Lessons from Buddha ;)
Just like you, the cpa world is something we think about all the time. I was last active on a day to day basis when ringtones were still hot. It was a fun time and so many people did so very well. It was quintessential cpa network days. Each network had a ringtone offer, but while similar in messaging, most of the offers were different. There really were exclusives which you could only get at one place and not the other. Each network was continually trying to improve its conversion flow, tweaking the landing pages, with the account managers acting as stock advisors helping marketers keep pace with what worked and didn’t. Everybody hustled and the energy was contagious.
Over the past year, I have watched as my editorial predecessor has put his money where my mouth is – in the mobile space. (It’s just like the old ringtone market, the irony being that both are mobile in their own way.) The result of those efforts are Buddha ;), a mobile app for uncovering the hidden connections around you, now available on Android and iPhone. Watching him go from idea to launched product has been amazing, insightful, and painful. Here are but a few of the things that stick out:
The app has become the new bookmark – there is a new real estate battle that has been brewing since Apple introduced the concept of the app store, and that is to have your icon appear on one of the home screens of the phone. The icon can go to a mobile web page or it can be a self-contained experience, which more and more apps are. They don’t replace the role of the browser, but for many functions using the app is much quicker and a better experience than going to the mobile web site. If a company has a mobile web site, that is often the distinction as to whether they build a true app, how much they can improve upon what is possible in the mobile web. As the user is stuck in a private experience, almost everyone would like to find a reason to have a persistent presence. For programs like Buddha ;), what they want to do is not possible in a mobile web environment, and the goal is to create enough value in day to day life that people will make loading the app habit.
Domain names are being disrupted – most apps have a site, but they are often times nothing more than jump pages meant to host a link to the app stores where the actual app is housed. Buddha 😉 has buddhatheapp.com, while many other apps based off common names will use a syntax similar to getappname.com or appnamedownload.com. It’s a slightly messy process. Within the app store it is seamless, but outside of the app store it is anything but. It’s easier to download ShopAtHome than it is an app from PC. Give it a try. Get Buddha 😉. It will change soon,and when it does, it could open up a world of possibilities for the performance marketing space. Instead of a toolbar like ShopAtHome, once a download can occur from the non-mobile web and synch to the phone, marketing to get downloads can take place much as marketing to for Facebook apps within Facebook is such big business.
You thought Google was a pain – getting an app approved to run in Apple’s marketplace can be one of the most frustrating experiences possible. If you thought that Google had poor customer service and operated like a black box, you haven’t seen anything. Just like quality score and the ad approval process, there is a huge disconnect between the mouth and the brain. The messengers of good or bad news do not make the decisions. They just shield those that do make decisions. You operate on their timeline and at there whim. It’s certainly as frustrating as poor deliverability but not nearly as fun to try and figure out.
It’s a crappy process – building an app is technically easy, but making an app that does something, looks good, etc., is really hard. Getting traction is even worse. There are only a few levers to pull to influence and seed downloads, and almost all of them are nothing like the world of performance based marketing. It’s no longer about a funnel. It’s about an inverse funnel. How do you get one user to become more than one so that each new user helps grow the overall? It also adds complexity, as many apps, like Facebook and foursquare have distinct instances on the web, having to manage almost two separate businesses
Iteration is a pain – if you want to make a change, you can’t just make a change. Well, you can, but then you have to hope that the user installs the update. You can’t really entice them to update – you can’t track them on the web and say, update your phone, nor can you do what the operating systems do and just update it, you are stuck hoping they find the time to squeeze yours in with the 50 other updates that need to occur.
The web business may be changing, but unless you really like the mobile phone, unless you are really passionate about an idea and just want to do it, finding a compelling reason to do so is not easy. You will have to learn a new everything, and if you decide to outsource the work, then you are potentially stuck with a dud that could quickly become obsolete. Despite the massive success of certain apps and the ubiquity of them, we are still in very early days. They can be rewarding, but they will also test your resolve to have left the comfort of the developed world for the frontier.
