New app - how to market?

publicious

Greetings,

I have just developed a new app. It's for use in pubs.

It took me about ten days to develop and I'm pretty happy with it.

I have a serious marketing problem though... I'm not a marketing type and don't really know what to do from here.

Anyone have any tips?

The Apprentice

Get it published into the App store.. and walk away ..

publicious

Walk away?!

I guess I've a good bit of shoe leather to wear. I'd like to pitch my idea to a few pubs. Anyone know how best to go about this?

I should say that this app works in any pub in the world. I'd love to get it rolled out into a few local pubs first (the type of customer is one who owns a smartphone) and then try the Wetherspoons of this world.

Axwell

You havent said what kind of app it is, is it promotional, a game, of use to the pub owner or just a bit of fun for the consumer?

That marketing approach is completely different depending on this and if the app is worthwhile or not and brings something innovative to the table.

Axwell

The Apprentice wrote: »

Get it published into the App store.. and walk away ..

If you are going to post something like this give an explanation to the person or else dont bother posting at all because its unhelpful and pointless.

publicious

Axwell wrote: »

You havent said what kind of app it is, is it promotional, a game, of use to the pub owner or just a bit of fun for the consumer?

That marketing approach is completely different depending on this and if the app is worthwhile or not and brings something innovative to the table.

It's of use to the pub owner. It also has a promotional element to it. It also has some fun features for the customer.

Stamply

Extremely difficult to market this kind of thing without footfall. I've tried for the past 2 years, working on the SME retail market.

You need to go out and talk to them. Before building the app, did you go out and talk to publicans? Are/were you ever a publican/pub manager? Have you ever worked in a pub?

In February/March, I was trying to develop something for the same market, so I got on my bike (actually, the bus) and walked around the whole of south county Dublin and the city centre to talk to 80 retailers. You first build out the concept, prototype it (pen and paper, in consultation with people in your target market), refine it, iterate, design a new prototype (in Balsamiq.com), bring it back to more people, different people and new ones, and present your case as firmly as possible.

You literally have to walk in and disturb people. What they sometimes do is make you wait. If you sit down and buy a coffee/tea and wait for them to have a slow period they will respect the fact that you respected the fact that they are busy people and only want to deal with you if you're serious.

Now you have a product built, but the chances of that being the WRONG PRODUCT for your market (without that rigorous prototyping phase) are quite high. Prototyping also helps build a relationship with merchants over time that gives you a nice test bed for bug-fixing before you try to push out further.

Facebook are currently touting the best return on advertising investment for app developers. You can research that yourself, I wouldn't vouch because I think the FB marketers are full of wind sometimes, but the fact is that you can target advertising on FB to people who own or work in bars. If you want to spend a bit of money on advertising that could be a good way to go.

But first I would say hit the pavement and start disturbing people. They will quickly tell you if your product is **** or not.

I've worked on two startups before and have taught myself to code and design (badly) but I am mainly a product/project manager type, with experience prototyping and talking to potential customers. If you want to have a chat about your particular case PM me.

One final (critical) point is that if you have built this app to change their business processes in any way, like if you want the publicans to pay you for it, then you can expect a strong headwind. In my experience, retailers, unlike consumers, make more calculated and conservative decisions about taking on any new software or hardware to manage their business. They want their entire system to go through the same company, so they have one set of guys to go and give a bollocking to if anything breaks. They don't want to deal with a bunch of different providers of essential systems.

Best of luck with it,
C

publicious

Stamply wrote: »

Extremely difficult to market this kind of thing without footfall. I've tried for the past 2 years, working on the SME retail market.

You need to go out and talk to them. Before building the app, did you go out and talk to publicans? Are/were you ever a publican/pub manager? Have you ever worked in a pub?

In February/March, I was trying to develop something for the same market, so I got on my bike (actually, the bus) and walked around the whole of south county Dublin and the city centre to talk to 80 retailers. You first build out the concept, prototype it (pen and paper, in consultation with people in your target market), refine it, iterate, design a new prototype (in Balsamiq.com), bring it back to more people, different people and new ones, and present your case as firmly as possible.

