Launch

The big day is finally here. It's been a week and you've researched your audience, created your business, and outlined and built an app. You've done about as much in 7 days as some companies do in 7 years.

You are on a lean, mean, app-building budget and you've come incredibly far to get to this point.

Now it's time to take everything you just learned and put it into play – to launch your app and see how it performs.

Scary stuff, right?

Don't worry about it. Like I said, most people fail at this point.

You certainly don't want to fail, but the bar isn't that high – just building something and getting it out there to solicit feedback is more than most developers ever accomplish.

You are light years ahead of the competition. Now it's time to really smoke them by getting your app into the hands of users.

The goal here is to accomplish two things:

1. Feedback
2. Growth

You need people to tell you what they really think so you can fix the app and make it better, and you need to drive user acquisition through word of mouth and eventually good marketing. It all starts here on day one of your launch.

Your First Feedback

All that said, let's stack the deck a little.

Let's get feedback from people who know you and like you and that you won't feel horrible about if the app fails completely. These are your alpha, beta, and first run testers and whether they are 100% honest or not, their feedback is invaluable.

These are your friends and family and they are going to provide the best insights you'll receive in the early days.

Why is this important?

Keep in mind that on average only 1 in 200 users actually provides any form of feedback when using a piece of software – and an actual comment or written response is closer to 1 in 1,000. So to get significant written feedback about how your app performs, you'd need thousands of users.

That's not going to happen on day one.

And yet, you need feedback. You need to know that this thing does what you've promised and does it well.

That's where friends and family come in.

Here's what to do:

1. Make them install and use it – on as many devices as the app is designed to run on
2. Watch them over their shoulder at first and then let them use it alone and log results
3. Get feedback – ask for immediate, direct feedback on their experiences and what they were able to accomplish
4. Take notes – when they test alone, as them to take notes independently.

What if you don't have enough friends or family to really get the feedback you need at this stage?

Fortunately, plenty of other people are in the same boat as you and there are services designed to help provide that feedback.

Paid testing services allow you to gather specific data about your app more rapidly than waiting for actual users or even friends and family (who may be busy or intimidated by the process).

Using Paid Testing Services

These sites are amazing, but can also be expensive, so you need a plan before signing on – specific questions you need answered and the kind of data you ultimately want to walk away with.

The goal here is twofold:

1. Can a large group of users break your app quicker than just you and your partner(s)?
2. What does a random group of users think about both the usability and ultimate functionality of the app?

By using a service like this you can learn more about how your app performs on a structural and design level. Which is why you need a clear plan in place.

Here are some tips for how to create the questions that will get you to the root of those two things:

• Avoid Jargon – Don't assume anything. Keep it simple and direct, avoiding any of the terms you use to describe your app amongst yourselves. Define everything and err on the side of assuming they have no idea what you are talking about.
• Be Incredibly Specific? – Define timelines, use patterns and other specifics whenever asking questions. Instead of asking someone how many times they used the app, ask them "how many times did you use the app over a period of 1 hour?" Instead of asking "what version of iOS are you using?" ask them to "Open settings and click on General>About. Please copy the exact version number of the iOS currently installed". Specificity is vital for these kinds of tests.
• Make it Clear What You Want Someone Looking At – In your test, define exactly what screen and what action you want someone to be reviewing when they answer a specific question. For website usability testing, breadcrumbs are frequently used along with screenshots. You can do something similar – showing them your drawings or a screenshot of what you want them to be reviewing when you ask a specific question.
• Be Aware of Subjective Questions – If you ask how something makes a user feel, expect a wide range of answers. Different things make different people happy (and angry) and your questions need to be as tightly defined as possible to get the kind of response that will actually be helpful.

Most important of all, don't be afraid to ask too many questions. Asking 3-5 questions that encompass everything you need to know about your app is a sure way to get vague answers that don't help much (and you're paying just as much for the privilege of those answers). Ask as many specific, detailed questions as you can and the answers will be specific in turn.

One way to gauge how specific to be is to start at a point that is comfortable but not too in-depth. This will ensure a larger number of answers. You can then get more specific as you revise your tests, but keep in mind that these sites are not free. The more you do this, the more it will cost.

