Recently, I was invited by the incubator JFDI.Asia to deliver a talk entitled “That Thing You (Forget to) Do” (inspired loosely from Tom Hanks’ movie “That Thing You Do”) on best practices of product development, management & marketing. Following up from part one, this article focuses on two fundamental aspects of product marketing: distribution and public relations.

Update on Post (3 May 2012): Video of the talk in JFDI Asia – credits to JFDI for recording it

How start-ups should view product marketing

There are two important questions to answer, whether you are a founder or an employee of a start-up. What’s the mission and vision of the start-up? How do we communicate the product to the customers so that they know that we are solving their problem or fulfilling a latent or present need in their daily lives? The questions are fundamental because it focused on the why and not the how of products.

So, in order for a product to go to market, it needs to overcome two barriers:

How will your customers hear about your product?

This is the awareness problem in product marketing. To solve this problem, you can either engage mainstream or social media, build a story around your start-up and then get the message out in the market. A lot of times, most people conflate this with the distribution, which is in fact the next question:

How do your customers access or buy your product?

This is the distribution problem in product marketing which the team within the start-up have more control. It involves the team working out what sales channels and distribution centers your product should go on. For example, the iTunes app store or Android market is a distribution channel for mobile app developers to sell their apps to customers.

The same can be said of software as a service (SaaS) platforms where a team selling web services can harness as a possible distribution point for their web products. Another aspect of the distribution problem is the strategic partnerships your startup build with a large multi-national company which are usually not within your control and depends on how much the big company really needs you.

Product Marketing: PR and Awareness

The first rule to doing product marketing is that you should never associate public relations with vanity. Whether it is a social or mainstream media site, the objective is to associate the message you want to propagate about your business to the potential customers. Everything else is immaterial.

Hence it is not sensible to do a machine gun approach to send out press releases to bloggers or journalists and expect them to cover you. It is essential for start-ups to work out a media plan that goes concurrently with the product development process. For example, you might want to do a soft launch of your mobile app in order to acquire feedback for improvement from early adopters.

The objective is to grow users, and hence the article must provide a link for potential users to download your app. The message should be about how the app from your start-up solves either a problem or need from customers.

Why should you stop there? You should continue to match the roadmap of your product development to your media engagement plan. So, every press release must fulfill a business objective about the product. Once you understand the process, you should also construct a list of the media you want to engage.

By the way, do not wait till the product is launched and then engage the press expecting them to want to cover you. Everyone in the press is busy but they want new stories. So you should build relationships before that. Where do you meet these people? Usually, you meet them during conferences and networking events.

Usually, people from the media are friendly and you should build rapport with them. Do not expect them to paint you in a fantastic light, and sometimes you need to provide the angle for them to cover you. Work with the people who understand your start-up, and don’t be offended if they don’t respond to you immediately. One important rule is target who you might want to cover you from a publication. For example, in SGE, you can contact our editor directly to let us know about a story.

The difference between Asian and US press is that the former is more friendly and does not attempt to be edgy when they ask you questions. Usually, Asian start-ups can get shaken with aggressive questions from the western press.

You should just answer what you can and politely decline if the questions are too controversial or an attempt to push you to provide confidential information. You don’t need a media trainer but make sure you have a FAQ made for the entire team whenever the press tries to probe about the start-ups.

The next thing is to build up your social media assets and used them to propagate your message. Having Facebook and Google Plus pages, as well as a Twitter account and a LinkedIn page will suffice (read: Minimum social media assets businesses should have). If your business is location sensitive, have a FourSquare location page will be vital as well. Sometimes being cheeky and creating an image that propagates an internet meme might help to draw customers to your website.

Some advice on engaging the press. You should use your discretion in how much you want them to know. If they are trustworthy, you might want to let them know certain confidential stuff but with the understanding that they are off-the-record.

Finally, just remember, PR is building awareness. There are cases where a company gets heavily featured in both mainstream and new media but it saw no conversions to customers coming to your site to buy the products. So, you need to make sure that you are engaging the correct channel to find your customers.

If you are building an app for people who like extreme sports, getting tech blogs to write about you will not get you the customers. You might want to find the influencers or tastemakers of extreme sports to help you spread the word.

Product Marketing: Distribution

Distribution is the other part of product marketing which most start-ups in Asia do really badly. The reason is that they often conflate press to bringing customers to the site or download the app. Hence, from now onwards, you should make sure that these two issues are separate. Here are the few things which you need to ask yourself in working out your distribution channels:

What is the platform and delivery process that allows you to distribute your product among users in a quick and robust way?

