This week, we pickup the promotion side of getting an app off the ground. We hear from the founders of an e-commerce app for artists to sell their music and physical products called Alosha. They share how networking and connecting was important for promotion as well as getting downloader feedback. Take a listen to learn how they went about this process!
Mark: Thank you for having us!
Tariq: Thanks!
Where to Start With Getting App Exposure
Bekkah: Yeah, so our first question about this is when you were ready to launch your app and start getting exposure how did you develop your game plan? What did that sound like?
Mark: Well, the game plan was to get more attraction as much as possible. It was more about Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter just trying to develop those profiles and that’s it.
Ruthie: Alright, which is awesome and I think that people underplay a lot the value of social media and how just the word of mouth through social media can really help promote anything really but like specifically with apps and things too so I think that that’s really cool that you mentioned that. What were some of the early lessons that you learned in your first round of launching your app?
Mark: My first round lesson was not connecting to groups on Facebook. For instance, for musical artists or aspiring artists there are all kinds of groups on Facebook just all about artists. I didn’t know how much demographic or how many artists were out there until I started being in the art world and I started following them and I started learning about the stories and I started watching their paintings.
I was like, “Man, why can’t we get these people into our application?” and so from that point on I started having conversations with them. Not, for instance, anything that I didn’t know before but everything that I knew about I would give them advice on different things and they would react in the most positive way especially on Instagram.
Bekkah: Interesting!
Ruthie: So kind of backtracking for our listeners if they didn’t listen to the last episode, can you give us a little bit of a description or like a breakdown of what exactly your amazing app does?
Mark: The app is called Alosha. You can reach us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and so on and so forth. At first, it was for musicians. When they were making beats for instance they were developing music and they were spending all this money to be on Spotify, iTunes, and so on and so forth on all these applications just trying to get heard you know I mean? Just the way I was trying to be heard and they were getting nowhere. They were giving it all for free so this application provides you with the growth, with the opportunity to actually start making money at the early stages of your career.
You know I mean? You don’t have to give up in the middle of like what – four years of making music or making artwork. You can actually start making money within the first year even if you’re not good enough. Even if it’s your hobby you can start developing some kind of noise around yourself if you wanted to develop a career out of it. Well, what the application does is this: when you go into it you can either be a buyer or a seller. You could be private or public; it doesn’t really matter.
What the application does is allow you to share at 15% commission. I know other apps or other websites don’t charge you a commission but they charge you a subscription and you continue to lose money with the subscription because they don’t sell as fast as other galleries or applications do. We don’t charge you for time to be on the application. So we don’t make money until you make money.
How to Use Facebook Groups to Promote Your App
Ruthie: Okay, so you kind of mentioned you were reaching out to these people in these Facebook groups and it sounded like you were very good at developing relationships with people. It sounds like that’s kind of how you started promoting your app and kind of building that following by touching base with people specifically and you were able to do that in those Facebook groups. When you were developing those relationships did you refer people to your website? Did you have a website or how did you tie in Alosha when you were reaching out to those people and building those relationships?
Mark: Oh, yeah, of course. When people on Facebook groups were asking me, “Hey, how do you sell beats and get the most money for it?” I’d be like, “Hey, look there are plenty of opportunities out there.” I mean, I wouldn’t just advertise myself at first, “There are plenty of opportunities out there to sell your beats but you’ll be spending a lot of money.” That’s what I would say in the comments or in the messages but at the same time as I would write the comment I would write the website down and at the bottom and they would know about it.
Then hopefully, they would choose to do what’s best for them and the choice that they can make. That seemed to work out just fine. Even the group creator was like messaging me like, “Dude, you’re finding out new ways to advertise your business!” like yeah you know that’s the way to do it. You know, he was actually surprised by that and I was like, “Wow! You know maybe more people need to do this instead of you know just me.”
Use Your App to Help to Solve Someone’s Problem
Ruthie: Yeah and, honestly, Bekkah and I talk all the time about how the name of the game is providing value to people. I think that is so true to what you’ve been doing. It makes it so much easier when you develop something because you’re not selling something that’s useless, you really believe in this and it’s so much easier to see, “I know that this will benefit your life and here’s how I can provide value to you,” and it sounds like you really found that when you were promoting your app which is so cool and I love that.
Mark: Absolutely! We’re not just a post and show, after time we’re also trying to grow value for yourself as well. You know what I mean? We’re not trying to make you go cheaper on your price. We’re trying to expand on your price as well as time goes on regardless if you’re just a hobby or you’re trying to get better or whatever it is. You don’t have – the main reason is you don’t time is not against you it’s working for you. That’s it.
Bekkah: Yeah well, in terms of like creating more content you have more stuff and then the more you have the more people will look at it right. No, I totally get it. Absolutely. When you guys were putting this out there what were resources that were helpful for you in understanding some app promotional tactics? Were there things you read that you were like, “Oh, this is really good advice”? Are there any kind of tools or websites that were helpful in getting started?
Mark: Well, I’m glad you asked that question. I actually went on thumbtack and I started to search all these social media gurus. From that point on they were like telling me, “Man, you gotta you know join these pages. You gotta join these clubs. You gotta join all kinds of stuff. You gotta be in it, man, you know? You gotta comment on every question everything you know about the art. You have to get people engaged into everything. You need thousands of views. You need thousands of followers. You need thousands of likes so on and so forth.”
I’m like, “No, no, no, no. You don’t need any of that. I don’t need any of that. The number one thing that I need is I can engage with people.” I figured out a better way. I can engage with people one-on-one, give them the right advice about the things that I know and what I know about. That’s how we have been able to be successful with other people logging on into our app and sharing their music, art, and sculptures with us.
