July BlueCloud 3

Question #8: My app is in the Apple store "English from Pictures". It is for all who want to learn English. I added sound to a famous Harvard developed book named "English Through Pictures". How do I advertise internationally and domestically to ESL, which is English as a Second Language, and kindergarten? [:29]

Answer #8:

·       Okay great. So you have a unique app. This is awesome. You know who you're trying to target. You know who your target customer is, your customer avatars as they call it so that's great.

·       What I would say is really dial in who your app demographic is. Like is it male or female? What age are you going after? Are you going after the kindergarten kids or are you going after their parents? So you've got to think about that sort of thing. What countries are you going after? Really dial in the demographics. Get super, super specific because that's how you're going to be successful. There's a lot of different apps out there. Actually in Blue Cloud Select there's someone who has an awesome how to learn Thai, the language of Thai and they're getting really, really niche focused on that language, so what I would say is figure out, I know it's ESL, but what is the country? What is the language? What is your target demo?

·       Get as specific as you possibly can and then focus all of your ASO on that unique niche because that is actually like an ASO dream to be able to have those specific keywords and you're able to get that dialed in and so not only do you think about the keywords, but thing about your screen shots. It's got to be pictures of people that look like they're from that country and the age in the demographic you are looking to cater to. So have it all match up and use parochial language, words that they're going to understand in that language. Obviously localize it and things like that.

·       Once you really like dial in that demographic and you focus all your ASO and your presentation around that very specific demographic, then what you want to do is you want to start buying installs on Facebook to see if you can get some easy wins. One thing about Facebook traffic and this is true with all ad networks is that when people say "it's really expensive", what's really expensive is buying in the United States or Canada or Australia or even the United Kingdom, but what's not cheap is if you go to a place like you know, Singapore or India or South Africa or like some very, very different market than these tier one countries. You can get apps installed for two cents or three cents. Now the users might no monetize that well, but if you have a very, very specific app for that country, all of a sudden you might be able to lock into a huge win. The economics on that change considerable, especially with your chart rankings and you rank really high in that store, but you'll be able to once you get that demographic dialed really, really well, go after the international traffic on Facebook because you can often get something really, really cheap.

Question #9: I have a beauty app with 4 million downloads. The main demographic is 13-18 year old girls. One hundred percent of my income is via in app purchases, but I'm ready to explore ads! The ad networks mostly have games targeted at men. How would you tackle advertising to this demographic? [3:33]

Answer #9:

·       Well it's a good position to be in so congratulations on that. One thing that you want to make sure you do, once you get into this demographic, kind of the 13, 13 is kind of the break even age number, but even 13-18, make sure that you follow all of the compliance stuff. Amazon is crazy about it, but Google and Apple can be pretty strict, but just make sure you review all that with your ad networks before you make any big changes just because I would hate to see you get you know knocked off for any particular reason.

·       So the first thing you want to do is launch with your regular inventory. So I would definitely start off because you have such a big audience, I would start off with something like banner ads or something really unabrasive. I would show it like pretty deep into the user experience and kind of phase it in. I would not try to make money off of this right off the bat. I would really make sure that it doesn't piss anyone off. Let's say you're going to use like AdMop or even Apple's iAd or whatever and you put a banner in, just launch it with the regular inventory. Don't try to optimize it yet.

·       Just say alright I'm putting it in there and let it run for a couple of weeks, even just one or two. I think it depends on how many daily active users, how many impressions you're getting.

·       Once you get a handful of data, export all of your data out of the ad network and start to identify what performed the best because you're definitely going to see some that work really, really well and you're going to see others that don't perform whatsoever. That's why you want to give it a few weeks to make sure you get enough of this data and it filters out any first campaigns that are happening at that time.

·       Once you identify that, then you can use that data and you can start brokering direct deals. So say your top app is Game of War because it probably will be because they spend so much money and you say "well if I just serve four game ads in here, this is going to do really well" so you take your easy PM and notice that this is like twice as high as the regular kind of market rate and you email their publishing team and say "look I've got an app with 4 million downloads. I've got this many active users. Here are the impressions I'm getting. I want to show your ads exclusively and I would like a premium price on this" and you know do this with like your top ten performing ads because a lot of these people you won't hear from them or they won't be interested, but the few that are, are going to make your business just triple. It's going to make a huge difference. Just keep doing this. Keep filtering out these advertisers because it's always going to be changing.

·       Then look at your demographic data as well. Then you start to do different campaigns in your ad network where you only show it to 13-18 year old people in different countries and you know slice and dice and you're going to get different ads in there and once you really find the ones that are, you get the really good fill rate and some easy PMs, you're going to start to see these direct deals start to pay off. It does require a little bit of hustle. There's no advertisersdirect.com. It doesn't work that way. You've got to go out and you've got to make, you've got to send emails yourself, but I can promise you that's one of the biggest reasons we made a lot of money at Blue Cloud because we did all this.

·       Congratulations on the app and I hope the advertising works out for you.

Question #10: If you have just $1,000 to spend in an app game and you were just starting up in app games and you have experience in Android wallpaper apps, but not games, how do you spend it? Do you choose Apple or Android? [7:15]

Answer #10:

·       This is the last question. Originally I was going to answer this and say you've got to watch the presentation I did about what I would do to make a million dollars by the end of the year, but because you're interested in games, how would I spend it?

·       Well the first thing I would do is I would probably spend it on a really good source code. You know I'd spend about $200 and get something that is really nice and then I would spend the rest of it just making something that is really unique. I would definitely start on Apple because I tend to, I think I like Apple a lot and I think it's best if you're starting. Apple is great!

·       I think you want to get used to the gaming business because it's completely different from the wallpaper business the way people behave. I would try to find something that's really, really unique and I would try to find something that plays to your strengths. So if you have a big knowledge base of wallpaper apps, think about what you know about wallpaper apps that no one knows about games. You know is it about how to move, do you have wallpapers on the server side? Maybe you can use that in your game somehow. What can you leverage? What knowledge do you already have that's really going to make a difference? It always comes down to you've got to have some unique hook when it comes to games because there's so many games out there.

·       That's what I would say. I would download an enormous amount of games. That's probably the first thing I always do. It's free and it's just download tons and tons and tons of games and I make maps of how they monetize. Not top grossing games, just anyone and you'd be surprised at how bad a lot of people are and you'd be surprised at how good some people are across all categories and just get a really good working knowledge.

·       Start out with a source code, have a plan in place, leverage as much as you possible can off of the wallpaper apps in terms of content and then I would go kick some ass from there!

Alright well thanks guys for tuning in. Definitely check out the launch module and make sure you watch the other videos and if you haven't already, join the Facebook group. It is definitely kicking ass and I will see you guys soon.