If your native mobile application is a paid app and requires a lot of downloads with a good payment mechanism, you should look at the apps store platform where most of the apps are making the most money.

If you are distributing the app for free, you might want to make sure that you get an app store platform that can reach out to many users quickly. You might want to figure out how to get to the stage where your app is on the featured list of that apps store.

The same rule applies to web services. You can distribute your product through web service providers. If you have a fantastic web service that complements a web browser, the question becomes, “should you write a browser extension such that you can distribute your service through this browser?”

Accessibility is an important rule when figuring out distribution. If you are using a payment platform, you should try to do within 2-3 frames so that the user can easily purchase your web service or download your app. Similarly, working with strategic partners (larger MNCs) will be similar. You should find out how they can add value to you before becoming part of their offerings.

It’s great PR to work with big companies but if they are half-hearted in delivering their services, you might want to reconsider because getting a strategic partner requires you to fulfill tough and stringent service-level agreements (SLAs).

One more thing I want to share about distribution is the firehose strategy: Should you create an API to allow 3rd party developers to help you distribute your service quickly? It really depends on the nature of the businesses.

You should create an API to market your presence and increase user growth, as well as to avoid spending time and effort to maintain something that does not solve your business objective. But do avoid the mistakes pointed out by this article when building APIs for 3rd party developers.

Product marketing helps your company to build up the awareness and distribution of your product to users. As for how to measure the metrics, iterate and manage the product, we will leave it to the last installment of the series to discuss that. Meanwhile, you can look at the slides for reference:

Image credit: LladyYas

Android Market, Google’s official app market for Android, recently celebrated the milestone of ten billion total downloads. To commemorate the achievement, they released an infographic containing a slew of statistics about Android Market and its users.

Singapore, it turns out, is the fifth most app-crazed country in the world by downloads per capita. Asian nations are doing particularly well on this front, with the South Koreans coming out on top, followed by Hong Kong and Taiwan. The United States is the only non-Asian country in the top five.

However, Nokia and Symbian still combine for 47 percent of the market, followed by Android at 17 percent, iPhone at 6 percent, and RIM at 1 percent.

For Asia Pacific, InMobi has included Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan.

In Singapore, where smartphones are dominant, iPhones have the majority market share at 44 percent, while Android is second at 31 percent. RIM, Nokia, and Symbian take up only 20 percent combined.

But the iPhone’s lead is slipping. From Q2 to Q3, its market share in Singapore has dropped by 8.1 percent, while Android has gained 4.9 percent.

Overall, mobile ad impressions on the inMobi network have grown by 25 percent to over 69.5B impressions, while impression coming from apps have more than doubled — which is good news for app developers (more statistics on mobile apps in Asia here).

Looking at long-term trends in Asia-Pacific from January 2011, it appears that the iPhone’s market share has been dropping drastically from 16 percent (5M impressions) to 6.3 percent (4.3M impressions).

Android, meanwhile, has grown from 13.5 percent (4.3M impressions) to 16 percent (11.5M impressions), getting into third place behind Nokia and Symbian, who has grown even more dominant.

In Singapore, the iPhone also appears to have taken a beating over the same time frame, falling from 70 percent in January to 44 percent in Q3. Android has grown from 14 to 31 percent.

It should be interesting to see how the release of the iPhone 4S as well as the availability of different price point for different iPhone models will impact market share. We could see some sort of a reversal in Q4.

Nonetheless, while this report is one of the most exhaustive out there, it is unclear how reflective it is of true market share for mobile ad impressions and ownership of handsets.

While it claims to be well positioned to provide an “objective, comprehensive, and representative view of the mobile advertising market”, the impressions are only collected from one source only — inMobi.

That’s despite the fact that numerous mobile ad platforms exist out there, including Google-owned Admob, which is dominant in Android, and Millennial Media.

If you’re interested in a more detailed look at InMobi’s reports, you can sign up for free here.

This means, however, that the average  iOS user downloads twice as many apps as compared to the average Android user.

Nonetheless, the sheer volume of users is good news for Android developers, who are buoyed by the recent announcement that Android 4.0 — Ice Cream Sandwich — would be made available on the Nexus Prime phone as well as existing HTC and Sony Ericsson devices.

Ice Cream Sandwich promises to resolve fragmentation issues by enforcing stricter specifications on hardware, having future Android phones support upgrades for 18 months, and unifying both tablets and smartphones under the same Android variant.

