Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Jazmin,

The answer to your question is: It depends.

First, it depends on who you are trying to reach. Yes, I know, iPhone users, educational and professional use. Great. That's a broad spectrum from tweens to Gen Y to Boomers, consumers to business. If you want to perfectly hit ALL iPhone users, all you have to do is spend an infinite amount of money and you can do that! But, assuming you don't have all the money in the world, then you need to focus your efforts on who you want to reach.

The second thing it depends on is what you have tried and why you think you need more. I read blogs, SEO, PR and a few others. Are these methods working? Are they not working? Why? (On both accounts - working or not working) WHy did you pick those methods first?

The third thing it depends on is your geographical market location. Marketing iPhone apps in India will be vastly different than in Japan, the US, or Europe, or any other areas of the world. Also, this depends on where your selling - online, retail, mail order/catalog, door to door - or what?

The fourth thing it depends on is your budget in terms of time frame and money. "Typical methods" are what you named and a few others - like print ads, TV ads, radio ads, networking, co-marketing/fusion marketing, celebrity endorsement, seminars, trade shows, direct mail, telemarketing, direct sales, bill boards, email marketing, pay-per-click, buzz marketing, ambient media marketing, and "a few others." The cost and time to "take hold" of each of these is greatly different and more effective or less effective depending on the budget you have.

Assuming you are looking to the expertise of this forum for more than an unqualified brainstorm list of methods, please provide us with a few more details of your situation and we will join in on a discussion.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

iTunes

Jazmin,

I understand the need for confidentiality with your idea. I wasn't necessarily expecting you to publicly "fill in the blanks." More to the point, I was letting you know that any and all ideas we come up with for you here will be more of a menu of possibilities. However, this is NOT the way to decide what to try and what not to try. Some may be better than others for your product/customer intersection than others. We won't know that. You may have someone who coincidentally reads your question and has a vast amount of experience marketing iPhone applications to exactly your customer target - but I would doubt that will happen. You will get a bunch of us who happen to be in love with a particular methodology and wish to sing it praises today and we'll bend it around until it seems to fit your needs - maybe. Great! Take it for all it's worth. Probably not much.

However. Your marketing activities should be planned out of a concrete and well thought out strategy, not something that sounds interesting and you sort of try to see if they work. Cost effective is not a good way to judge them - you should be working on return on investment. You get return on investment in Marketing by having a clearly defined customer segment you are aiming at, you know their needs very, very well, you know how the competitors miss satisfying those needs, your core competency and how it enables you to meet those needs better than the competition, what your customers' influencers are (pictures and words that emotionally impact your client toward a "buy" decision), and how they find information about your products and services. This analysis is best done with your target customers, not marketing experts. Based on that primary research (with sprinklings of secondary research upfront to develop ideas and then prove out with primary research) you develop product/market strategies, brand strategies, sales strategies, and so forth. This leads to a marketing plan that ties to the strategy and analysis and will maximize your marketing ROI. By adding goals and measurements, you can review your results and take action to make course corrections to improve your ROI.

Maybe you have this also. If so, I apologise for being so lengthy. If not, this is an excellent way to find those marketing activities that will be most effective (without giving away your secrets to us).

Wayde

As you know, the goal is to communicate your marketing message to your target market. Given you market, you might try to reach these people via Facebook, university newspaper ads, blogs that they commonly read, or even PPC ads (based on specific search terms that they'd use).