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I have almost finished developing an iPhone app which I feel has a lot of potential.

The problem is I have no money, and I am pretty clueless about marketing. So I feel if I tried to release it by myself, no one would hear about the app and I wouldn't be able to get many sales.

Most funding options I have seen for startups are for large amounts of money. I suspect this app will only need at most a few thousand pounds for its marketing.

What options are available to get some funding for marketing the app? Or are there marketing firms out there that would be willing to market on a commission basis?

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4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote

I would start with free marketing:

  • Press releases
  • Forum posts
  • Direct marketing (send an email to potential customers directly)
  • SEO (if you can handle it yourself)

With that, you will generate sales. Keep the money and reinvest it in paid marketing:

  • Google AdWords
  • Banner campaigns
  • Magazine advertising
  • etc.

After a while, you will be able to measure how much marketing you need for a certain amount of revenue.

You will be in position to test things, to invest your marketing money wisely.

In any case, buying one of two books on the subject will help you a lot.

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If its a B2B app let me know. I would be interested in helping out with funding based on the app, and the market it addresses. Finding a microloan for an applicaiton would not be hard. my honest advise is to bootstrap it and reinvest your profits. The advantage of having funding is that you get more exposure before anyone has time to copy and improve upon your idea. If you need funding for a blast of exposure look to your friends, and family. I also would look for loans versus equity. – Frank Oct 29 '10 at 4:33
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The strongest marketing technique available is to get each of your users to recruit/spread the word to new users. This enabled hotmail, skype etc. to get a huge userbase without spending a single dollar on marketing (I know this for a fact with regards to hotmail). This mechanism is possible for a range of software or physical products. I once read a whole book about how to do this, there are so many ways.

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Interesting. Given me some thoughts. Do you know what the book you refer to is called? – Mongus Pong Oct 28 '10 at 13:08
I am sorry. It is too long ago. Just focus on getting each new user to get more than 1.00 users to join, and the process will accelerate. Maybe research something like peer-to-peer marketing. – David Oct 29 '10 at 15:29
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Keep in mind that there is a difference between Marketing and Promotion. The methods mentioned by User3997 are get advertising/promotion methods which is part of marketing.

Before you get into any of that, take a step back and learn about your market. Think about who would buy this, why they would, who are your competitors, how are they advertising, what makes you different?

From there you will have a better idea of what it is going to take to promote your product. It is very dangerous, from a time and money standpoint, to not consider your market first. So either take some time to learn about marketing or higher a marketing firm, it depends how serious you are about needing to make money with this product.

Those are my thoughts.

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Google marketing iphone apps. There are several reputable companies that specialize in funding/helping developers market their iOS apps.

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