Another way to generate App Store PR
Can we cut out the middle-men? Let's see...
What we’re trying to find out is: can app developers encourage grass-roots PR using zero cash?
As an app developer yourself (probably – I’m guessing that’s why you’re reading this page!) you’ll know that with 65,000 other apps out there, app discovery is very difficult for small start-ups without the cash to spend on marketing. Currently you have few options:
– hope you will get discovered/go viral
– tell your friends and network like crazy
– pay for reviews a la FuelMyApp
– get in league with a publisher
– buy ads from AdMob, Google etc.
So we’re trying a new alternative; we’re encouraging users to talk on Twitter/Facebook about fitness and our products – from within the apps – in exchange for FREE upgrades to some of the most-requested features (we talk with our customers pretty regularly, so one thing we know they want is better voices rather than the default, grating, robot one!).
From our perspective, we figured this was a bit like in-app payments; but rather than taking those payments and putting the money into Google to drive traffic and installs, we thought we’d try to cut out the middle-men!
To be clear, this isn’t the same as “add a friend and we’ll give you something”; our customers are merely being encouraged to tweet using the app – what they say is up to them! Naturally we have no idea whether or not it’ll work, but if something interesting happens (i.e. measurable – good or bad), we’ll post it here.
The experiment is kicking off at at 1pm GMT on Tuesday 6th October (that’s 2pm in London, 6am in San Francisco and 9am in New York); if you want to see how it all pans out, follow us on twitter here: @GymFu. Alternatively, leave a comment here – we’d love to hear your thoughts; we’ve done literally ZERO PR before (we’re semi-stealth, whatever that means!) so this is all a learning experience!
Short url for sharing: http://gymfu.com/a/appstorepr
P.S., yes we know our facebook integration is lame, but there are some circumstances where you can’t use facebook connect. Feel free to debate this in the comments also!
