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Success Report: July 2016 (Another Apple Feature)

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The bottom line

A great, different app is what earns an Apple feature and press coverage, and a smart pitch raises the odds. Of five July 2016 launches, one was featured by Apple and two got major coverage.

Key takeaways

  • Building a great, different app makes marketing much easier. 11:12
    • A word game that blends Words with Friends and solitaire was featured by Apple in 12 countries, including Canada and Australia.
    • Its developer had worked on it for years, and the hardest part is still building the great app, not marketing it.
  • The right story angle is what gets reporters excited. 4:48
    • Storyo builds videos from photo metadata, and a crafted angle got it onto Adweek's Social Times.
    • Adweek's blog channel has 11 million monthly visitors, according to Similar Web.
  • Giving a big site the exclusive increases the chance of big coverage. 9:14
    • It takes a lot of time to execute, but it keeps working and landed a lot of big coverage.
    • It is not always necessary and it guarantees nothing.
  • Emailing Apple's generic app store promotion address early puts the app in front of the right person. 8:19
    • People at WWDC said someone checks that address and forwards each email to the right contact.
    • Use it as soon as a TestFlight build is ready.
  • Even with all of this, only a few apps get featured. 11:47
    • Out of hundreds of launches, only a select few get an Apple feature or coverage on TechCrunch.
    • In July, one of five launches (20%) was featured by Apple, and all five got some coverage.

If you build a great app, Apple will feature it, the press will cover it.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 The Apple feature win

A soft launch and a self-sufficient developer set up the Apple feature.

  • A complex social word game was soft launched in a few countries first. 2:20
    • It wasn't a casual app, and a lot of technology sits behind it.
    • Steve advised testing in a few countries before the full launch.
    • The Apple feature had been in the works for a couple of months.
    • The five July launches had different prices and different types of involvement.
  • A developer who runs his own growth makes the agency's work count. 2:55
    • Jonas handled Facebook ads and the first downloads himself.
    • The agency pitched Apple and the press.
    • Steve calls him a pure joy to work with and wants him on the podcast.
    • Jonas is an indie developer who built the technology himself.

3:26 Press wins at Pocket Gamer and Social Times

Press coverage comes from fit with the outlet and a fresh story, not from an announcement alone.

  • Pocket Gamer covered a client once the app was the right fit. 3:28
    • The agency had wanted that site for a long time.
    • They pitched the site directly and landed the coverage.
    • It was a site the agency had never landed before.
    • Steve wants every client on big sites like it.
  • Storyo needed a new story because similar apps already existed. 4:48
    • The app was already live when Steve met its founder.
    • They shaped the story together to win the Social Times coverage.
    • Steve told the founder over coffee that he had seen a few similar apps, but this one was done well.
    • The Social Times reporter, Brandy, is someone the agency works with a lot.

5:53 Paid to free and the July tally

Paid to free is a proven growth tactic, and Steve is looking at performance pricing to chase bigger coverage.

  • A paid to free campaign worked on Steve's own app and a friend's. 5:53
    • Steve ran it for Paintball Rush, which China featured in May 2016.
    • He ran the same campaign for a friend the week before, who called it amazing.
    • Steve says it isn't as simple as it looks, because the campaign has barriers.
    • He has a written case study of the campaign.
  • Performance-based pricing could push for bigger coverage on every launch. 7:38
    • The idea is a base price plus more if a client lands a really big site.
    • All five apps got coverage, but not always the biggest.
    • Steve wants every client featured by Apple, and that didn't happen in July.
    • He says he is exploring all angles to get the biggest coverage.

8:35 Finding the right person at Apple

The generic Apple address is the main route in, and older tricks for finding a contact still work beside it.

  • Other ways to reach the right Apple contact still work, but the generic address comes first. 8:55
    • Steve has shared other clever ways to find the right person before.
    • His team has built these into a full strategy.
    • He plans to teach that strategy in an upcoming mini course.
    • The Apple trick and the exclusive method are both written up in earlier posts.

9:58 Hiring a virtual assistant

A good virtual assistant frees time for the work only the founder can do.

  • Hiring Mary in the Philippines took calendar and client chores off Steve's plate. 9:58
    • Mary is the newest team member. She manages his calendar and tasks for clients.
    • He found her on Virtual Staff Finder, which sent him the three best applicants and saved him from sifting through them.
    • He learned just in time from Chris Ducker's book Virtual Freedom.
    • He followed Ducker's guidance on interview questions and on what to do after hiring.