Ruthie: Yeah, so when you are looking back in time say you started over again what is something that you would absolutely do again?
Use Social Platforms to Promote Your App As Soon As You Can
Mark: The number one thing I could do again is start the Facebook groups a little bit earlier than ever. Posting on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and I would learn about it more in a progression. The way that it’s going now it would have been a lot faster growth at the beginning than what it is right now if I knew the things that I know now. It would have been a lot bigger than what it is.
Ruthie: Okay, when you are looking at starting your app and stuff and when you originally launched and you’re working with developers, what is one way that you stayed in communication with the developers. Because I know that it seems like there’s a big disconnect a lot of times with app developers and the people who are actually promoting the event and promising things to their audience. How did you stay in communication with your app developer in that process?
Mark: Well, Tariq is an amazing guy. He’s really, really great. When I found him on thumbtack, when I had this idea, I contacted him the next day and I went through, I don’t know, five to ten different people. He was the only one who was able to. I only had, I don’t want to talk about money here but I only had a certain amount of money here. He was able to work with me with the progression of initial payments. It was a benefit for me at the time that no one else was offering.
When I found that out I was like, “This is the guy that I want to be in business with because he’s going to help. He’s willing to be in it to win it and he is going to be in it all the way.” And from that point on we just clicked. We developed a relationship. I told him the dream. Well, I told him the vision, I didn’t tell him all of the vision. I had no idea that he developed such a small apps before we should jump in here too because Tariq is here! So he’s like hearing all this praise about him.
Tariq: That’s still nice!
How to Know What to Change in Your App as You’re Growing
Bekkah: Silently just like, yeah so my question I’m going to repeat that question a little bit so, Tariq, from your perspective, when you guys were getting ready to launch and Mark is doing all of this front-end marketing work how was communication helpful? What worked for you guys to make sure when it was going out, as people were trying it all that kind of stuff?
Tariq: It was kind of – we had our weekly meetings. We would link up to kind of talk about the features I’m working on and –
Mark: That’s the problem with me! I have millions of ideas and Tariq only has so much time in a day and he can’t do it all. What I decided to do is just to organize one feature at a time but first things first becomes marketing right now. Because we have more than a thousand people who have downloaded the app. Mostly with the features like, “Oh, yeah, we can add this we can add that!” It’s partially my fault because have a huge vision for Alosha that expands a million years from here on out into the sea and the water is deep.
When I realized Tariq was going on Ramadan to his you know what I mean, he had to take personal time off. What I realized is that organization is the key to everything. So if we organized the development in a way that doesn’t overwhelm Tariq with his other projects, we would be better off as partners in that type of solution. Because he’s not, you know what I mean, he’s not overwhelmed. He’s not hot or anything. He’s not sleep-deprived or anything of that nature. There’s no time limit on any of developments.
Learning From Your Users Can Make Your App Even Better
Ruthie: Yeah, okay, so how does going from that development side and getting feedback from your customers, when you started doing all the marketing, how did that help you create a better product and craft your pitch more to meet your users’ expectations?
Mark: Before the app was what it is today we have a bunch of issues. I mean like people uploading their artwork, people sharing, and everything else but what it is today we fixed a lot of issues with registering credit card numbers, shipping labels, shipment arrangements, and everything of that nature that wasn’t working before. We actually fixed what do you call it a display of artwork. Make sure the artwork is displaying well, uploaded right, and music is playing well, and everything else is downloaded. It wasn’t working before. We had to work a lot of issues before that we could get into the place that where we are now that sounds like does that answer the question or not?
Check Your App Reviews Often to Hear Feedback
Ruthie: Yeah it sounds like this is a really in-depth app! There’s a lot of different functionality that you can do with Alosha which is really cool and I love that you guys were taking that customer feedback. You had said earlier that you had some one-star reviews and stuff like that but that can be so valuable when you’re looking at customer feedback of just being able to use that to make your app better. Then, in turn, people can see how you’re responding to those reviews and that’s a huge piece of marketing for your customers to see that you have really good customer service.
Mark: Yes, ma’am, but well, from the beginning we had blank screens on everything and I was calling Tariq I’m like, “What’s going on?” You know what I mean? “Why do we have blank screens on profiles and why is nobody willing to upload it?” That’s actually one of those concerns was actually in one of the comments so I’m glad people actually commented on that because I didn’t know. You know what I mean? I was working hard at the time. I was blinded by work and I was trying to do 100 things at a time. When we rejuvenated the app, relaunched back in last year right, Tariq?
Tariq: Yeah, yeah it was. It might have been a year before that, but yeah I think you’re right. We did relaunch. We did a rebranding anyway in the last year.
Mark: So when we rebranded, everything else worked. All the concerns were met. All the applications were everything. So it was kind of like a trial run, but at the same time we learned so much through that trial run and from all the negative comments that we had. We fixed all the problems and now we don’t get any comments. We don’t get like reviews. We don’t get anything. We just get downloads now I guess that’s a good thing, right?
How to Stay Motivated While Promoting Your App
Bekkah: Yeah so how do you stay motivated to keep promoting?
Mark: Well, the number one thing is I wanted to help artists. The number one thing I want to help musicians to grow to be better than what they are doing right now, you know what I mean? With Soundcloud, Spotify, and iTunes and all this and that they’re paying more than they can get out of it. I mean why do you have to pay more? Why do you need to struggle even longer to do what you need to do? You know I mean everything costs money. Everything this and everything that, but your time is more valuable than anything else in the world. You don’t have to pay to keep your art on our application for your time.
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