As for where to run these tests, there are several sites that offer the kind of in-depth user testing you need to really get to the heart of what your users experience when using your app. Here are some of my favorites:

• UsabilityHub.com
• UserTesting.com
• UsabilityTools.com

Most offer similar services, but make sure the site you select is one that works with apps as well as websites – some services only work with only-ready content on a website or web app. If yours requires a third party device, it may not work with the platform.

Getting Your First Customers

The data you get from usability testing will be invaluable, but as long as the app isn't broken, you don't need to do anything with it right away. For now, the goal is to get your first paying customers – people who will give you money to use your app.

This is where it all pays off, and trust me, the feeling of your first paying customer is unbelievable – nothing like it in this business.

But you have to get them first, and without a five figure marketing budget to make it happen, the process can seem daunting at first. Fortunately, there are several things you can do that either cost nothing or very little to jump start the process – from incredibly targeted advertising to carefully curated word of mouth.

Two Paths to Early Customers

Customer acquisition for a small company with no budget launching its first app is tricky. Without a bunch of money or an existing install base to contact, you have two options. You either:

• Pay for those users

Or:

• Attract them through word of mouth

The first set of tactics we're going to look at relates to actually going out and paying for users – investing in the initial base of people who will use your app, share it, and hopefully help it grow. From there, we'll look at how to leverage those first few users (or skip over this step entirely if you're out of cash), and drive some serious word of mouth about your app.

Advertising Options on a Budget

If you haven't noticed, the Internet is one big box of advertisements, with occasional bits of interesting or funny content mixed in.

Seriously, though, it's a huge opportunity, not just because of its reach but because of how targeted you can make your ads. Gone are the days when you have to pay thousands of dollars to reach a large audience in the hope that a few of those people will convert and download your app.

You can get incredibly specific and target people based on age, location, gender, employment, education, interests, pages followed, sites visited, and dozens of other factors.

The end result is the opportunity to advertise to a much smaller group of people who are more likely to actually be interested in your app. It's powerful, but it's also complicated and requires a bit of time to setup, or you're going to be out a boat load of cash.

In reality there are thousands of ways to run ads online, but for our purposes, I'm going to break it down to three:

• CPA Networks – These ad networks allow others to place ads to your content on their site and get paid a set amount per "action" taken. You decide how much that action is worth. If your app costs $10 for example, you might set your CPA at $5 for a successful download. It's entirely up to you, but keep in mind that the market will dictate if it's worth placing those ads. If they don't convert, people won't want to run your ads.
• CPM Display Ads – CPM means Cost Per 1,000 Impressions, and applies to pretty much any form of display advertising you see on the Internet. The banners, the blocks, the ads on Facebook or Twitter – they all come in a CPM variant. The cost for 1,000 impressions is pretty low (usually less than $1), but the odds are against you actually getting many conversions out of these.
• CPC Ads – The CPC ad (cost per click) is the reason Google makes $50 billion a year in profit from their ad networks. When you run a CPC ad campaign, you pay only if someone clicks on that ad. The catch? The cost of a single click can be quite high. In some niches like app downloads, you can expect anywhere between $0.50-$3 for a single click. So you'd better be sure that when someone clicks, they are going to convert and buy your app, about 20% of the time.

There are a lot of networks for all of these types of ads, but for the type of hyper-targeting, low budget advertising you'll want to do, I recommend sticking with the big boys, which include:

• Facebook
• Google
• YouTube
• iOS/Android

You'll notice that this is really just three companies and that Google has placement on three of the four. There's a reason for this – their ad networks are the most sophisticated and powerful on the planet and allow you the kind of targeting that you won't find anywhere else.

At the same time, this stuff isn't magic. A LOT of people lose a LOT of money advertising online because they assume it will be easy.

And worse yet, Facebook and Google make it look really easy. The setup process for a new ad campaign takes less than 15 minutes if you follow their automated steps. It's a quick path to losing a lot of cash really fast.

How Much Should You Spend?

So the big question then is how much should you spend? A lot of people ask this question and it's not always clear what the best option is. My opinion is that you set a budget based on the following:

• How much do you make when you sell your app?
• How much do you think that one user will be worth over a lifetime?
• How much profit do you want to make early?

