App Pre-Launch Strategies
Carter Thomas
Lessons
Introduction to Workshop
05:50 2App Store Overview
06:47 3The Different Business Models of Apps
10:20 4App Case Studies That Work
20:12 5App Market Research
22:43 6Developer Overview
03:43 7Hiring vs. Developing Yourself
12:19 8iOS vs. Android
06:26Finding Your Developer
18:40 10Writing Your Job Description
11:55 11Job Description Hot Seat
10:24 12Developer Expectations & Relationships
12:16 13App Publishing Overview
02:43 14Getting Started With Your Developer Account
06:23 15iTunes Connect & Google Play Developer Console
15:52 16Write Your App Description
07:15 17Picking Keywords & Titles
07:27 18The Importance of App Screenshots
18:20 19App Pre-Launch Strategies
12:45 20App Post-Launch Strategies
10:30 21App Marketing Overview
03:33 22Your App's Unique Selling Proposition
07:23 23Internal App Marketing
33:17 24External App Marketing (with special guest Steve Young)
14:00 25Paid Traffic, Advertising, & Social Media
09:14 26Measure Results
12:09 27App Monetization Overview
05:37 28App Advertising Strategies
04:14 29Sponsorships & B2B Apps
08:28 30App Analytics
06:44Lesson Info
App Pre-Launch Strategies
So launching your app is a very dramatic wyss and putting her out from the app store right? We're not gonna necessarily blast off the way some of these top grossing games dio or your super bowl commercial you do everything like that but launching a rap is a calculated effort and honestly that's what a launch is right it's a coordinated effort to maximize your first days in the apse or so especially on apple app store the first four days you get a natural lift you will get a kind of how there's all these thiss new traffic in the app store doesn't happen every time but there's a lot of websites out there that aggregate new apse that people will follow there's a lot of different reasons the algorithm rewards new aps things like that that's why the launch is considered one of these places where you want to really just put ire all your fish in one basket eggs in one basket not official one basket uh this is what we're going to live in the alps are right so when you're launching the way you ...
measure that launch the way it's kind of all right the launch has happened or it's done is when you're live on the app store when someone can go and they can search on the app store and get it on the device is typically takes a few hours to cycle through but it's available like I said the algorithm rewards new acts this is not maker break I don't want anyone out there to sink that to think that if you don't do all this stuff for if you don't have a great launch you're screwed and that you'll never be able to you know you'll never get downloads in your doom for yeah purgatory or whatever you wanna call it it's just a really really helpful great strategy it's a good way to leverage everything you're doing and honestly it's exciting when I was when I lost my first act in october october nineteenth, two thousand eleven so the screen shot and I just worked so hard is my first app and yeah, it didn't it didn't do very well whatever peanuts but that moment of launching it were at all this effort and I put everything I had into this is one project and to see all of that hard work and all of these people that have helped me out all go into the app store and be able to look at it and say, you know I did this this's this happened is this cool? Yeah I didn't get a whole lot of downloads and it was really, really difficult but it was exciting I was so stoked when that happened and I think that's that's one of the reasons why it is cool to focus on the launch especially if you only have a few abs or if you're just getting started because it's a really exciting part of business. When you're when you're launching, you're creating something new. There's. Two parts of launch, three technically, but we're going talk to at the pre launch, actual launch and then the post launch. Prelaunch checklist okay this is a good one where you can you know print this out take a screenshot or if you purchase the course you could go back and watch this again but this is what I always go through whenever I want to say all right I'm getting ready for launch and I'm gonna put this app out on the app store what do I need to make sure that I that I really take care of before it goes life still in my app itunes connect account or google play account first is all my information in there did I get that but I could get that support you are l figured out that I pick mikey what did I do all that is everything in there did I get my tax information in there all that just make sure everything all your teaser crossing our I's are dotted writes and pricing I have done so many times where I thought I was making this a paid actor and all of sudden I released that and oh it's it's free oops there goes that whole strategy that I thought I had you know or similarly I thought that I was doing a free app and I release it and it is twenty six ninety nine because I thought that'd be a good way for me to remember and it's not the checklist is the way to honor not your head countries. We talked about soft launches before this has won a lot of big aps to write so clash of plans I want those classic lines out there it's, the behemoth in the ap world top grossing game make millions of dollars every day what they dio specifically with one of the more recent games which was called boom beach is that they took the game and they released it into new zealand they went to australia and they took it out of us should they put in canada and I took it off to canada. Meanwhile in the united states the u s app store never saw and for all intensive purposes most of us who are in the united states we had no idea that this app was coming but all over the world on the blue cloud forums and people were emailing me saying, oh man, I just saw this new game new beta launch and they were just going into itunes connecting clicking what countries they wanted to so if you are interested in that if you have a big gap right if you're trying to roll something out if you're trying to target a specific country anoca worldwide make sure you got your country's checked most people are just going to go all your country's this it's a great strategy that's what we often do day of the week what they're going to launch it we're just gonna launch a when it's time to go where? Yeah so just like picking that out just saying I'm gonna do this tuesdays and thursdays time to be the biggest social media days on the web so if you have something that could get picked up on social media people actively using social media can be great on the weekends there's a lift in advertising budgets as well so if you want to release on the weekends you might have a little more competition but if you have advertising you might make more money right? Because your ads of mirth worth more we'll talk about that a little bit but I would recommend tuesday