About Me 0116: Making Money Marketing

Thanks God we are done with celebrating and can start working! Here’s one essential checklist for you to start:

1. Acknowledge Your Biggest Fans

Do you have fans that re-tweet your posts, email your articles to friends, and send new business your way? What have you done for them? Have you at least taken the time to thank them?

You should always monitor your brand, your website link and your own name (I use SocialMention). Every time someone says something nice about you, you should thank them. If you can do something else in return, by all means do.

2. Understand the Golden Rule of Blogging

Most blogs don’t appeal to the audience they’re writing for. The writing may be good, but the topics aren’t. Let’s say you sell furniture. Your blog shouldn’t be about your specials, the new employee you hired or about your vacation to Hawaii. Your blog should be about furniture.

Always ask yourself this question: who am I writing for? What kind of content do they want? It doesn’t matter if you don’t offer all the services you write about. For example, I own an Internet marketing agency and my audience is business owners. But, I don’t only write about online marketing; I write about topics that are of interest to business owners, such as lowering costs, motivating employees and off-line marketing.

Find out what your audience wants and give it to them.

3. Use Decoy Offers

Have you ever wondered why some stores sell an item for $100 and in the price tags says “Was $200″? It makes the current price look a lot better. Some people might think $100 is a lot of money for that item, but hey, it was $200, so you’re getting a great deal, right? Well, believe it or not, it works. This is because everything is either a great deal or an awful deal based on what you compare it with.

Psychologists call this “the principle of contrast.” How can you use this to your benefit? My favorite way is to present two or more offers. One will be your current offer and then you’ll add some decoy offers. The decoy offers will be really bad deals, but they’ll make your main offer look great. For example, you can sell one can of your product at $19 and three cans at $25 with free shipping and feature this last offer as the weekly special. Try it; it works like a charm and there’s nothing unethical about it. You’ll keep your main offer and all you’re doing is making it look better by adding some not-so-attractive offers.

4. Write Your Marketing Copy First and Develop Your Product Around It

I’ve found this tactic to be extremely effective. Instead of creating a product and then writing the marketing message, I like writing the copy first because by trying to sell it with words, I get a much better understanding of what the audience really wants and I can give them that product or service.

5. People Buy from People, Not Companies

Your customers might have known your company first, but they bought from you because they liked you or the salesperson they dealt with. This is especially true in B2B. The takeaway here is: do a good job explaining how your company can help your clients but do an even better job connecting with your prospects at a personal level.

Amazon is officially taking the wraps off its long-awaited Amazon App Store for Android, with the formal launch of a developer program. The Amazon store — which won’t arrive until sometime later this year — is aimed at creating a high-quality destination for Android app buyers and will give Android users a trusted place to pick up apps.

As I wrote last year, what Amazon is doing has a lot of potential, because it addresses some major shortcomings of Google’s own Android Market, which appears on almost all Android devices. Android Market, with some 200,000 apps, doesn’t suffer from lack of quantity, but it hasn’t been a huge money-maker for app developers because it’s rather simple, provides too few discovery tools and categories, has had little marketing and requires that purchases go through Google Checkout, a system that many users don’t seem to want to use.

While Google has addressed some of the concerns with recent improvements to Android Market, there’s still a lot Amazon can provide to both users and developers. I think serious developers will definitely look at the Amazon App Store as a way to sell their apps. It does bring some confusion to consumers, having to consider multiple application stores, but Amazon’s approach and its reputation as an online retailer should make it a popular destination for both consumers and developers. Here are the details of the program, some of which have been reported before:

Amazon will take a 30-percent cut of the sale price, the same as Google and Apple. There’s a $99 developer fee that Amazon is waiving for the first year. Developers must set a list price, but Amazon will be able to discount the app on its own. Developers will get at least 20 percent of the list price on discounted apps. This could get tricky if Amazon starts undercutting the price of an app already listed on Android Market, but Amazon officials told TechCrunch they’re looking to make money for developers and price flexibility can be helpful for that. This won’t be an issue if developers ultimately make more money selling through Amazon, but we’ll have to see.

The Amazon App Store will be built into Amazon.com and will also be accessible from mobile devices through the Amazon app. It’s not quite clear how the installation process will work, which could be an important point. Amazon is reportedly in talks with manufacturers to get the App Store pre-installed, but until then, users will have to go into their settings to allow app installations from “unknown sources.” App purchases and installations will need to be dead simple for this to work well.

At launch, the Amazon App Store will work on Android 1.6 devices and higher and will only be available in the U.S. initially. This will need to expand quickly for developers to take advantage of the big opportunity overseas.

Developers will be able to submit an unlimited number of images and up to five videos showing how the app works. Amazon will use the videos on its products page. This should be good for developers to better showcase their apps, and videos especially could convince some consumers that an app is worth buying. The fact that users will be able to browse from their PC is also a plus. Google has promised an online storefront for Android Market but we still haven’t seen it yet.

Developers who want to apply DRM must use Amazon’s system. Amazon will test all apps for functionality and to ensure they meet content guidelines, which forbid things like pornography, illegal content, offensive material and intellectual property violations. According to some reports, Amazon is looking to take a more liberal stance than Apple, so it should allow more satire. This review process could also weed out some of the junk apps and blatant copycats in Android Market, making for a more refined buying experience. There may be fewer options for consumers, but they may feel more confident about putting down money for an app.

Amazon will help market the apps and will apply its recommendation engine for apps, so consumers will be able to get recommendations on apps based on previous purchases. This is a big part of value proposition for Amazon. They know how to sell, and many consumers obviously have a good relationship with them. Android App Store has a new “similar to” feature to recommend apps, but Amazon will be able to draw on more of a user’s overall purchase history to help create more precise recommendations.

App purchases will happen through a consumer’s Amazon account, so existing users won’t have to enter credit-card information, and developers will be able to add their own payment system, presumably for in-app purchases. This is also a big win for developers. Google Checkout, the main way for buying apps on Android Market, doesn’t have that much penetration among consumers, so first-time app buyers are forced to enter in credit card information from their handset. Having an existing financial relationship with consumers gives Amazon the ability to do one-click purchases and gives consumers some of the ease they see in iTunes purchases.

We still have to see the Amazon App Store for Android in action and how many developers actually support it, but it sounds like this should be a positive addition for consumers and developers. Android Market is still getting better, but for now, Amazon’s app store is showing there’s a need for more choice in the marketplace.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

Why RIM’s Future (Unfortunately) Hinges on BlackBerry OS 6

Will Killer Apps Affect Which Handsets Consumers Buy?

How Carriers Can Crack the App Discoverability Nut

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Money Marketing

1. Acknowledge Your Biggest Fans

2. Understand the Golden Rule of Blogging

3. Use Decoy Offers

4. Write Your Marketing Copy First and Develop Your Product Around It

5. People Buy from People, Not Companies

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