11:08 Hype versus the hard part

Marketing skill cannot replace a great idea, and building that idea is the hard part.

  • Praise for a marketer can set other developers up for disappointment. 11:40
    • Jonas praised Steve in a Facebook group. Steve told him to stop.
    • Steve has seen hundreds of launches, and few get featured.
    • Jonas answered that with a good app, Steve can do wonders with it.
    • Steve thinks Storyo is another app that Apple should feature.
  • Steve finds building a great app harder than marketing one. 12:17
    • He knows a great app when he sees one and knows he can market it.
    • He is unsure he could come up with the brilliant idea himself.
    • To learn it, he asks podcast guests about their process, thinking and mentality.
    • He says the app has to be different for success to come.

12:53 Tool of the month: ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is more than a landing page builder, because it builds whole sales funnels.

  • ClickFunnels builds a complete funnel, not just a page. 13:01
    • Steve built his paid-to-free campaign page with it.
    • It has beautiful templates and a lot of A/B testing. Upsells and downsells are built in.
    • He tried it after hearing so much about it.
    • He says it suits collecting emails and building quick, good-looking landing pages.
    • He says he gets nothing from the company for recommending it.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, app marketing agency. A monthly wins and losses report from an app marketing agency that helped launch five apps in July 2016, with practical lessons on pitching Apple for a feature and landing press. One launch was featured by Apple in 12 countries, and two of the five got major press coverage.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript465 lines
0:00

coming up i'm going to share our wins and losses from july 2016 including a tip on how you can get featured by apple stay tuned that was weird what'd i do thumbs up

0:26

what is up app nation it is steve p young founder of appmasters.co and i'm changing the format a little bit this is unedited unfiltered just raw success report is what we're going to call it and kind of showing you some of the lessons from our previous month the wins the losses and everything in between holding nothing back and sharing with you what's really working in the app space so in july 16 we had five app launches and i want to be upfront with you because as i'm sharing the wins i want you to be i want you to have the knowledge of how many apps we actually help launch these were all different prices and different types of launches that we were involved with but at the same time these were five that we were involved in all right let's go to some of the wins and the biggest one let's start with the biggest let's not hold anything back let's go straight into the biggest win we helped one of these app launches

1:31

qualified get featured by apple and it was something that's been in the works for a couple of months now we were working with jonas and his team to really bring it together and it's a phenomenal app a great word game that you have to check out it's called bali fide but it combines the best of words with friends and solitaire so really fun game and jonas has been working on this game for years now and i'm so super excited to have helped him get it featured by apple in 12 countries including canada and australia and i think the biggest thing i feel a lot of pressure when i'm working with clients because i know that they need results they want results and because of that i also want to make sure we set it up for the best part and i think the thing that we did well with and i don't i don't think jonas minds me sharing this is i advised him to actually soft launch this app because it wasn't a casual app it's a word game

2:30

it's a social game there's a lot of technology behind it as well and jonas did a great job for being an indie developer and creating this game so much technology behind i said hey soft launch in a few countries and i think jonas was just a pure joy to work with and i'm going to kind of relay this with another client that we have launched in the previous month but he knew what he was doing you know he was doing his thing not just completely relying on me to do my thing he knew this was art we had specialties we knew how to pitch apple we knew how to pitch the press and so forth but the things that he knew how to do in terms of facebook ads or driving initial downloads he was doing all that on his own and i was helping along the way but he didn't rely on me and i loved working with jonas and i hope to have them on the podcast soon so that you guys can hear straight from him how he created this game and some of the things

3:23

that really worked in launching this game so sticking with the qualified theme we actually helped them get featured on pocketgamer this was a site that we've been dying to get featured a client featured on and finally you know i don't know if it was worthy enough or something else i don't want to say my other clients weren't worthy enough but at the same time it was the right fit for pocketgamer and we pitched them and we got them on to the site so phenomenal win for us and jonas as well and i want to strive to get to have all these clients be featured on these big sites so pockygamers was one that we hadn't been featured on we finally got them featured on pocketgamer so really big win for that all right more press wins another client of ours storyo was featured on social times which is a part of ad week and i guess i don't know if most people know this but adweek is as big as venturebeat