For a single app with no additional features this is pretty simple.

If it costs $10 and you have nothing else to sell them, then your revenue is $10 (minus whatever the app store's cut is, usually 30%). Let's say you have $7 to work with and you're okay walking away with $0.50 per download in the early going, just to get your user base up a bit.

So you can spend up to $6.50 per new user, at least until you either further monetize your app or until you raise the price or starting getting new users through word of mouth.

On average, a CPC campaign will cost you about $0.75/click. It might be a bit lower on Facebook and a bit higher on Google, but you'll be in that ballpark, so out of every 8 clicks, you need one person to buy your app – that's a 12.5% conversion rate, which for the record is kind of high.

Before your head starts to spin with all these numbers, let's simplify.

Don't spend more than you make in the early going – try to straddle that line and shave of as much as you can. If you can get cheaper ads, go for it. If you are comfortable taking less profit, do it. The goal here is users early, but don't go broke getting them.

At the same time, determine how many users you want to have to consider this a success. If you're paying for 100% of your user base via ads and you make no profit doing so, eventually this is only going to cost you money as bug complaints and requests start pouring in. Figure out how many people to get on board early and set that as your budget.

Word of Mouth Outreach

One of the most effective ways to build an audience is to let them talk to each other. Word of mouth is the least expensive, most natural, and highest converting form of marketing out there, but it's not exactly easy to engineer.

You can't stand on a street corner and tell people to tell others about your app.

It either needs to be really freaking amazing and generate word of mouth on its own, and even then being good is only a fraction of the formula. You also need to get incredibly lucky.

Build it and they won't necessarily come. You need to do something to spark a fire that can then spread to people who may buy your app.

Fortunately, the Internet is a networkers dream come true – with several resources perfect for doing just this.

Making a List of Influencers

Here's how this works.

The Internet is full of personalities – people who have made a name for themselves by creating educational, funny, or just plain interesting content.

Maybe they're on YouTube, maybe they write reviews for a major blog, or maybe they post funny pictures on a Facebook Page.

The common trait is that they have an audience. They have influence over a large number of people, and when someone has that influence over an audience that you want to access, they are your primary target.

So the first step is to create a list of these people. They should be:

• People who produce content your ideal customer likes
• People who have previously reviewed or previewed apps on their channels
• People who know or speak about software, mobile, apps, or the specific niche in which your software solves problems
• People with a reach of at least 5,000 (preferably in the 15,000-30,000 range)

Build a list of these people and you have your seed – somewhere to start that allows you to start attracting a larger audience of potential customers.

Contacting Your Influencers

Once you have a list, it's time to start sending emails.

You'll need contact information, but again, this is why the Internet is so amazing. Most people will have contact details on their website, Facebook Page, Twitter profile, or any of a dozen other places they spend time.

Add that contact information to your list of influencers, in a spreadsheet if you're not too averse to using them.

Now, you need to send a few emails.

The goal here is not to beg someone or faun over them obsessively. Tell them the truth, offer them something you think their audience will enjoy, and ask them to provide coverage.

There are three rules for doing this:

1. Know the audience and the platform – Don't write to someone until you've spent at least some time reviewing their site and getting to know what they produce and who they produce it for.
2. Personalize everything – The fastest way to end up in the spam box is to write something that reads like a form letter. If it feels canned, it will be ignored, and the larger the audience, the more likely people are scrutinizing everything that comes in.
3. Don't Be Afraid to Follow-up – Keep a list of every message you send and follow-up if you don't hear back. The more people these influencers interact with, the more email they get and the harder it is for them to follow-up. Don't be afraid to send a second message a week later. If you use Outlook or Gmail, download and install Sidekick – an app from Hubspot that will tell you when someone opens your email so you can know if they are avoiding replying or just never saw your message.

The goal is to instantly create a connection. Don't push your luck and you'll be able to do just that.

What to Ask When You Connect with an Influencer

The relationship between an influencer and a product creator is symbiotic, and most of these people don't do it for the money (at least not when recommending products).

