For those that don’t know me, my career has been spent building developer relations programs and working with 3rd party developers to build applications. I have worked at brands such as Microsoft, Skype, Symbian and Nokia working with the developer community for marketing and application generation.
Since developers don’t necessary make the best marketers, today I thought I would offer up some quick start marketing tips for developers who have created their augmented reality application and want a head start with the marketing.
Firstly the obvious, it goes without saying that you should create a blog to engage with your potential customers. You don’t need to blog every day, but putting out content once a week will reap rewards. The web has a long memory so any blogs you post will get indexed by search engines and continue to drive users to your website for years to come. You should also use twitter. Don’t tweet every 30 seconds about your application being available, but a few ‘relevant’ tweets a day will help you get users. Be sure to include a URL to drive traffic to your download page to make it easy for your customers. To make life even easier, if you use Wordpress use one of the free plugin’s that automatically tweet when you post.
Hashtags.
Hashtags are essential in making sure your tweet gets to the right audience. Some good tags to use are #augmentedreality #ar and depending on your platform #iphoneapps or #androidapps. If you have written a Layar, Wikitude World or Junaio channel, make sure you tweet at the relevant platform provider as well so it can be re-tweeted easy.
YouTube
I search YouTube almost daily to see what has been tagged as ‘augmented reality’. Putting together a 1 minute video might take you a couple of hours, but you’ll be surprised at how quickly it can go viral.
Bloggers
The hardest thing about blogging is finding something to blog about. Sometimes there is an abundance of news, other times it’s a struggle. I’m sure I speak for every blogger that writes about augmented reality when I say this, but if you have a cool app, tells us about it. By telling bloggers about your application it will get picked up by the widest possible audience. We don’t bite, and I for one really like to hear what people are building. (Our email is on the contacts page).
Competitions
You want users to install your app, bloggers want traffic to read their blog. So offering a blogger a few promo codes to give away on their blog is a win – win and before you know it you’ll be re-tweeted all over twitter.
Events
If you’re a small company then running your own event and getting it well attended will be pretty difficult. But do look out on websites like Eventbright and Meetup and see what relevant events are running. Once you find something of interest contact the organiser to see if you can get a 5 minute speaking slot to launch/talk about your app. Lookout for Augmented Planet events as we always like to have the community talk about new applications.
Advertising
Look at advertising on a relevant blog. Having your advert appear on a blog with relevant content is far better than paying for a Google ad campaign where you have no control over where you banner appears. Don’t be afraid to haggle with the blogger over the cost. Most bloggers would be more than happy to give you a discount as they’ll be looking to keep you as an advertiser long term.
Newsletters
Like blogging regularly, newsletters are hard work putting together. Authors are often looking for content so make it easy for them by asking if you can submit a article. Even big companies like Forum Nokia and Orange struggle for unique, relevant content so a well timed email could give you access to an audience of hundreds of thousands of potential customers.
Social Networks
LinkedIn in particular has numerous groups for augmented reality enthusiast, so ensure you post your news there as well.
Like most things with marketing, a lot of it is fairly straight forward. Make sure you use a stats program like Google Analytics so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully these tips will help even the most marketingothobic developer out there get off to a good start with telling the world about their creations.
Code may be poetry, but marketing is art.