4:19

so they've got a suite of blogs sub blogs so this is adweek.com socialtimes and if you look at adweek as in blog channel it has 11 monthly 11 million monthly visitors according to similar web so again we know this we know the reporter here very well she's great brandy we work with her a lot and we were able to get storyo featured on this site and i think the the key lesson here as i'm talking about this is we understand how to create that story right how to figure out what that right angle is going to be because a lot of pr is not just about all right what's the announcement what's the story here and there but it's also about how do we tell the right story that's going to get reporters excited about this and that's what we helped storyo with because it was an app that was out already and i met with the founder and i was like well this is cool like i've seen ver similar apps like this so with storyo it grabs

5:20

all your photos it grabs the metadata from those photos and creates a nice little vid video out of it really cool looking and uses so it knows where it's at right so it knows if you're in italy or in france or in the us it knows that picks it up from the the metadata and then creates the video out of that and i was like really this is really cool when i was talking to the founder as we met over coffee and said this is really cool i've seen a few of these but you've done a really good job but we helped them sort of craft the right story to get them coverage on social times all right the other win was i launched my new mini course it's actually 79 dollars now or 99.99 now but i think it is the best growth hack and i'm a goddess i got a case study for you so i ran this for one of my apps paint ball rush that was featured in china in may of 2016 and i did this paid to free strategy for my app and i've got a case study on

6:18

just why it is so amazing this is the best growth hack in the world if you want access to this mini course people already have taken advantage of it and also one of my friends i said you got to do this man i l i ran it for him last week recording this let's see august 15th and i ran the same campaign for my friend the previous week and he's like steve holy cow this was amazing and if you want to use it as a case study i'm happy to do that for you so if you want to check it out it is the exact strategy for running a paid to free campaign now it's not as simple as you think people may be thinking hey i've run this myself it's no problem no there's some barriers to this campaign and i walk you through step by step how to do it how we execute it for our clients and if you want to get access to this course all you got to do is appmasters.com p the number two f so paid to free p the number two f

7:15

masters.com p2f all right those are the big wins so i shared the five app launches you understand that all right two of the five we got major coverage for and one of them became an apple feature so 20 of the apps we helped launch were featured by apple now we wanted to get all of them featured by apple and we're starting to think about ways where we can do more performance based marketing where okay if we get you on a really big site or this is it's this price point but the base price is this price point because i want to make sure that we're doing everything we can we're exploring all angles and making sure that we get the best coverage and the biggest coverage because that's what i want for all our clients fortunately doesn't happen for every single one of them for the five apps we did get them coverage but it wasn't always the biggest coverage as we wanted okay so let's talk about what worked so

8:15

stay in tune for this this is the part that you want to be listening to number one this is an email web general general general generic email address that apple has said to definitely use okay when you're trying to get a feature an apple feature it's app store promotion at apple.com i talked to people at wwedc they said somebody definitely checks that email address and forwards it on to the appropriate person so use that email address make sure that you use it when you have a test flight ready to go so as early as possible use that email address okay i've shared other clever ways of trying to find the right person those still work but apps for promotion at apple.com is the one to use as well we've we've sort of built out the strategy and i'm going to share the strategy in another mini course coming up soon but we've found out some clever ways to get in front of the right person okay the other two the other the next lesson

9:16

is give the exclusive to a big site it's a strategy that i've shared in the past and it continually works it takes a lot of time to execute on but it does work that's how we're able to land a lot of big coverage for our sites now it's not always necessary so if you're looking for the most coverage you don't necessarily need to use it but if you definitely want to ensure not always guarantee but to sort of increase your chances of getting on these big sites make sure you give them the exclusive i'm linking all that into the show notes the the apple hack and the exclusive strategy into the show notes so you can see how to actually do it yourself i've written about this in the past the other thing that worked is i brought mary onto the team the newest member she's in the philippines but she really helps manage my calendar and manage a lot of different things for our clients and i loved her i love her she's

10:11

phenomenal phenomenal the and i found her through virtual staff on finder so in my last month i said hey kind of get oh just in time learning and just in time learning i picked up chris ducker's virtual freedom i went through the whole thing the virtual staff founder i found using that's his site i found mary using his site and what i really loved about it was it saved me time on having to sift through a bunch of applications and just they brought me the three best and mary was one of them and i hired her and she's been great really loved it and virtual staff finder is a great site but virtual freedom is a great book and i followed chris's sort of guideline on how to talk to mary what to do after i hire her interview questions which were great i shared that in the previous the last month's video but really really great job the other lesson of what worked is he's thinking hey man you know what it's

