Raising awareness amongst your audience can be slow
Building the app is the easy part in developing a business is what I’m finding these days. Yes, I’ve found lots of frustration in developing this app. That is nothing compared to what I’m now finding in the slow uptake of the app in the Google and Android app stores.
The assumptions we had that people would pick up the app quickly were wrong. Installations are much slower than we imagined. This is probably for a number of reasons, some of which are beyond our control. It also means that we can modify our development plans too.
Some aspects of the app are less smooth, than I’d prefer. I’ve also realised that we can improve some parts too with some editing. Similarly, some feedback has led to other useful changes too. These have all been put into place in app updates. All of this is under our control.
We can talk about the app on social media networks. That too is ok, and we do this regularly in various ways. While we can’t control how people respond to posts, we can regularly post, and comment on other people’s posts. Sadly, this is possibly not very useful, as only small groups of people seem to talk about our domain in these spaces. Growing traction here is a slow process.
Most surprising to me is the response in the online support groups, where our app is relevant. I thought we’d gain people as customers from here much easier than has been the case far.
Most of these are in Facebook groups, which carries a number of restrictions about promotion, and selling, yes, even for ‘free’ items. This constraint on what you can write makes posting challenging. Given this is where we can find most of our potential market, I think it will still work for us, but will take longer, than I’d hoped. This part is very much not in our control.
Crafting your message
We should’ve started posting in these Facebook groups much sooner than we did. Being busy with development, I didn’t think about this too much as someone else was doing this. I prepared a mailing list to capture people’s interest. This has shown some usefulness.
I’ve also come to appreciate, and reread some books on marketing. I now notice how some of our previous posts were less useful than we thought. They didn’t speak to the people’s emotions, and show we understand their situation.
No, not the clickbait evil marketing based on fear. Rather, the marketing language that offers support and hope for the future. This is where and how we grow our audience. It looks like it will just take longer than we hoped for.
The authors and books you should look out for, and read are these three. They all cover similar aspects: be true to yourself, and authentic. Talk to people’s emotions more than their rationality as that is less important for consumers than you think it is. We buy things that we want more than what we need.
The easiest to read is Seth Godin’s ( LI) All marketers are liars tell stories, which is an older book, but still very relevant. Reading it reminded me of 1999 publication, the Cluetrain Manifesto. It’s easy to follow and I found I kept mulling over possible ways to apply the ideas, in between reading sessions.
Billy Broas’s ( LI) Simple Marketing for Smart People book is the shortest book. It takes longer to digest and work through, as you start to apply the ideas to your product and service. This is the one that I find the most useful at the moment. It also makes the most sense as it treats potential customers as people, with problems needing solutions.
Rory Sutherland’s ( LI) Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense is the longest, and the most detailed of the three. This is the one with more stories, and references to the literature. It also has fun footnotes, which is a nice surprise. Coming from a long-time marketing professional, it also provides lots on insight into the profession that we experience through the many everyday marketing messages that we encounter each day.
All three of them speak a similar message that I think makes sense, and sounds applicable. Be honest with your potential customers, and speak to their emotions. People are not rational, so let them know how they will feel.
The part that I think they all tell me is that we should have a clear story to tell, with an argument showing why our product is suitable for our audience. Our argument should be consistent so that we’re always ready for people when they find us: first impressions matter, but we don’t know/decide when that will happen. That is out of our control, so we need to have a constant, clear story to tell.
Share your story before production
The part I got wrong was leaving this clarifying of the story until after product release. I should’ve realised this takes time to have an effect. I blame it on the excitement of the build. Don’t do that.
Start talking to your team now. What is your story? What is the argument for your product instead of your competitors? It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it should be consistent.
This post is part of a project pulling together my materials and ideas about Teaching Team Collaboration: the Human-Side of Software Development for software development to students.
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The ideas above are from my book 101+ Ideas to Improve Team Collaboration, which covers all of these little things that students can do to improve their collaboration. Also available via Kindle.