Posts tagged business
How to #SEO Your Business Blog: Free SEO Webinar – San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
May 8th
|
How to #SEO Your Business Blog: Free SEO Webinar
San Francisco Chronicle (press release) The Search Engine Academy will host a free SEO webinar and interview Tom Williams, Founder and President of Innogage, a digital marketing and collaborative blogging software firm. Toronto, Ontario (PRWEB) May 08, 2012 The Search Engine Academy, … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Business Analysts See Hardware and Car Retailing to Improve with the … – San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
May 7th
|
Business Analysts See Hardware and Car Retailing to Improve with the …
San Francisco Chronicle (press release) Perth, Western Australia (PRWEB) May 08, 2012 Oracle Digital, Australia's premier SEO provider, has expressed its support to local retailers by offering its most aggressive social marketing techniques and ethical SEO strategies that would eventually … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
SEO Advice for Small Business Owners – Business 2 Community
May 7th
|
SEO Advice for Small Business Owners
Business 2 Community By Nick Stamoulis, Published May 7, 2012 Even small businesses can benefit from a strong SEO program. We live in an online world, and even 50 year old mom-and-pop pizza joints have a basic web presence nowadays, even if it's just a one page website … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Free Social Media Training by JM Internet Group Kicks Off Small Business Classes – San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
May 6th
|
Free Social Media Training by JM Internet Group Kicks Off Small Business Classes
San Francisco Chronicle (press release) San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 06, 2012 The JM Internet Group, www.jm-seo.org/, a leading provider of Social Media Training, is excited to announce their upcoming free Social Media Marketing training webinar, entitled "The Top Ten Free Social Media … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
SEO Speak: Social Signals – Business 2 Community
May 6th
|
SEO Speak: Social Signals
Business 2 Community By Emily Mace, Published May 6, 2012 It's been a while since I did a new entry in my “SEO Speak” series the last entry being in January about what a content strategy is and how it impacts your SEO. However, with all the recent talk of changes to … Google Penguin Update: Impact of Anchor Text Diversity & Link Relevancy |
View full post on SEO – Google News
SEO Sweat Equity: Advice for Do-It-Yourself Business Owners – Noobpreneur.com
May 5th
 Noobpreneur.com |
SEO Sweat Equity: Advice for Do-It-Yourself Business Owners
Noobpreneur.com As you go through your work week, and if you're present on the web, you've most likely been given dozens of promotions by SEO (search engine optimization) experts who guarantee to raise you up the search engine rankings if not get you to the top of the … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
SEO Professionals Can Harm an Ecommerce Business – Practical Ecommerce
May 4th
|
SEO Professionals Can Harm an Ecommerce Business
Practical Ecommerce Practical eCommerce recently fielded a question from a reader wondering why his site was being penalized for work his SEO company had done on his behalf. It doesn't seem fair, he complained. He's right, it doesn't seem fair when you've trusted a … Click Consult Announce Joint Sponsorship of Ecommerce Expo Manchester |
View full post on SEO – Google News
On Foursquare, $10 Buys Instant Verification For Your Business
May 3rd
Foursquare will charge businesses a fee of $10 to instantly verify their page online. In the past, restaurants, bars, and shops have had to mail in their application and wait for approval. The process typically took weeks to complete.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
6 Targeting Methods To Reach Your Business Audience Via LinkedIn
May 3rd
Most B2B marketers have a list of potential buyers at specific companies that they would like to reach. It can be very difficult to selectively target this audience via PPC Search ads or banner campaigns. Even behavioral targeting has its limitations. Your next move… LinkedIn Ads:…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Mobile Developers: Have a Business and Marketing Plan to Make Money
May 3rd
App stores are frustrating, cluttered places. Even with Apple’s prescreening process of every app that passes through its iOS gates, the App Store, it is often hard to find what you may want or need. This is a problem for consumers – but an even bigger problem for developers that often rely on these apps to make a living. For every successful app that makes millions for its publisher, there are thousands of apps that will not rise above the mess.
So, you are an app developer and you have figured out your next big idea. Dollar signs and millions of downloads float through your head, like so many sugar plum fairies. If you build it, users will come… or so the thought goes. But there is really a lot more to it than that.
“People still believe that if you build an app, they will come. They see the app stores as being the answer, and feel all they need to do is publish and watch the money roll in,” said Tom Emrich, principal at Toronto-based App Promo. “There is a lot of disillusion from the big winners that get the most press; this belief often causes them to focus on the idea, UI and code, so they forget that they need a plan and a strategy to be successful.”
There are plenty of apps that have succeeded by building a great service and spreading it through grassroots and word-of-mouth methods. For example, RunKeeper has never had much of a marketing presence, yet it is one of the most successful apps over the last four years. Granted, it also had a first-mover advantage in the App Store, but the company has been able to build a lasting business and platform well after its initial rush of popularity.
The middle-class developer does not have the advantages of being a first mover that establishes a market segment, or the financial wherewithal to wait for grassroots acceptance and word-of-mouth to take effect. Developers need to make money so that they can keep developing and earn a living. Monetization of apps is more than just deciding whether it should be free or paid, or have advertising or in-app purchases. Those are avenues of payment. But if nobody is actually using your app, those avenues do not matter.
From the beginning of production, developers need to think about strategy. Who is your target audience? How can you reach that target audience? Once you have people in the door, how do you get them to spend money? Unless you are a hobbyist, apps are a business and should be treated as such.
“Most of the individuals that are creating apps either come from code or just have an idea and so aren’t used to creating business plans, revenue projections, etc.,” Emrich said. “So even if they know what they need to do, they don’t usually know where to start.”
These are questions that small businesses have asked themselves for generations; they are fundamental tenets of business. What are most app publishers if not small businesses? They may not be your traditional Main Street small business, but the basic concepts of economics still apply. The difference for app developers is that the ceiling for success is much higher than a traditional small business. A successful app can create millions in revenue.
“At the end of the day, there has been a lack of emphasis in the app community’s conversation on the fact that what we are creating are products and business,” said Emrich. “You wouldn’t take $100,000 and open a coffee shop tomorrow in your neighborhood without a plan and marketing, would you?”
In talking with several venture capitalists, we have seen a trend emerge with how many consumer app developers (as opposed to business-to-business developers) approach their ideas and projects. One VC says that “consumer developers often are just scratching an itch.” They have an idea and want to build it. Building things is fun, especially if you have the talent to pull it off. But building without a plan is not a recipe for success.
Every decision a developer makes from the very beginning should be focused on how to get an app into the hands of consumers that will ultimately provide revenue. Monetization is a consequence of good decisions, not skill or luck. Appcelerator and IDC took a deep look at this in a Q4 2011 survey of mobile developers in the fourth quarter of 2011. The path to revenue is reach that turns into engagement that turns into loyalty.
Reach includes discovery across multiple platforms. Engagement is creating a unique and intuitive user interface that can be coordinated with marketing (analytics) and social plans. Loyalty is created through relevance and understanding your users (analytics again). When all of that is in place, then you find that the app monetizes itself if you have the proper avenues already in place or ready to launch.
As we can see, there is a path. That path needs to be figured out early in the development cycle, because it is not something that can be thrown together ad hoc.
“I see people throwing into paymium games which do not have an effective in-app purchase strategy. In-app purchases cannot be retrofitted. Freemium game play has to be built in from the beginning,” Adam Telfer, VP of game development at Toronto-based XMG Studio told ReadWriteMobile recently.
Developers: Are you coming at your ideas with a business plan in hand? Or are you trusting to providence that the great idea you have will generate the millions of dollars you dream about? Let us know in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