or thursday launch those are typically the most solid days to do it reaching out to partners steve is going to talk about this at some point and we're going to go into how you want to set up people that are going to help you with popularity right? So I would say let's say you've got a you know a keyboard ac or a meditation app or whatever it may be maybe you find somebody who also has a monster keyboard app and they're willing to promote that keyboard app on this particular day for this amount of time in exchange for money in exchange for help exchange for advice whatever and you can go toe aps you could goto websites you could goto tv personalities you goto bloggers you goto you know anyone you want but finding partners and giving them in very clear sheet that says on this date at this time we're releasing this app this is when you can schedule your timeto promote us and just getting that all set up and getting those relationships built revue friends this is ah but I really like to talk about where you have a bunch of friends will talk about this in a second and finally set up any paid traffic campaigns um just getting the creative set up and all that good stuff so when you're in the itunes connect you want to get uh you're going to go down to the pricing availability as we talked about this is where you going to do all the free changing pricing and you khun schedule this date right so as we were in there we didn't talk about this but you can say all right I don't want this to go until that date is like whatever it may be three, three months in the future three weeks in the future whatever it may be similarly you can pull out you can click on chek all all right I only want to go in hungary hungary is like the hot half spot I guess and or you can do all the country's things like that and then saving the plan pricechange when you want to change that price you can just click on that choose what price you want to go to if you want to free we'll talk about what those were all about start date ended things like that this is an example of a block or a website you could reach out to us moto if you have something unique about your app, you khun totally reach out to them really easily and say here's, my half here's. Why it's unique and here's why you should write about it. And I know that sounds overly simplified, but if your app is really unique and you reach out of a lot of different publications, it could be very powerful and get creative with that. We'll talk about that a little bit. Revue friends, this is, uh what I said, I was gonna talk about the second reach out to your network. This is all great out just because, you know, I don't you stealing my friends and, uh but this is good, right? So on facebook messenger or on your email or your phone or whatever it may be email twenty people, you know and say, hey, I'm I'm launching this app here's when it's gonna happen, can I count on you to download this? Can I kind of need to review it? Can you give me some feedback once it does come in? Can you do x y z reach out your network and at least let them know what date it's gonna happen on finally your facebook ads right so facebook is just one platform if you wanted to pay a traffic it's typically the best because I got the best targeting but if you're when you're getting ready populate your facebook at the creative donna right that's right the headlines if you want to learn more about facebook ads for mobile acts we have a killer block post on blue clouds solutions that you can learn everything you want to know about facebook ads but that's really no when everything's ready to go right you get all these checklists and then you're I think you're at the goal line any time of day that you could set or is it just a day just the day today it's it's a little bit of a great science because it can go live on the charts but it might take a while for the search to pick it up and then the times on urine might be different so you know they say they fixed so that based on the international time zone launch is on the same date but have you had to see that really work out that well so it's not I would not bank on the timing what I would do is I would know the date and I would release it either a day or right before the day I tell everybody else toe promote it so that when they go in it's easy for them to see because I've been on launches, where there, like it's, not in the app store and like, oh, it just hasn't. Algorithm hasn't gotten here yet, because they woke up seven hours ahead of me, and I forgot to think about that. It's a really good question. So your goal after doing all of this after going through this checklist is to have everything ready to go so that you can step back and just go all right published cia all right you're good to go a lot of people had questions about s so you know we're going to get into that a bit more but anything that you want to talk about on the pre launch side about ways to I mean I guess first what s so is it in ways that people can incorporate that and they're pre launch anything you want to mention about that pre launch for s o you really want to remember two things so one you're not gonna get it right and that's a big important piece of the s o it isn't evolving science for you and for people who don't know eso enough store optimization its like its search engine optimization for the app store so you make you make your ap picked up by the algorithm better and when you're talking about pre launches and s o it's really easy to say oh man I just gotta get there I got to nail these keywords negative perfect title in the bass screenshots is there saying I just need to get some data so that I have an idea of what's you know what's working and what doesn't work so I think that that's probably the number one thing to think about I think the, uh along those lines, the second part of that is that you know it. Even if you think you are going to nail it, you won't. It's, it's going to be completely different once you go live. Ah, and you could just update in updating update things like that. In terms of pure research, we'll go through some tools, but you can go to something like center tower. If you want to say, I don't just want to blindly throw key words in there, I want to have calculated strategy. You can definitely go and get keywords and title your app, so that it's, you know, prime for success. But that's, you know, that's, kind of how, how it goes with that.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
lauritadr21
This was a great class!! If you're thinking about launching your own app, this is the best first step you can take! It is a comprehensive lesson that takes you from the moment you get an idea all the way up to monetizing your app. Highly recommended!
cucharina
Lots and lots of information, I can't wait to listen to it again, so it can really sink in. Wow what a great course.
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