Top blog articles for startup founders

What is Growth Hacking? It’s no easy to copy a growth strategy. For each project, for each app, there is a different strategy and it’s an art to find the right one. That’s why the growth hacker is born. The Growth Hacker is at the intersections between the latest technologies, analytics of data and marketing. It’s a combination of Network effect and viral marketing. The Growth Hacker can make your app win positions and downloads without having to pay huge quantities of paid advertisings. Here are 12 tips for Growth Hackers: 1.    It sounds stupid but like any marketer, you should know what your customers want, what language he speaks and where he is. Write it down and post it on your wall. 2.    You should be able to make use of the latest social media tools. You should know about Twitter, facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Linkedin ads, etc.), iconography, Rich snippets and Blogs. You should know how to use them and how to measure your results using them. 3

How to monetize my app? Affiliate sales.   You can sell products and services on your app provided by other companies. You can find offers of products through pages like Zanox, CJ, Linkshare,… Mobile commerce. You can do like e-commerce but for a mobile application. However, it’s not easy. Check this article to see how to do it successfully. In-app purchases.   This is the most important business model for apps in term of volume. It means that your app is free but you can buy virtual goods inside the app. For example in car game, you can buy petrol. Ad supported.   Like a website you can keep space to put banners and widgets of partners. Now you can also run some video inside your app and get a price per video watched inside your app. Data collection . If with your app you collect valuable information about users, their desire, their search you can monetize it. Your app could later be sold to a company interested in this infor

Amazon has doubled its mobile sales to $8bn in 2013. Walmart estimated   that 40% of all visits to their internet shopping site was from a mobile device. According to IBM, Mobile sales increased by 46% in Q4 2013. Mobile commerce is booming. What are the reasons for some businesses cracking the secret to m-commerce success?      Let’s start with Groupon, the deal of the day website, present in 150 markets which has approximately 50% of its sales coming from mobile. What makes the difference with other mobile commerce apps? The user experience. The navigation of the app is easy and straightforward. The payment gateway is safe and there is an added value for users to buy through the app as offers are time-sensitive and payment may be required from their current location. L et's see the example of ASOS, the UK’s largest online-only fashion and beauty store. You can see below how their have completely re-thought their design to make the user experience smoother

4 free tools to market an app You should use social networks. Why? It’s statistically proved that people thrust more a friend or acquaintance recommendation than any other advertising coming directly from a company or add agency. You should make people speaking about you online and with their friends. According to my experience, here are the four main tools. You could also add linkedin if your app is a business tool for example. 1.    Facebook. You should build a company page and an app page. Use your company page to build a community of fans. Only when you have more than 1500 true fans, you can start to organize competitions and sell your app. Don’t forget to use facebooks insight to see the virality of your posts. One of the best tools to build a facebook competition is easypromo .  According to some studies the best moment to publish posts is between 03:00 and 05:00 pm. This can change from one region to another. Check the one of your target audience. 2.   

The best online marketing tools for your app Beside the free existing ways to promote an app as seen in my previous posts you have the paid ways. If you have money this is the most secure way of getting users. More downloads you get, higher you go on the ranking of the Appstore. However, don’t start this without knowing how your apps is working. Make first some user tests. Be sure your app has enough engagement. Be sure people will not delete it after a few days. Check you have no bugs or crash. If all the above is satisfactory you can start to pay per downloads or per action in your app.  Don’t forget to have a clear objective. What position do you want to reach? In which category (Games, Social networks, Lifestyle,…? In wich platform? In which country? If the following tools are efficient for the Apple store, there are not so efficient for Google Play. Google Play uses complex algorithms taking more values than the number of downloads into account. You actually have fou

What team/skills do I need to build a successful app? To develop a successful app you need the following partners or skills. Please note that many of those partners/skills can be externalized. However, at one moment you will need them. Designer.   Someone able to work with Photoshop, Freehand, etc. If he has experience with mobile applications it’s better.  Take into account that picture definition change from iOS to Android for example. UX/UI expert   (User experience).    Your app must me be easy to understand and to navigate. Behaviour of an iOS and an Android user changes. Make UX texts and prototype before developing your app. A good tool to test your app is   justinmind . Testers.   People able to make quantitative and qualitative user tests. Testing should start as early as possible in the process. Mobile Developer.   There are many different platforms (Android, iOS, HTML5, Blackberry, Windows,…). So priories where you want to be and with which functions