One iPhone Developer's Sales Figures Prove PR Works Best
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AppCubby, an indie developer of two popular iPhone applications – Trip Cubby and Gas Cubby – has put together a comprehensive blog post containing graphs and sales figures of their applications on the iPhone App Store. Entitled Financial Realities of the App Store, they look at the success (or not!) of advertising with MacWorld, AdMob and Google Adsense, and the effects of PR (such as a mention on Gizmodo) upon sales.
Perhaps the best conclusion, however:
[T]he only methods of marketing I’ve found to be measurably cost effective are working with the press and getting featured by Apple, both of which are essentially free, but incredibly hard to guarantee.
This continues to show that the App Store should rarely be relied upon as a marketing device in its own right – you need to do lots of legwork using good old fashioned marketing and PR to more reliably build up sales and coverage.
Some confusion seems to have broken out over the “This continues to show that the App Store is rarely a marketing device in its own right” claim.
I stand by it, because yes, while marketing in the App Store is VERY important.. it’s VERY important for just 100 or so apps (at a time – though there are many long-running incumbents). This makes it “rarely a marketing device” in my book if, say, 1% of apps ever get to enjoy the fruits of that route.
You need to use good old fashioned marketing and PR to build up sales to get into those featured and best seller lists in the first place unless you get lucky with a feature!
So it seems like both sides are right, just that my statement was, perhaps, misinterpreted as “The App Store has no marketing use whatsoever” which isn’t what I said.
Perhaps, more accurately, I should have said..
“This continues to show that the App Store should rarely be relied upon as a marketing device in its own right – you need to do lots of legwork using good old fashioned marketing and PR to more reliably build up sales and coverage.”
If you still disagree with this revision, do contest it! 🙂
The iPhone is defeinitely the next generation of hand held devices. We created a few apps, and they’re selling good on the app store.
Sam
iPhone Application Developer