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200,000 Apps — Where’s mine?
A busy Mobile Monday tonight — perhaps sparked by the twin pull of the “marketing” and “apps” tags in the event description!
It was a good panel with a fair spread of perspective: Eli from Vision Mobile provided a lot of useful information, based on research with mobile developers as to what works and what doesn’t; Dave Burrows talked about the traditional BlackBerry corporate apps; and Alyssa Tisne understood how to get people to buy things amongst 10 million different audio tracks.
There was a good mix of people afterwards as well — not just the usual suspects, but some design and marketing students on a 3 month course at Birkbeck and a load of BlackBerry developers too.
Anyway, on to my notes, typed at speed as usual. If you’d like to add anything or correct something I thought you said, please add a comment or contact me on twitter at adamcohenrose.
Keynote — Mike Kirkup, Director, Developer Relations, BlackBerry
- BB introducing lots of ways to pay
- enabling in-app payments
- running a Super-App Developer Challenge at the moment (ends Sept 6th)
- focussed on “super-apps”: tightly integrated, efficient apps
- apps need to be in Developer World to be entered
Panel
- Chair: Ben Scott-Robinson - Creative Director, We Love Mobile
- Chris Bourke - MD, Mobext
- Dave Burrows - Director of R&D Interchange Group
- Alyssa Tisne - VP Strategic Partnerships, 7Digital
- Tony Pearce - CEO and co-founder, TeePee Games
- Eli Camilleri - Asssociate, Vision Mobie
- Mike Kirkup - BlackBerry
Why apps rather than mobile internet?
- CB: speed. Apps compensate for the lack of speed across mobile internet
- speed will gradually improve over years
- but apps provide clean, sophisticated, richer user experience
- but can have local storage & javascript in browser apps…
- AT: Apple has set gold standard for music apps
- 7digital’s iPhone presence is web-only as can’t compete with Apple
- however, can integrate with last.fm and built-in player on BB
- MK: BB6 web platform has been optimised to ensure that it gives a great experience
- 30-50% increase in traffic just by having an app icon (on home screen and app store), even if the app just launches the browser
- EC: user experience is much better, but ubiquity is much harder
- if you want to target a market rather than a technology then you have to strike a balance
Demographics & handsets: which demographics on which handsets?
- EC: most people are not looking at demographics…
- when asked devs where they were getting market information, they said mates, colleagues… not really the people actually using the app!
- survey sponsored by Telefonica — they have more experience understanding the demographics
- TP: hardest thing for any publisher is to get their app discovered
- need to peel back the profile of the user
- find out what they actually like
- DB: we do a lot of B2B work — boss buys app and imposes on staff
- don’t have a high curve of under 25s
- instead have a large number of users all the way to 60+
- most people want to do one thing on the device and that one thing well
- amongst first feedback: “yes, but can we take the phone away please” !?!?
- CB: mobile is moving too fast. although they’re tracking analytics, the market changes continually
- seeing 13 year olds with iPhones purchased by their parents
- they’re probably hand-me-downs as the parent gets the next version…
- have run campaigns which were more successful with younger brother or sister of target audience — other family members were grabbing phone
BB has become a youth device — was this deliberate?
- MK: partially driven by people transitioning from SMS, but also by other capabilities
- not a concerted strategy, unfortunately :-)
- were surprised at take up of BlackBerry Messager (BBM)
- people walk into shops and say “I want BBM”, “Oh, that’s for BlackBerry”, “so that’s what I want”
Apps as marketing tools & marketing for apps
- CB: iPhone apps may be a case of the CEO’s wife…
- but also association with a cool company may rub off
- launched a campaign for EBLEX: responsible for promoting beef & lamb in UK
- made an app to help you BBQ better (iBBQ)
- TP: no-one knows the apps on facebook
- top few games are there because the publishers have the money to keep investing in advertising
- http://teepeegames.com is a discovery site for mobile & social media apps
- EC: market towards niches
- these are services — can learn from old industries how to get to individuals who need them
- even games are entertainment services
- seeing links between old platforms (e.g. magazine) & new (digital) ones
- can do guerilla marketing
- need to take responsibility for own marketing
- get association with a brand that’s trusted & known
- AT: 7digital want to integrate with other music apps
- esp. streaming apps — “now buy the music you’ve just heard”
- MK: seems like a new problem but it’s a new set of people encountering the problem
- if you convince crackberry.com blog to feature your app then downloads go through the roof… (email: kevin@crackberry.com)
- DB: the real estate is on the device
- when first buy a PC, first thing I do is remove the ISP adverts
- there will be a time that this will happen on mobile
Apps are pushed through other media. How?
