How to Market Your iPhone App: Tips and Strategies

I love surfing. It's exciting, it's exhillirating, and it's all timing but it's not. It's all timing, it's all positioning, and it's all skill. You must have all three down pat and perfect or you can't surf. Waves come in swells and they gang up on you in sets. Disruptive technology like epub3 and iphone apps follow the same natural rules as ocean waves.

If you're way out in front of the wave, it will peak before it catches up to you. And it will crash on top of your head like a thousand pianos dropping from a skyscraper. This is when you're on the bleeding edge of technology. If you're zoned out when a swell starts forming right beneath your belly, by the time you realize that there's a huge massive wave of technological shift, and try to catch up to it, you'll spend all your resources and even if you do get close enough to the face of the wave to drop in, the face will already be occupied. This is what happens when you're behind the curve.

The people who made the most amount of money in the iphone app space are the people who started building iphone apps when every body was asking, "what's an app?"

Here's how the iPhone app wave sounded like:

June 2007: 1. "iPhones are lame. Theres's no swappable battery, there's no keyboard, and the reception sucks. Steve is getting old. This will never take off."

(if you started to build your iphone app at this point, you'd be way too far ahead of the game. You'd be Tesla, not Einstein.)

July 2008: 2. "What's an app?"

(this is when you should have built your app and uploaded it to the itunes app store. If you did, you'd be rich. It's at this point that apple started to spend millions marketing the app store. They featured any old lame app just because they needed mantle-pieces to stoke your imagination. This is why the mirror app and coy pond app made their makers filthy, filthy, rich.)

(at this point, Apple Computer Corporation was your biggest marketing allie. They pushed you and you grew with Apple.)

March 2010: 3. "Why would anyone need an app? I have a laptop!"

(if you started building an app here, you can't get away with novelty apps like the mirror or coy pond. Your app had to be much more advanced and offer powerful utility like Instagram. This is because Apple started looking for world changing apps and started pushing them in their TV commercials and magazine ads and in the app store)

July 2011: 4. "Whoa, Apps are Cool!"

(if you realized how cool apps are when everyone else did, neither the apple app store or Apple computer are your allies. They are actually more like your enemies. If your app duplicates core features, they will block you. If your app touches on questionable content, they will block you. If your app functions below their fickle expectations, they will block you. If your app has a feature or functions in a way that slightly differs from what they expected from your written description, they will block you. This is because, Apple has all the apps they need to create market dominance over Android.)

(if you happen to get past all the gargoyles of the Nile and get into the Apple app store, now, you have a snow flake's chance of being found in any search because there are soooooo many apps with similar features)

January 2012: 5. "I Should Build An App Too, Before the World Ends"

(if you finally realized that apps are here to stay, (i remember when media professionals said the 'Information Super Highway' was just a fad) and you've got a fantastic app or app concept, remember that your biggest potential allie, Apple is no longer your allie. Now, you need new allies to stand above the fray).

Now, you need this:
IPhone App Marketing Tips

Got questions? Let's talk at http://sparkah.com/marketing.php

Bob Wan Kim, CEO
Sparkah LLC

2611 South PCH 101, #102
San Diego, CA 92007
310 598 1606