But does this mean both operating systems are on equal footing when it comes to monetizing apps? The answer would depend on your needs and inclinations as an app developer, but it’s certain that the gap is closing.

First, the positives for Android. While iOS users are much more likely to pay for apps, Google’s enabling of in-app purchases is a boon for developers pursuing the freemium model (more on monetizing your app).

In the Asian context, where smartphone users are more reluctant to download paid apps than their Western counterparts, developers have less reason to avoid Android.

Image: App Genome Report

Also, since Android allows more access to the phone’s hardware than the iOS, developers can push the envelope in what they can create.

The barrier to entry for Android is certainly much lower as well, especially since Apple has strict guidelines and a long review process for every app.

As a result, many seemingly harmless apps have been banned for not meeting the Apple App Store’s policies.

On the other hand, and to iOS’ advantage, fragmentation remains a deterrent for potential Android app makers. While Ice Cream Sandwich will resolve the problem somewhat, many Android handsets will still be stuck with older versions of Android for the near future.

Even if a large share of Android phones do stick to the same iteration, phone manufacturers will continue to introduce different screen sizes and user interface modifications to differentiate their phones from competitors.

This means developing an app for the iOS is still easier at the moment. Mainstream users are also more likely to be satisfied by Apple’s App Store and the iOS experience, since their controlled approach means bad apps and malware are kept out of the ecosystem.

Top image: _Max-B

These days, every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to build an app. While many do it for vanity reasons, a lot of us want to develop a great product and make money out of it.

Happily, app monetization has seen plenty of innovation over the past few years, which is why we’re able to gather 4 ways (and many sub-variations) you can monetize your app.

These tried-and-tested methods were discussed at length by app developers at the Apps World Asia forum in Singapore recently, and will be a main topic at the next Founder’s Drinks on 27th September 2011.

Since mixing and matching the right methods can be tricky, we hope this little guide can assist you in making the right decisions.

1) Display advertising

To be honest, display ads are a little passe. After all, they hail from the era of billboards and newspapers, which means they may not translate well to your smartphone. But if used right, they’re still effective.

Display ads are awesome if you have, like, a gazillion users/downloads/impressions for your app. They work best if your app is constantly updated with new content, which means users will come back day after day, driving up ad revenue.

Typically, eCPM for mobile ad networks can vary a whole lot. But for example, if you’re getting an CPM of $1, then 100,000 impressions will get you $100. Variables like fill rate matter too — if your banner ad space gets filled only 10% of the time, time to switch to another ad network.

You can also consider display ads if you have a targeted audience — mothers like ads for baby equipment, sports fans like ads related to sports, and so on.

Display ads may also work better on tablets and larger devices, from a usability perspective. With a larger screen real estate, you can afford to put in a banner ad or too without irritating the user too much.

However, if the only users of your app are your wife and two kids, forget about display ads.

Consumers often find banner ads annoying too, and it’s worse if the ads are often irrelevant and untargeted.

But don’t write off display ads too quickly, says Zhou Wenhan of 2359 media. “This model will be sustainable as people are reading more and more on the phone,” he told the audience at Apps World Asia.

2) Paid apps

Getting users to pay for using your app is probably the most straightforward way of earning money off it, but implementing the right payment scheme can be tricky.

Upfront app payment

If you’re an upstart developer publishing a new app for an Asia market, charging users to download your product can be a recipe for disaster.

Aldric Chang, CEO and founder of app development firm Swag Soft, and Charles Tidwell, vice-president for marketing at SmartRoam and ChatTime, told the crowd that starting off as a paid app didn’t work for them. ChatTime only took off when changes were made to it.

While Western smartphone users are accustomed to the idea of paying for an app, many have noted that Asians are more resistant. They generally refuse to download an app of an unknown quality.

User reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations can certainly bridge the gap, but that cannot happen unless enough users love the app and are willing to serve as product advocates.

So, asking users to pay upfront may not work if you’re building a mass market, consumer-oriented app.

However, if you’re producing a niche product, not only can you charge users, you can even get them to cough up a large sum. Some examples of niche apps include a legal dictionary and an enterprise CRM app that corporations may want to buy in bulk. While these kinds of apps won’t generate millions of downloads, you make up for it by charging a higher price per download.

iVIP Black, dubbed 'The Millionaire's App', costs a friggin' US$999.99 to download.

Long before smartphones even existed, developers created ‘shareware’ on PCs to entice users to eventually pay for the full software. Many of them offer a 30-day trial, after which the software can no longer be used.