- CB: need to have significant budget and use it wisely
- for BBQ app, targeted mobile ad networks & aggregators
- initially ran an explosive campaign to push app into top 25
- then get organic usage and get talked about
- when start to fall out of top 25, need to give app another push — a bit more budget
- BBQ app relied exclusively on mobile media
- CE: Royal Academy of Arts app — all users had downloaded it when they visited the museum
- front desk had told them about it
- still don’t know why they’re not promoting retail apps in retail stores (e.g. Selfridges app)
Is it worth plugging a free app?
- EC: yes, if it’s extending services for a segment they want to own
- again, BBQ example fits well
- but not if it’s your core product
- freemium works if the extra functionality is worth something and has clear value
- bad free apps create noise — destroy space and time for apps that people will really value
- TP: Nokia users are used to paying £5 for an app, whereas iPhone users are shocked at 59p
- unless you have a freemium model and can get existing users to give you money
- EC: ad-funded apps were not making money they expected
- ones that were working were
- maybe because of numbers
- TP: content is key
- DB: have to monetise somewhere?
- sometimes get the money paid as development
- marketing done by somewhere else
- ad-funded market is in its infancy
- have to have consolidated advertising mechanisms to provide content
- AT: can send push message to get people to interact with app
- get free releases and browse associated paid ones
- since 7digital is a store, the app is always free
Is sponsorship a realistic model for launching an app?
- CB: absolutely (see above)
- actively looking for sponsorship opportunities
- white labelling apps (esp. games)
- BSR: lots of useful case studies
- e.g. VW approached a specific game, stripped it down just to show VW car and released it for free
- CB: Brand Butler idea
- releasing services and games to consumers is a great way to get brand awareness & engagement
Andrew Scott (Rummble): discoverability should be about word of mouth but some operators still have a rate sheet for their promoted places
- BSR: in theory app stores provide word of mouth
- MK: BB twitter app has a load of feedback comments which are attempted first tweets… (is that a problem with the BB store?)
- TP: teepeegames.com will have a combination of user recommendation & editorial control
- putting a social network behind each product
- AT: with 10 million audio tracks available, discoverability is about genre, really good meta-data (which is not always available from the item itself), friends recommendations, …
Fragmentation: has anyone used an app-porting mechanism, and how did it work?
- CB: they tend to break down at the edges
- a bit like decorating your house — it’s only beautiful at the end when the details have been completed
- app-porting tech tend to deal with heavy lifting well, but don’t deal with the polish
- Charles McCloud from metaflow: have sent roughly 50 million SKUs to market
- there are a few porting technologies out there
- it’s tough, complicated & costly
- it comes down to what user experience you want to deliver
- BSR: if you want to deal with extra percentages covering the market, it gets more and more expensive
- fragmentation is getting worse from an agency perspective
- when porting, you want to take advantage of the new platform — not just port the app
- e.g. to port an iPhone app to iPad — a day or so
- but to take advantage of the iPad and make a good iPad app — a couple of months
How can apps modify people’s behaviour? e.g. foursquare
- DB: “mission critical” apps need to modify behaviour or won’t get ROI
- BBM is changing his behaviour
- carriers want stickiness
How do small new companies get market knowledge?
- EC: talk to the people who you think are your real customers
- mobile metrics are mostly irrelevant — they come from technology point of view
- even talking to 30 people who you believe you want to use your service
- also want to test apps with people who will actually use it
- CB: can also do croudsource-based testing (e.g. mob4hire)
- can target individual segments or geographic regions
- BSR: avoid listening to the press!
Helen Keegan: where does a small development house start with marketing, PR, branding?
- MK: have a very popular “Marketing for Developers” session at BlackBerry World — can send slides
- simple things: start a blog
- respond to complaints — the faster the better
- BB recommend mob4hire
- get ideas from professionals giving a quote
- CB: only way to get noticed is to cause trouble!
- have something in your app that people will talk about
- do something that will upset somebody
- or start saving and then come to us :-)
- BSR: don’t target a big audience — target a niche
- communicate to people in context
- if you’re in a niche, you probably know the people already
Notices
- Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition launching this week
- nothing in August
- Over The Air 10/11th September
- need volunteers to help
- and sponsorship money
- Demo night on Monday following
- October — Design for Accessibility
- October — DCKTN/UKTI competition for dev places to Mobile World Congress