You literally have to walk in and disturb people. What they sometimes do is make you wait. If you sit down and buy a coffee/tea and wait for them to have a slow period they will respect the fact that you respected the fact that they are busy people and only want to deal with you if you're serious.

Now you have a product built, but the chances of that being the WRONG PRODUCT for your market (without that rigorous prototyping phase) are quite high. Prototyping also helps build a relationship with merchants over time that gives you a nice test bed for bug-fixing before you try to push out further.

Facebook are currently touting the best return on advertising investment for app developers. You can research that yourself, I wouldn't vouch because I think the FB marketers are full of wind sometimes, but the fact is that you can target advertising on FB to people who own or work in bars. If you want to spend a bit of money on advertising that could be a good way to go.

But first I would say hit the pavement and start disturbing people. They will quickly tell you if your product is **** or not.

I've worked on two startups before and have taught myself to code and design (badly) but I am mainly a product/project manager type, with experience prototyping and talking to potential customers. If you want to have a chat about your particular case PM me.

One final (critical) point is that if you have built this app to change their business processes in any way, like if you want the publicans to pay you for it, then you can expect a strong headwind. In my experience, retailers, unlike consumers, make more calculated and conservative decisions about taking on any new software or hardware to manage their business. They want their entire system to go through the same company, so they have one set of guys to go and give a bollocking to if anything breaks. They don't want to deal with a bunch of different providers of essential systems.

Best of luck with it,
C

Greetings,

Many thanks for the message. You're right about asking the customer what they want/need. This is a whole new idea and I think I have to communicate to pub owners how my app can integrate into their business. I'm going do a few cold calls this week and try to arrange a couple of appointments. I can easily feed back any information I learn into the app itself. I've only invested a couple of days of my life into this app so a few more tweaks here and there shouldn't be too much trouble.

onedmc

publicious wrote: »

Walk away?!

I guess I've a good bit of shoe leather to wear. I'd like to pitch my idea to a few pubs. Anyone know how best to go about this?

I should say that this app works in any pub in the world. I'd love to get it rolled out into a few local pubs first (the type of customer is one who owns a smartphone) and then try the Wetherspoons of this world.

Call the vintners federation or the other pub associations, get some advice from them. Maybe they have a newsletter or an event that you could sponsor a table at.

publicious

Meeting an MBA student tomorrow... Don't know if this is a good or bad idea...

How to do cold calling? I've never done it before. I got really nervous just before some calls during the week. I think I might have left a *bad* impression at one or two places.

TsuDhoNimh

publicious wrote: »

Meeting an MBA student tomorrow... Don't know if this is a good or bad idea...

It depends. It could be fantastic, but only if it's the right person. The fact that they're an MBA student is far from enough to suggest that they are the right person, so it's impossible for any of us to comment. You'd potentially gain as much or even more talking randomly to anyone in any pub in the country.

publicious wrote: »

I got really nervous just before some calls during the week. I think I might have left a *bad* impression at one or two places.

If you genuinely believe in your product and can put that across in a meeting/discussion, it'll go a long way towards convincing others of its value. If you are nervous and/or uncomfortable in the discussion, it'll give others a poor first impression of the app and the person behind it.

Your best bet is to start off with a few face to face meetings. That would hopefully be more within your comfort zone and easier than cold calling for you. As you gain more experience both talking about the product and talking to bar owners, you'll be far more confident in your phone discussions too.

As you're trying to market an app, you're looking to market to owners that understand the value that something like this will carry (or at least these are the owners most likely to be early adopters of such an app). These owners are likely to be the ones that actively engage in social platforms (like Facebook or Twitter) already, so using that as a means of manual outreach is one potential avenue to look at for your specific market (I'm slightly guessing at this, as I'm not actually sure what the app proposes to do... so I could be off the mark slightly and it could be the case that you're actually aiming for the opposite and providing a means of digital activity for the owners who currently aren't utilising any means of digital marketing?).

amjon.

You should go to some of the more upmarket, fancy pubs in Dublin. Filled with hipsters with their iPhones and all the other associated trinkets of their dickheadedry.

dandaman2764

If you give me a better idea of what the app does I may be interested in buying it off you if you're interested?