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External App Marketing (with special guest Steve Young)

We're going to talk about some pr, and we have a crate. Guest instructor steve who's got at masters dot ceo, and steve is one of the best podcasters in the app business. I was, I was fortunate to be a guest with steve and he's going to come up here and show you how to make it rain in the pr world. Thank you what thank you thanks chris kind of old photos over a little look I don't haven't hope I haven't aged too much all right coming up we'll talk about some of tools we're trying to leave it in there going got a few minutes so I'm trying to pack all this information into very action packed fifteen minutes five things you gotta know about api are now a pr is completely different from just like a web launch because there's a review submission there's promo codes it's not just like turned on a button and making it live because you got google you got apple they're going to guard their platforms and the one growth hack that could drive huge amounts downloads to share that with you guys the g...

reat ones have been sharing a lot with and so we share that with you guys as well cool it's just a little bit try spent like two minutes on this a little bit about me starting two thousand eleven that was not me but I was very eager to get started right? I wanted to get started in the up space and I created my own ap coded it got it out there create for my son actually and hit number eight under educational games this is back in two thousand eleven and did phenomenal and I was addicted by then and I was still in corporate life so I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with my life and you wanted to be an entrepreneur so hit me as a consumer of creative life type of courses and just podcast I said I'm gonna interview people I really admire in their space picked their brains about marketing how they come up with the app ideas how they designed stuff and carter was a guest as well and so I started doing that and through that a little bit of an audience and all this knowledge that I started executing on and I sort of started teaching some of this stuff on my block and so forth and people started coming to me for a pr health like a steamboat to launch nat can you just help me what do you need help with? I'm just sort of kind of learning and beginning just like I'm learning take it easy man but they said hey I want to hire you to do our launch and so since then been really focused on that and we've been on some major publications for a client so you know some of the big publications out there and that's sort of the power ofthe pr so I'm a share with you some case studies that we've been able to achieve because of pr all right this was one of my clients fit man cook we hit number two paid out over all through now there was a lot of pieces that were moving and a lot of things happened right for this app but we're number one on product hunt and we did we got on the gr app advice mac life a lot of big publications picked it up hit number two really great efforts there now if you want to do paid advertising for one of my clients we were able to drive it down to the fifteen cents cosper install so you know what they paid me and the downloads were able to achieve with pr able to dive down to fifteen cents and I wanted to show this graphic real quick because the average costs for mobile app installed leads through either facebook or twitter any type of medium it's going up as you can see he's starting to go up and this was a client that was used to spending like a couple of dollars or install so through pr were able it really really really drive the cost down and lastly this is the growth factor I'm gonna share with you a little bit later we're able to achieve one hundred thousand downloads in just three days this is a little one growth hack I think you know a lot of people can use to sort of reenergized your app it's been on the app store it's doing ok but how do I really get the downloads to pick up I'm gonna share that growth back with you as well so things you must know all right so here we go and one tuesdays and wednesdays are usually the best days launch, and I'll say this thursday's air good. Carter sent mention that because the absolute refreshes, so if you're going to feature by apple, even talks since apple there's a perfect, they're gonna want youto launch on thursdays. But from a pr perspective, tuesdays and wednesdays are better because they're not as crowded. You got the big guy's publishing on thursdays, and so if you're a small little guy like me and, like, pay attention to me, usually I'm going try to avoid thursday, so I'm gonna get in early on. The weak fridays are good, but you know, traffic tried tends to dive down for these big publications on fridays and over the weekend, so we usually like to focus more on tuesdays and wednesdays for some of our clients, that just aren't, you know, as you know, well known. The thing is sort of basics have a video trailer and I'll tell you exactly why because you know when you're pitching reporters it's going to be a lot easier for them to see a video of your a quick little thirty second video of your app in action then you try and explain it you know if you got a great title like carter did like merge songs and music into your vine and instagram that's great but if you don't have something that descriptive have a little video trailer that shows the unique problem selling propositions of your app it's going to make it a lot better you have to spend lots of money on it but it really helps a reporter and seeing what the differences differences are for your app and another reason why is because a lot of these publications are actually using your video in their block post so it's a great way to get even mohr exposure if you create engaging one people are going to read about you they're going to watch your video probably more likely to download your out and just seen it on a screen shot so a lot of these publications are doing I don't think you wanna have is you want to make it easy for reporters to write about you you could do that by creating a little press kit now you could just google how to create a press kit a lot of same things they're going to be in there the things that you're kind of submitting to the app store you're gonna have in your press kit. So the icon, the screenshots, the video, a review guy that sort of talks a little bit more about thea. Your pitch to the reporters should be short, nice and sweet, but the review guide you can really gloat in that review, guys. So here's all the cool features in there. So you want that in the press kit and another reason why you want that is because publications are using this thes, this is ap advice. So really popular ap review site million monthly visitors so, you know, relatively small in the grand scheme of the tech blog's, but really tailored to just act. They do all app reviews, and they have been using these big old images in the reviews. And so have these, like really high resolution images in your press kit makes it easy for them to just say, oh, I'm gonna grab this from the press kit I'm gonna put that on my posts and I'm gonna write about you really, really makes it easy for them. Next is tell a good