This time honored (and time honoring) method is still relevant in the app world today, although it doesn’t seem quite as fashionable. It may not be the most optimal way of generating revenue compared to the next method.

The freemium model

This is a good way to introduce consumers to your app. Use it over the free trial model if your app relies heavily on network effects — where your app becomes more useful if there are more people using it.

Dropbox is a good example — it sucks if only your family and your dog are using it. The freemium model allows Dropbox to retain all its users by keeping basic features free, thereby ensuring the service takes advantage of network effects. At the same time, users who love the service can pay a premium for extra features, in this case more space.

Subscription-based model

This often works hand-in-hand with the freemium model, as many services do charge users a monthly fee to access premium features.

It works well if users have a reason to come back to your app again and again — for instance an app that allows you to check the latest stock prices, or any app that constantly receives news or information updates. Why do a one night stand when you can have a monthly affair?

Rent-to-own

Android app developers generally find it harder to make money out of their apps compared to iOS developers (see here). However, game distributor WildTangent (also read this) has opened up a different monetization opportunity for Android and PC game developers.

It operates a rent-to-own app store where users can try a game for a day at a fraction of the total cost. If users like it enough, they will keep paying until — finally — they fork out the full price and effectively own the app.

Steven Frank, business development director of Wild Tangent in Asia, is bullish about this approach. “There’s a lot more room than just charging users 99 cents or $1.99,” he said.

3) In-app purchases

In-game purchases have been prevalent in MMORPGs for a while. More recently, it has become popular for casual games on social networks like Facebook. Gamers can now purchase additional items using Facebook Credits to give themselves an edge .

But non-gaming apps can also take advantage of in-app purchases. Recently, I wrote about SingPet, a new retail app that allows users to purchase pet food and other pet-related items directly.

Daily deal sites like Deal.com.sg and Groupon have also incorporated this model in interesting ways by allowing users to browse, purchase and flash their coupons to merchants through the smartphone.

Who doesn't want 10 Mafia Members for 120 Facebook Credits?

4) Get paying clients

Besides earning from consumers, third parties can also provide an important source of revenue for you. This is applicable in two cases: When you’re a hired mercenary for big corporate clients, or when you’re acting as a middle man between consumers and other businesses.

Start a boutique app development firm

If you can get a corporate sugar daddy to fund your projects, why not? It’s what buUuk and many other app developers do: They became an app development firm. Instead of huffing and puffing to make a money-spinning app, get others to pay you to do it.

The good thing about this is that you’re not putting your eggs in one basket. Success does not depend on whether you can create that One App to Rule Them All, but whether you meet your client’s specifications. Some of them may not even want to monetize their app, but are just as happy paying you.

If you do decide to take this route, being picky about clients may not be a good idea when starting out. Which means it’s your job to please them; they’re your paymasters after all. Sometimes, clients think they know more than you (when they clearly don’t), which can lead to unnecessary wrangling.

Get companies to pay for placement on your app

ShowNearby takes your business places... for a fee.

Imagine movie placements, but for games. Think about it: Isn’t it cool for users to get a Starbucks Cafe Latte that boost their character’s energy, or a Subway sandwich that adds to their health?

This method works marvelously for games. It has been useful in the publishing space too: Sponsored in-app items are actually called ‘advertorials’ or simply ‘sponsored’ content, and that’s old news. Placement can also manifest in tie-ups, like what Rovio did with the hit movie Rio to produce a special edition of Angry Birds.

But like display ads, placements only work only if your app is well-used. Don’t expect the corporate types to brand an item after them if no one is going to download or use it.

Location-based services have also taken advantage of this model, but in a different way. Singapore’s ShowNearby, a location-based directory app that allows users to locate services in their vicinity, earns by charging clients for prominent placement on their business listings.

Another company, Chalkboard, started by Bernard Leong who also co-founded SGE, charges merchants to place their promotions on his app. Chalkboard essentially allows users to find out the latest promotions and offers from nearby establishments in their location.

Conclusion

Monetization is about picking the right strategy and approach that best suit the needs of your company and app. While putting up banner ads is a venerable, time-tested approach, doing it blindly would deprive you of alternative revenue streams that might be a better fit.

This list is definitely non-exhaustive, since there are many ingenious app developers like yourself constantly experimenting with new methods. Do share with us if you know of more interesting ways to monetize an app!

This is the last in a series of articles based on Apps World Asia. Also check out ’5 trends that will shape the app world’ and ‘The future is shiny for Asia’s mobile apps ecosystem’ if you haven’t.

