App Marketing Conversations: iOS7 and Your App

In this installment of App Marketing Conversations, our CEO, Ian Sefferman (@iseff) discusses iOS7 and how the new software will influence your app marketing. He is joined by Ryan Morel (@rmorel) of Gamehouse (@ghpartners) and Robi Ganguly (@rganguly) of Apptentive (@apptentive).

Transcription

Ian Sefferman: Welcome everybody to another installment of App Marketing Conversations. I’m here with Ryan Morel, Gamehouse and Robi Ganguly of Apptentive. I’m Ian Sefferman with DevHQ.

We’ve been talking a lot about the new iPhones this week and obviously everybody is sorta starting to get their hands on iOS7 now. From the marketer’s perspective and from MobibleDevHQ perspective, one of the interesting things is around the new App Store. There’s a bunch of new features that a couple of people have played with, the developer releases, but now they’re out. Let’s talk a little bit about today in the next five minutes, what are those features that are really interesting and how can a marketers take advantage of it.

So the first one, or maybe we’ll start with the first two which are actually editorially controlled, but I think provide a ton of value is featured, becoming featured and the new kids apps. Right? So let talk about featured Apps for a second. So what sort of a headline that you noticed as you opened up the App Store for featured Apps?

Ryan Morel: Well, frankly, it doesn’t look a whole lot different to me. I mean, I think there’s clearly more real estate, at least in my apps. What I actually noticed was that those featured apps are more prominent on the charts than I would have expected. Things like OmniFocus, which I’ve never seen anywhere on the charts show up right at the top grossing. It could be just people are playing with new apps [inaudible 0:01:48] they want to buy whatever it is. Or it could be that their feature is driving more downloads. Right? Because the feature was starting to tail off in terms of its importance.

Ian Sefferman: This week is sort of the equivalent of a Christmas Day. Right? Where it’s like if your app is smart enough, good enough, whatever, to get featured right now, you’re going to be . . .

Ryan Morel: Looking pretty good.

Ian Sefferman: Yeah, you’re looking pretty good. What are some of the top one to two tips of how to get featured for a new iOS?

Robi Ganguly: Well, I mean, I think that the clear thing here is you have to really jump all in on iOS7. Right? You have to understand how it works, how the apps, they redesign themselves, work and utilize the new operating system, and what you can do to show it off. If you can do something that really shows off a iOS7 that shows you’re committed to it, they’re likely to show it off as a good example of how, you know, iOS7 is something that other developers should switch to and consumers should be adopting. So I think that’s, you know, number one.

Number two is, on the flip side of that, you don’t want to rush. Right? Like, Apple is the worst [inaudible 0:03:07] system to rush in, partially because of their own doing. Right? They have delays around publishing your app. Those delays are going to get worse in the next three months. Right? So you’re not going to have as many windows if you put out bad stuff. I would say you need to be a little bit more careful of the quality.

Ian Sefferman: And I think the kids app, by the way, is exactly the same. You know, showing off great features for kids. Branding and design is like a huge portion of getting featured. Apple will never feature you if your design isn’t great . . .

Ryan Morel: Yeah.

Ian Sefferman: . . . and doesn’t match up with theirs. Okay. So those are sort of the editorially controlled ones. And then, you know, I think some of the more algorithmic ones that there’s been changes to. Top Charts has had changes. You guys have probably seen this a lot as well, where Rating is more important than the Top Charts now than it ever was.

Robi Ganguly: Yeah.

Ian Sefferman: How can developers use the new changes of Ratings in conjunction with, you know, what’s going on in iOS7 to jump in the charts?

Robi Ganguly: Well, I think you have a brand new customer base that you can potentially get to. If you’re jumping out of the depths of the charts, to the top, right, and get introduced to a totally new customer base. You have this huge opportunity to win them over. And we all say that, you know, listening to those customers really early on especially in a new iOS release is going to help you do two things. One, establish a relationship with the customers. Two, learn faster. Right? So it seems to me, you know, monumentally important to talk to your customers just so you can learn how iOS 7 will work for the consumer. Nobody knows. Right? For three and a half months we’ve had everybody and their mother in iOS land telling us what iOS7 meant. Nobody knows until 57 million consumers are using it everyday.

Ian Sefferman: Right.

Robi Ganguly: So, just listen to your customers.

Ian Sefferman: And lastly is the apps near me, the new apps near me feature of the App Store. So I’ll give you two data points since I was in two cities yesterday. In Chicago by my sister, the apps near me were the lotto update was number one. And the next four were Chicago Transit things. Here where we are, which is in the TechStars office surrounded by amazon. It is the Southlake Union Shuttle was number one, which, by the way, I don’t a clew what that is. Then the rest were Amazon Cloud Drive, Sunrise Calendar, Cody Fitness, they’re in the building. I forget what the last one was.

Ryan Morel: Yeah.

Ian Sefferman: Is near me, actually. Anything that marketers can take advantage of?

Ryan Morel: Well, my initial thought was no. But I think it’s something that I can start up, something to take advantage of. Right? So instead of, you know, it’s hard to control where your apps go. And it’s really hard to control how you acquire users. Location based advertising is expensive and, put paper out, install advertising on top of that. Now, you got even more expensive advertising. But if you’re talking about doing like a roll out plan of acquiring consumers, it’s pretty interesting. Right? Like, let’s see if we can go get a 1000 users Seattle.

I don’t know what the number is. But, if I get a 1000 users in Seattle, does that get me in the near me section? And then, can I drag more users my way? You know, it’s kind of, we, previous company we always have this belief that there will always be more people around you than you can ever possibly be friends with. That’s why location is more interesting than your social crap in terms of app downloads. So I think it’s interesting but it’s on a local level, or on a phase approach. Really, I’m not sure.

Ian Sefferman: Yeah, it becomes, I mean, this is a standard, like, physical retail store type strategy, where, like, test a location and move it to somewhere else. That goes back to sort of what Facebook did. Right? Start at Harvard, move to other Ivys, move broader colleges, move to high schools, move everywhere.

Robi Ganguly: Yeah. And I think another thing that you brought up as you’re talking about that that strikes me as a clear opportunity is; so, yeah, start ups, maybe you can benefit from this as a really grassroots marketing campaign. Franchise, chains, right, that have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars into building their apps . . .

Ryan Morel: Yeah.

Robi Ganguly: . . . in order to get people through the lines faster. Why aren’t they showing up in that list? Right?

Ian Sefferman: That’s good.

Robi Morel: Why I can’t I order specialties, or I can order from specialties, but why isn’t showing me that I can. Right. Oh, I didn’t know they had an app. ‘Boom’. Front of my desk, now I have that utility.

Ian Sefferman: Yeah. Which, by the way, specialties doesn’t have an app.

Robi Morel: Oh, okay. All right.

Ryan Morel: You can order in their store with an app . . .

Ian Sefferman: Yeah, exactly. They have an app on an iPad in their store, but there’s no app outside it.

Ryan Morel: Well, that’s an interesting point. So you wonder how much that . . . where’s the connection to potential payment opportunities?

Ian Sefferman: Yeah.

Ryan Morel: Like, hey, we’re going to start showing companies near me that have, that are connected to Apple payments, or whatever it is. That’s interesting.

Ian Seffeman: Yeah. All right. Great. So I think the top line is the new app store provides a bunch of new features. Those features are things that all marketers should be thinking about in some way. Be sure to watch all of the other videos. Like this video on YouTube. Subscribe to our channel. And, see you soon.