At the last minute, I took part in a panel yesterday with Ken Yarmosh, Josh Clark, David Barnard and Davide Di Cillo called “Think First. Code Later.” The focus of the panel was about how to approach the design and development of an iOS product out of the gate.
I learned about two minutes before the panel that I was the only person up there that was actually an in the trenches iPhone developer, which made for an interesting dynamic. A lot of the subject matter of the panel centered around where design takes place during the course of building an iPhone project as well as the marketing and search optimization that is involved with producing an app.
I’m not much of a marketer and beyond writing my description and setting my keywords, I don’t do much App Store optimization.
During the panel I talked about how marketing budgets, search tricks and a big design budget aren’t worth a damn if you’re product sucks. I have done my share of marketing via traditional media, Web banners, ad words and even podcasts and have never found them to be that beneficial. What I do find beneficial is the marketing that my top customers give me for free.
No longer do I spent money on advertising. Instead, I put all of that money towards ways to improve the product: better design, sharper icons, and even making sure I can afford to take a bit of extra time to fix the bugs users report and the feature requests they want.
If a user reports a bug in your product and you are receptive to it and get a fix out, they are going to be overjoyed. Even better? They’re going to tell someone about it, which is hopefully going to net you another sale.
When you get that first taste of iPhone or Mac App Store success, don’t look to advertising or other forms of marketing as a way to continue the sales spike. Put those resources and efforts into improving the product for your existing customers. They are the best resources for netting you new customers.