story so card alluding to this but when you're talking about unique selling point like that as part of the bit right you've got to tell a good story and some of the good stories come from you know some things that we like toe really think about our what's a unique selling points what's really really really different with your app to what's interesting about the founder sofer fit man cooked that hit number two the founder had a million followers on instagram so we leverage that you can leverage it's that's how you tell a good story like how do you let it for its social proof for some of our other clients they've been featured by apple maybe they've had partnerships with disney or whatever so you want to tell a good story sort of leverage some of the social proof because sometimes the apse all start looking very very similar and you can china stand out just by using some of social proof of your past so the other things that we've done in the past alice logic lines I'm a subject like brink so you can piggy off piggyback off of someone and these air exact subject lines that we've used for clients and we've gotten press on so if I took the the client's names off obviously if flappy word was an astronaut you know farmville meets candy crush this is like a match three type of game and snapchat meets jack that did fairly well so these air subject lines that I like to use when I'm reaching reporters because instantly they know a little bit about the up and then I can then once I've got their attention I can and make sure they know what's really different about my house next thing I wantto cover and things that most people don't know about our public oats so usually promo codes are for paid at you want to give your friend a hew hey here's a promo go check on my app right and it's you don't have to pay for it the one most people don't know is you can use it for free aps and I generally like to use promo codes for early access so carter alluded to this but there's usually a review wait time so you smith nap to apple about seven ten days before they actually review it they approve it then I set my apple launch date because then now I could get promo codes so when I'm reaching out to reporters I say hey you want to take a quick look at my app they say yes I say here's a promo code where you can download it and you can get you know there's forms out there we can give people early access using promo codes so it's for free aps but it gives them early access even though the apse not live in the app store you can give them a promo code so that it can download it before it goes live so here's the one growth act and this is generally we can do this general get about ten thousand downloads when we do this hack but one of my clients we got one hundred thousand downloads he wrote about it on the block post over a weekend it was phenomenal like it is great so this hack their general sound is the paid to free campaign all right so it's when you have a paid up and you make it free and it will just spiked downloads instantly there's a few big publications that cover it one is apt advice and this is my app I pitch this you got forty thousand downloads in a matter of a couple of days and so I just gave tyler who writes about this tyler on that advice I gave him exclusive just say hey tyler I'm going free tomorrow it's generally two dollars was two dollars in time but you can you know it's going free tomorrow and we got forty thousand dollars instantly this was a strategy that most my client or most money guess on the podcast tell me hey steve you know like I mean my up free for a week and I got a million dollars that's that's great I'm gonna try the strategy and it worked like holy cow it worked. I start thinking myself like we will be happy to vice covered it but what if I didn't hell anybody that I was going free and so I said all right I'm gonna try I'm gonna wait a little bit I'm not gonna tell anybody mark and you're not gonna know about this I I'm just not going to say a word and I'm gonna make it free and you can see this is like twenty thousand downloads close to it when an app advice covered it when I didn't tell a soul I think I got maybe two hundred I can tell the grafts heavily built small but it was very very small and so with this campaign you've got to make sure that you get press for appa devices one b j r is another you you have to get presses its hard it used to be back in the day when my guest told me there were these sites that just pick it up instantly but now it's like there's so many aps out there and a lot of people are using this strategy you've got to make sure you get press for it and that's how you can drive lots of money lots of downloads now I know what you're thinking hey lindsay you're like hey, I got a paid up what do I do? Well, you can make one of your purchase is free so that's another hack you can use if you want to leverage this strategy we've done that we've actually done this for a virtual good I didn't know if it was working up but ended up working that was like buy five coins for five coins when making this in that purchase it wasn't even that purchase per se you had to use virtual coins and it worked and they covered it but another great way to get press for this is to just give the site in exclusive so if you're pitching app advice tyler at advice given the excessive extensive the tyler this app is going free and it's going to increase the likelihood that you actually get covered from that site lasting I'll leave with last one but for some of the tools I really love using I love using banana tag so if you're using if you're reaching out to reporters I say look most of people come to me steve I reach I sent like one hundred emails nobody responded and said what's subject line would you use they open it I don't know the human mind and so banana tag allows you to track the cliques and opens and so I usually use that when I reach out to reporters that way I can test different subject lines of smaller publications and then when I find a winner I got to the bigger publications and I say hey here's the winning subject line and I make my pitch there that's any questions about pierre? I came in in the chat room here this is from apple in the chat room who has a question about pricing, and you had mentioned that you you picked the time to make your app free. Yes, it's kind of driving the pricing apple wants to know. Have you ever used the other tactic of hiking your prices up when you see a surge in traffic, and is there a way of doing that without, you know, kind of upsetting customers who may be paid less? Yeah, I mean you to do that, you've got to go into the app store to do it, and there is a new tool called the low down dot com that allows you to dynamically change that, and so it will run. Its own test will pick up data, and it will have kind of determine what the best price should be for your out. But it's, an sd kate that you can get installed in your phone. That's. Great. Any other questions here for steve? Any questions from you, carter. How did he? Dio was great it's, like, I'm ready to go to a press release. Thanks card, my steve. Awesome. I was. I was really, really helpful and steve's done really well. Del fi. Subscribe to his podcast and check him out. There's. Some really amazing information.