They review or promote a product because they like it or they think it will help their audience.

Your message needs to pitch the value of what you're offering in terms of what that influencer's readers, listeners, or viewers are going to be interested in. And that's not always a review. Here are a few things you should consider pitching depending on what they are using:

• Guests Posts – Blog runners have to post a lot of content to stay relevant. For mid-sized blogs especially this means relying heavily on guest authors. If you're trying to reach the audience of a site that accepts guest posts this is a fantastic, organic way to do it. Don't blind pitch a guest post, though. Look for sites that say they accept guest posts or that have posted them in the past. Then pitch your post with the audience in mind.
• Reviews – This is the first instinct of most product creators – asking for a review. Pitch your review quest, always thinking in terms of how it benefits them and their audience.
• Free Downloads – You probably won't get a review if you do this but if you've already gotten a review from an influencer or if you just want to reach their audience, offering a free download key is a great way to do it.
• Interviews – If they do interviews (this is big for podcasts especially), volunteer your expertise and experience in creating the app and ask if they'll interview you. This is great, free exposure and gives you the chance to pitch your product actively.

The list goes on but these are the most common things you can realistically ask someone to do when promoting your app. Do your research and match your request to their audience – they'll appreciate it and your positive responses will go up substantially.

The Oldest Influencers – The Press

The last bit I want to touch on related to targeting influencers is PR. A press release is roughly the same now as it's been for the last 50 years, with a few exceptions. First, you can reach thousands of people in a few seconds online, and you can target much more closely to your audience.

The downside? Sending a press release can cost you a few bucks. Getting it into full distribution can cost upwards of $400 on a site like PRweb.com and that doesn't guarantee coverage. There are some free sites, but the distribution is much worse on those sites and the time it takes to follow-up with more niche sites makes them not worth it.

Should you use press releases then?

If you have a website to promote, the answer is yes. If you are driving all traffic to an App store, consider waiting until you have more word of mouth and something online to promote.

The Long Term Approach

Everything above is about the short term – getting people to download your app now. To become your customers now.

But what about the long game. Surely, it's not all about right now? Here are some tips to help you build an audience over time that will support the growth of your new business.

Demo Videos and Walkthroughs

You don't need a website for this, but I recommend building one as soon as you have some downtime and a bit of spare cash or the coding knowledge to slap one together (heck, you can buy a $30 WordPress template on ThemeForest.com and have a site up by tonight if you want).

As soon as you do have a site though, or if you have created a YouTube channel, start demoing your app. Show people how it works, what features are available, how to dig into the more detailed features of the app, and how to get more out of it.

There are two goals here.

First, these demos are great marketing tools if someone is looking for a tool to solve a specific problem you address in the walkthrough.

Second, they help your users get the most out of your app, which in turn creates happier users who give more positive reviews and boost word of mouth. It's a win-win-win.

Viral Landing Pages

If you're not ready for a website, at the very least you need a way to show people what you're selling online.

A quick viral landing page requires very little writing and can be created from a template in 30 minutes. LaunchRock.com is one of the best sites for this, offering hundreds of templates for viral landing pages that you can then promote with the advertising methods listed above or the social media methods coming up next.

This gives you a website to drive traffic to with your paid advertising, a way to capture email addresses and send updates on your software, and a way to showcase all those amazing demo videos you are creating.

All with limited investment of time or money into a full scale website before you know if your app is going to succeed.

Social Media

This is last for a reason. Social media is a huge time sink and filled with vanity metrics. You can get 10,000 followers on Twitter and not sell a single app, because followers don't equal customers.

This is one of the biggest mistakes made in business. People go down the road of easy wins and social media is the easiest of easy wins.

All that said, having a strong social presence is still a good idea for a fledgling company like yours.

So for now, you should do the following:

• Create accounts you plan to build up over time (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+)
• Link to each of these where applicable in your app help materials
• Link them to your phone so that you can answer questions quickly when someone asks something

More than ever before, people turn to social media for customer service. Use it to answer quick questions and show how awesome you are at supporting your product. That's about as much as you can hope to get out of social media right now.

It seems to be impossible to solve but it's actually easy to solve a Rubik' Cube using algorithms.