are interesting and worthwhile. I am hooked. Well, congratulations, Marianne. You won free ride Friday. Just email me at omar00mba.net so we can hook you up with that lifetime access to easy course, a $500 course on how to create your online course. If you're listening and you're not, Marianne, you too can win a free ride. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. We announced a winner every Friday, so make sure you tune in. All right, that's it for me today. But I want to leave you with this. Software as a business is not easy. I'm going to tell you straight up, I have a software business. It's not easy, but it's so rewarding. Yes, it's challenging, but the challenge is such a fun ride and it's so great to create something that's useful and you see actually put into action people using it, people benefiting from it and it's just a fun journey. So don't be put off by the challenge. It's going to be more challenging than you expect most of the time, but you'll love it. It'll be really rewarding and I'm rooting for you. All right, I'll check you in the next episode Monday, which is a guest teacher episode we have Stephan Priddy teaching how to stop losing customers and lower that churn. Such an important topic. Can't wait for that. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella, Eduardo.