Launching an App: The Hard Part Comes After Having the Great Idea

Getting discovered in the swamp of more than 5 million apps takes professional help.

“We started the company because we liked the idea and wanted to do something entrepreneurial. We weren’t in love with the idea or market we were going after and weren’t core users of our product. We worked really hard getting it off the ground despite this, but it made it more difficult to sustain the energy and to understand the best product choices.”

Those are the sad words of the founder of YouCastr, a video monetization platform that was designed to offer video broadcasters a different way to make money by selling live or on-demand videos. This was way back in 2007, but the date nor the exact service the startup was trying to provide are not all that important.

What’s important is the above post-mortem by its founder Ariel Diaz. They weren’t core users of their product and weren’t even all that passionate about the market they were going after but wanted to do something entrepreneurial.

This is unfortunately often the case with modern app developers. Someone will have an idea that sounds reasonably good… and then they’ll just go for it. But creating a successful app isn’t based on luck.

People see an idea blow up and think, “Hey! That could be me!” But the road to every successful app is littered with the corpses of literally thousands of other similar ideas that didn’t make the cut.

The difference between a win and a sad exit from the market – coupled with often large financial losses – is the team executing the marketing strategy and providing the ASO services for your app.

Obviously, a successful app can do extremely well and possibly also make you exceptionally rich. But you have to get discovered. You have to break through the noise of over five million apps currently available between Google Play and the Apple App Store.

And getting noticed is rarely the result of getting ‘fortunate,’ nor is it usually a case of ‘being in the right place at the right time.’ Success is all about discovery and to get discovered you need to call in the pros who know how the game is played.

A world-class ASO agency, such as Moburst app marketing services, provides you with a tested team of specialists who fine-tune your product, your strategy, your mobile SEO services – and offer creative suggestions for how to best utilize all forms of modern media. They can teach you a lot about the basics of business as well.

Understanding a ‘business model’ is not as easy as it sounds. A professional crew handling mobile app marketing can help you answer some important questions such as, “What is the value you plan to create?” “How do you plan to deliver it?” “What’s the plan for earning a profit?” And, “How are you going to bring in enough basic revenue?”

Professionals can also help you avoid the bad execution of a good idea. As one harsh assessment puts it: most people are sure their ideas are outstanding. Most people are wrong. We overestimate ourselves and our ideas. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

After having what you and your friends think is a great idea for an app, it’s easy to imagine that consumers will likewise find your app idea delightful and love it as much as you do. – And indeed, people might have loved it… if there weren’t already competitors on the market with similar good apps, or if your market research had been based on facts rather than assumptions.

There are so many questions to answer: Have you defined your target market? Have you run the numbers to see if your investment will actually provide a return? –Doing these things is hard, but without ‘due diligence,’ you’re asking for trouble. Pro ASO companies can take your decent idea and make it great, or help you save a bucketload of money by helping you pivot after their research shows the idea isn’t all that wanted or needed.

For too many people the assumption is that they will design or develop an app, do a bit of marketing, get downloaders and or subscribers, and voila! – make a fortune and become the next Jack Dorsey. But the stats don’t match the fantasies.

According to one research agency, only a tiny fraction of apps are successful financially after a year on the market. And this is mostly because that ‘due diligence’ wasn’t done beforehand. Even with ‘due diligence,’ if the ASO (which includes – of course – what some think of as ‘SEO’) has not been fine-tuned, people aren’t going to even find your app… and obviously, if they can’t find your app, they’re not going to download it.

There is so much potential for new app ideas, despite the five million already in existence. You really could be the next hot thing, but the chances of that happening go up significantly when you have a team behind you that knows what they’re doing.