Have you ever been friendzoned?
Likelyhood is that you have at some point, it’s certainly not an uncommon occurrence. Many question why this happens, and many theories and even books have been written on this subject (from our own experience, it’s because you were too chicken to make a move, just saying). The fact of the matter is that ultimately, friendzoning comes from the other person liking you enough to want to hang out, but finds you too boring to want to sleep with you. You might not actually be boring, but it’s all about how you come across. If you’re just going to sit passively and expect them to do all the work to come to you then to the friendzone you shall go.
The interesting thing is that this is the exact same problem that many app developers face with their customers.
Many developers will make a good app, but only a handful will have any success. Why is that? Is it the zeitgiest not wanting what they’re selling? Is it that the app isn’t to the majority’s taste? Or is it that they didn’t put any effort into showing people why they should buy the app?
Whilst the first two will probably have a certain impact, it’s the third one that is the most likely candidate for your app’s seeming non-starting. If people don’t know about your app, don’t know how good it can be for them, and if you don’t put the effort into essentially charming them into buying what you’re selling, it’s very likely it won’t sell.
There was a study done later last year that said that 91% of app developers think marketing is important. That’s good! But that also over half of developer don’t put any budget into marketing at all. That’s bad.
That second reason is why 80% of app developers don’t make enough money to operate as a standalone business.
If you don’t put any effort into selling your app to your customers, letting them know what they an potentially get from it, they’ll get bored quickly and move on without ever actually buying your app. In other words, they’ll friendzone you. After that, unless you release something drastically different and exciting, customers will keep not only your app, but your development studio in the “meh” category.
So if you want to avoid that, get marketing. We know it takes effort, and if you put all that effort in and your app still doesn’t do that well then it redoubles the failure, because you actually tried to make it work. But the statistics don’t lie, if you don’t make any effort, you’re not going to make an impact all, regardless.
Want to get out of the friendzone? Kumulos features like app store optimization, client reports and our white label app portal all show your customers that you’re serious about being their app developer – and just a friend.
As the endlessly quotable Wayne Gretsky once said “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”
