Just discovered a really hilarious parody of one of my favorite ads, “Old Spice- The Man You Could Smell Like”. The new take for Mac geeks is by far the funniest parody I’ve seen in awhile.

The original Old Spice Ad this was based off of

You’ve spent hours of time on the development of an iPhone or iPad application. You’ve spent time making sure your app works right and looks a certain way and now that it’s done, you’re convinced that your app is so good it’s just going to sell itself. Wrong, think again.

It’s not a secret that you need to do more than just throw your new application up on the app store and hope for the best. Not all apps are good enough to sell themselves, and in fact majority of them fall short from even attracting a modest number of users. The current structure of the app store is not designed to help developers promote their apps, even if you do create the most amazing app anyone has ever seen. With over 150,000 apps on the app store, good design alone isn’t going to skyrocket you to the top of the charts. An effective marketing plan combined with a well designed app however, can elevate all those hard spent efforts to the top of the pack in record time and make all your efforts worthwhile.

In order for people to download and use your app, they have to find it first and that can be difficult to achieve. The only way that large numbers of people are going to know that your app exists to download, is if an all out effort is made to get it out there in the public eye. You need to be social with it, be visible and talk about your app every you chance you get. The more public your app is, the more visibility it will have and the more downloads it will get.

Sounds simple, right? Well not exactly. If you’ve got the money you can hire an agency that understands your product and the audience you are targeting and let them drive the marketing efforts. However, if like most startups or indie developers or anyone else who’s on a budget then you need another more affordable alternative. Guess what, you’re in luck. You can successfully market your app with 1 or 2 people dedicated to the efforts. Ideally those people should have a background in marketing, but if you don’t have the budget to hire someone to help, you can accomplish a lot of it yourself with a little determination and focus.
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I will be attending Chris Pirillo’s Social Media conference, Gnomedex on August 20th in Seattle. It’s sure to be an interesting two days accelerating ideas around social media and online communities.

At least according to Forrester Research.

“The research firm nonetheless revised its forecast for 2009. It now expects the U.S. technology market to shrink by 5 percent this year. In March, Forrester had predicted a smaller 3 percent decline in spending on technology products and services.” According to a recent article on Online Athens.

I personally see that within the industry it feels like things are starting to slowly but surely pick up. I’m seeing more money being spent on marketing and advertising with lots of anticipation that things will be better by Q4 CY.

Many people I talk with are also feeling that there is a slight shift in the attitudes across the industry, it’s no more continual doom and gloom reminiscent of the dot.com bust. I for one am optimistic that when fall gets into swing we will also see an uptick in consumer confidence and high tech will be leading the way.

What do you do when you are faced with upper management that doesn’t understand Social Media and why it should be an important part of the marketing strategy? I stumbled across a great presentation by Chris Brogan today that pretty much sums up the question of “How to Convince Your Boss that Social Media has Value”. It’s on HubSpot and I highly recommend that you check it out. It was recorded earlier this year but is still very applicable

I just finished attending a virtual online conference through B2B titled The Leading Edge; .

The benefits of being able to attend the conference from my desk were great, I was able to answer emails continue working in-between session breaks and download content immediately from the presentations. The keynotes were clear and came through with video and overall I thought Continue Reading ->

Many times exective and upper management outside of marketing make decisions for marketing when they have no background or experience in marketing. We aren’t talking about well informed decisions, based on credible reports or extensive research, we’re talking about decisions that change the landscape of their company’s direction, their ability to do lead generation and maintain brand visibility and credibility and the decision is made on a “gut feeling” or “best guess”. Continue Reading ->