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Chapter 1 – Public relations...What’s the deal?

“If you build it, they will come.”

That’s a take on a famous line from the Kevin Costner classic Field of Dreams, a movie about a man who builds a baseball field in the middle of nowhere, after having a prophetic vision of its success. In the end, the character’s baseball field is a resounding success, attracting hundreds of patrons from miles away.

As inspiring as the story is, when the story is translated into the business world, the premise simply doesn’t work. Building an incredible product does not guarantee you an instant audience. In the app world, if you want an audience you have to earn it.

The Power of PR

An old colleague once described public relations as the “fairy dust” that gets sprinkled on a product to make it shine. In the Peter Pan tales, fairy dust combined with a “happy thought” equaled the marvelous spectacle of flight that made Pan legendary.

Public relations does to your product what fairy dust did for Peter Pan. It allows you to soar above your competitors, build a legendary status, and when mixed with the “happy thought” that is your product, the sky is the limit. Without it, even the most ambitious and extraordinary products are stuck on the ground.

That is a big problem in the mobile, tablet, and Web app industries because of how crowded the marketplace has become. Millions of apps currently exist. Even the number of app marketplaces has continued to grow. With each one vying for the public’s attention, getting yours downloaded is not going to be an easy task. That fact alone can be disillusioning enough for developer to avoid the industry all together. After all, why spend hundreds of hours creating the best app in the world, if it’s just going to get drowned out by the thousands of average apps cooked up by developers that are out there to make a quick buck? It’s become a bloated, loony world for app developers, one where even the best apps in the world are relegated to the bottom of the charts without proper exposure to the masses.

A developer once told me that his app got the biggest bump in downloads by word of mouth. Essentially, he would show ten friends his app at a technology conference, or even at a dinner table, and they in turn would tell ten of their own friends.

Public relations essentially works the same way. The only difference? With public relations, you can tell ten friends about your app, and they in turn tell millions of people about it. Getting the right people to talk about your app is as good as gold.

Of course, these “friends” aren’t just normal people. They are reporters, bloggers, and broadcasters at media outlets that get bombarded for attention by developers just like you, because of the potential reward involved.

Just exactly how big can these rewards get?

To put things in perspective, some of the most popular websites for technology news get over 3 million unique visitors per month. If even 10 percent of its readers read about your app there and decide to download it, that’s over 300,000 new users! And if you are charging even $1 for a download, that’s a lot of green!

Getting your app featured on just one of these sites is enough to skyrocket your app to the top. As an added bonus, once it is written about, your app is featured on their website forever, which can result in future downloads, without any further effort. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

You don’t have to look far to see the results in action either. At the time of this writing, all 50 of the top grossing iPhone app developers have used public relations to drive downloads and keep themselves on the charts. In a nutshell, winners use PR, those that don’t get stuck at the bottom of the charts.

Public relations versus advertising

You might be asking yourself, “If media outlets have enough clout or influence to make my app the ‘next big thing,’ why can’t I just place an advertisement on their websites or in their magazines?”

Advertisements are a good way to go if you’ve got a lot of money to spend. Besides being incredibly expensive, one of its big weaknesses is that the audience simply doesn’t care about them. When was the last time you were happy to have an interesting article you were reading interrupted by pages of ads in a magazine? When was the last time you were genuinely interested in an ad that played before an online video that you wanted to watch? In all likelihood, you’re probably frantically looking for the “close” button as soon as they begin. Advertisements can be the thorn in the sides of readers and viewers alike.

Its other big weakness is (like a good sale at your favorite clothing store) that once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. Advertisements are ephemeral by nature. Brands get their message to the viewer in 30 seconds and hope they’ll remember it when they get to the store. Likewise, once a reader turns the page of an advertisement in a magazine, there’s no reason to flip back to it.

Public relations gives you the same amount of visibility in these media outlets in a forum that the audience actually cares about—the articles themselves. Readers and viewers trust reporters to create news about the coolest new products. They trust reporters because they are the authorities, the ones that spend their entire lives writing about a topic. Getting a reporter to write about your product is its ultimate third-party validation in the eyes of the reader because reporters are the independent party.

Because you are involved with these independent reporter parties, you get the added bonus of getting honest feedback about your product. If a reporter doesn’t “get” your product, odds are neither will the masses. Using public relations lets you see the “holes” in your product, the product weaknesses that often go unnoticed because developers like you are too close to see them. Best of all, with feedback from reporters, you get to know the features that will resonate most with potential users. It’s essentially giving you access to a free expert focus group!

The Bigger Picture

Looking at the bigger picture, public relations offers more than just immediate benefits. Used effectively, it helps with long-term goals of building a brand and managing your reputation.

Popularity is a strange creature. It’s natural to think that the more people hear about your product, the easier it becomes to “sell” your brand. The one thing that developers always forget is that as your fan base grows, so do your critics. The worst part is, your critics often drown out your biggest fans. It’s not because there are more of them, it’s because they are louder. People who love your product will use it religiously, but will frequently be hesitant to post positive feedback about. On the other hand, those who are unsatisfied will bash it—loudly, repeatedly, and harshly. Needless to say, your reputation can take a nosedive if you are not careful.

Using public relations puts you in control of your reputation. While you can’t eliminate the naysayers, you can certainly drown them out. This is important for any budding developer looking to go make a name for himself. Building a good reputation means building a better brand. Think about your favorite clothing store. In the same way you trust that they will have the perfect pair of jeans for you—the ones that fit around your hips just right—users will trust that you are making the perfect apps for them.

That visibility is not just limited to potential users of your product, either. The more media attention your product receives, the better the chance that certain “power players” will take notice. They can be investors, willing to give you millions of dollars because they think you’ve got something special. They can be a massive technology company that see your product as the perfect acquisition, and are willing to pay handsomely for your brand. Or it can even be a completely unrelated company that wants to partner with you to help your product be even better. The fact is, the more spotlight you shed on your product, the better the chance that these power players will take notice.

Playing your cards right, getting your apps in front of the influencers at the right time, and knowing exactly what to say to them can mean the difference between an app being a “flash in the pan” versus the “next killer brand.”