Top image: Bart Claeys

Other features of the service include: Email notifications for new or unpaid bills, downloadable PDF bills, and limitless archive for bills. Through the service, users can also request service providers to stop sending them paper bills.

Currently, you can view digital bills from StarHub, M1, SingTel, SingPower, and NUSS in Singapore; Maxis, Digi, TNB and Astro in Malaysia; and Optus, 3Mobile and CityLink in Australia. The company says more billers will be added in 2011.

Here you can find some interesting startup news from Indonesia, not only in its capital, Jakarta, but also other their tech startup hubs such as Yogyakarta, Medan, Surabaya, and many more. These listed news are taken from our partner, DailySocial, a leading blog on Indonesia’s tech startup scene.

(1) Tasterous, the location-based app that lets you find and share local dishes, has launched an iPhone version. The company officially launched their Blackberry app in April 2011 and their Android app in June 2011 before finally launch their iPhone app.

(2) Google chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the company will open their office in Indonesia before 2012. The announcement was made during his meeting with Indonesia’s vice-president Boediono in Jakarta. The vice-president’s spokesman Yopie Hidayat, as quoted by Kompas, explained that Google would like to develop their business by leveraging SMEs from Indonesia with foreign buyers like what Google did in China.

(3) MediaWave, a social media analysis platform, will continue to make improvements in their platforms, especially on the functions and user interface.

(4) StatCounter, an independent agency that tracks Internet access stats, have a web app called GlobalStats. If we look at the data captured by StatCounter in Indonesia, there was a monumental shift in June 2011. For the first time, accessing the Internet via BlackBerry beat Symbian-based phones.

(5) Internet reach in Indonesia has surpassed traditional media and ranks second only to TV according to a recent survey done by Yahoo! and TNS. The survey was conducted in several major and smaller cities across the country.

(6) A very recent report from Akamai, The State of The Internet report, shows that Indonesia holds 7th position as the slowest country in terms of narrowband connectivity.

More about Indonesia tech startup scenes (below excerpts are translated by SGE team, while the full article is in Indonesian)

(7) Freco.com is a site that provide search results on various topics based on other users recommendations. At this site, users can type some keywords to get other users’ recommendations. Users can add their own recommendations on some topics, which could be stuff that Freco.com does not have yet.

(8) Joining the e-commerce industry in Indonesia is Bibli.com, which was officially launched in Jakarta by CEO Kusuma Martanto. Bibli positions themself as an online mall with an easy, fun and free concept.

(9) HackerSpace is now present in Yogyakarta and will be managed by Bancakan 2.0, a community of developers.

(10) Indonesia Communication and Information Ministry will start to block internet access to the websites that provide pirated mp3 download services.

This has been brought to you by SGE and DailySocial. DailySocial is a blog that covers the Indonesian tech startup scene. They publish in both Indonesian and English.

Thank you to nordicfactory for the flag image.

App developers looking for publicity can sign up with Mobileapps.com and pay to have their products displayed by web publishers in customized widgets that function like mini app stores.

Consumers too can benefit from their business model, since Mobileapps.com serves as an app store in itself with over 500,000 apps on display for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms.  Around 2,000 of the apps are hosted on the website.

The company just received US$400,000 in funding from Japan-based I-Freek, their partner and investor. They plan to launch the product in Japan on August 2011.

Their app, called Mobile Airtime Smartphone, is the product of a partnership between TransferTo and DonRiver, a leading mobile payments consulting and application development firm.

It will provide a convenient way to transfer airtime internationally using a smartphone. Users can transfer small amounts of value in the form of prepaid mobile credits. For example, 15 minutes of airtime in US (at US$6) can be transferred to India for 250 minutes of airtime (at 200 INR) — more than 16 times the value, which makes it a low cost and high value complement to cash remittances.

The TransferTo Mobile Airtime Application will be available this summer within Apple App Store and Android Market.

TransferTo is a Global Airtime Remittance Hub that interconnects mobile operators’ prepaid systems to deliver end-to-end, cross border top-up services. With over 185 partner Mobile Network Operators in 70 countries, they can reach 3.6 billion prepaid users. 

The application was co-developed by DonRiver and integrated to the secure international TransferTo airtime transfer network. Last year, TransferTo received investment of US$38 Million.

DonRiver is a leading business and technology consulting company that serves the global telecommunications and mobile financial services industries. It provides mobile financial strategy, software development, and system integration services to the world’s leading mobile operators, financial institutions, and financial services providers.