11:12

tried and true if you build a great app marketing becomes so much easier qualified that was featured by apple i think storyo is another one that could be that should be featured by all apple if you build a great app apple will feature it the press will cover it yes you got to figure out what the right angle is going to be and i can help you with that but at the same time you know i think if you build a great app it will work and i think jonas was talking about this in a facebook group and he was saying you know steve's great and i was like jonas stop like you know he's kind of hyping me up i said stop jonas you you're setting everybody else up for disappointment because i've gone through hundreds of app launches and only a select few really get selected to be featured by apple or get coverage on tech crutch and so forth but jonah said steve you know you're good man and the value is if you have a

12:04

good app i know you can do wonders with it and i really appreciated that from jonas and it's so true that if you do build a really good app and it has to be different then it will you know success will come along so that's the hardest part right i think that's what i try to uncover when i'm talking to people who have built really great apps like their process their thinking their mentality i try to uncover that like because i think that's the hardest part is how do you build a great app i think i know how to market a great app but i think the weak side that i've sort of really become aware of myself is that i don't know if i can build a great app i know when i see one i know i can market it but i don't know if i can actually come up with this brilliant idea to make a really phenomenal app i'm trying you know it's a goal of mine and that's what i'm doing through the podcast and so forth okay and my favorite tool so i'm

12:55

going to try to do this every month as well where i pick up a tool and i share this with you but click funnels great tool look it is sort of like a landing page builder in a way but it's so much more than that i started using it i just heard so much about it that just said forget it let's just jump in and i built the paid to free campaign so if you go another plug masters dot co slash p two the number two f p two f masters dot co slash p two f you'll see that it was built on click funnels the templates are beautiful what i really like about click funnels is a lot of a b testing but the it builds out a complete funnel so the upsell tool the downsell tools all that is all built in and you can really create funnels so it's not like just a landing page builder but it's just funnels if you need funnels built it is a great tool to use so i've been loving it i'm gonna start putting more things into it

13:53

and really great tool when you're trying to get new emails or just build quick landing pages that are beautiful and quick funnels definitely check out click funnels i don't get anything from them it is just click funnels the last thing i want to tell you guys is that the mastermind is reopening and i'm going to put a flag on the ground so when i first started opening the mastermind it's going to come up but i'll just give you a sneak preview actually let me just tell you this it's going to reopen but it's going to take on a brand new requirement so it's not just going to be for anybody anymore when i first started it it was just to build a community now i feel i feel like we've built a phenomenal i'm going to say that again it is phenomenal community but now i'm ready to level up and those who joined early on is they're going to benefit from this i would say 50 of the community has this 50

14:49

doesn't maybe 60 40. i don't know what that real split is but i know there are a lot of great people in the app masters elite and that's what i will be calling it moving forward app masters elite this is the mastermind where you must have one million downloads to join that will be the new requirement to join it's gonna open up pretty soon again and this is going to be the community so if you joined early on if you're already in you're good you don't have to have this requirement anymore but for everybody else it will be that requirement where you must have 1 million downloads to your name to join not a publisher nothing like that but it is to your name to join so if you're interested in that go check out just stay tuned don't check out anything just stay tuned it's going to be opening up very very soon using my favorite tool click funnels to build that landing page but it is going to be called app masters elite if you are

15:48

interested in joining just stay tuned keep watching my videos subscribe to the podcast subscribe to the emails newsletter you will find out when it releases when it reopens but it will reopen at app as appmaster's elite with a requirement of one million downloads i'll tell you a lot more about everything that's gonna work and why i think it's the best thing to really grow your app business all right guys that is it this is the success report for 2016. thank you for tuning in your attention means everything to me and i will see you oh if you're watching this on youtube like my page subscribe do help me out throw throw a brother some love you know what i mean all right guys thank you so much i will see you on the next video oh and the next video is gonna highlight it's gonna show you the power of the paid to free campaign all right i'm going to show you the metrics it was for my app so i'm going to reveal it all about what

16:43

really happened to the in-app purchases what happened to the other in-app purchases what happened to the downloads from my other apps how many downloads that i'd specifically get for the paid to free campaign all that will be in the next video so stay tuned for that hit the subscribe button if you're watching on youtube and then join the email list if you're just watching this on my blog all right guys that's al all right that's it that's it that's it that's it i'll see you guys on the next video bye