Case Study

Building a 300k a year business in 12 months and how you can too!

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INTRO: BUILDING A BUSINESS SELLING MOBILE APPSHi there!

We have an awesome story to share with you today on how KaleoApps built a 300k a year business selling mobile apps in just 12 months and how you can do the same!

Building a business selling apps can be one of the most rewarding ventures in the world. Whether you’re building a business from scratch or selling to existing customers, mobile apps are one of the fastest growing markets with huge opportunity for revenue and profit. We are going to cover step by step on how KaleoApps built their business from just an idea, to over 300k in recurring revenue in just 12 months. We will explore concepts such as choosing your vertical market to the nuts and bolts of building a business.

Before we dive in though, I’d like to cover a few things you might find interesting about the mobile market!

Did you know the mobile market is projected to be worth over $36 billion by 2017? Also Did you know that 91% of small businesses don’t have a mobile presence? So with over 28 million businesses in the US alone, that means there are 25 million that can you use an app.

Are you going to be there to help them go mobile?

Ian BlairBuildFire Co-Founder

THE NUMBERSSHOW ME

ACTUAL FIRST YEAR REVENUE DATA

(from KaleoApps Recurly Account)

Now that we’ve seen what kind of revenue you can generate, lets dive into how they got there!

WHAT WERE THEYSELLING?

STEP 1

THE KaleoApps MOBILE SOLUTION

BuildFire offers a robust Mobile App Builder that can create mobile solutions for nearly any vertical market. In this case, Kaleo Apps used BuildFire to create Mobile Apps for churches. We will cover quickly what their product offering was and how they used BuildFire to create solutions for their customers. First we will start with the some examples of their apps.

KEY FEATURES AND VALUE PROP FOR THE APP:

• Easy to communicate with the congregation throughout the week with Push Notifications.

• Sermons are archived and available on the go. • GPS directions for all of their locations and homes. • Music streaming for those who wanted to listen to worship music.

• Event Calendar.

• Sermon Notes. • Connection forms so they could gather people’s information.

• Social Wall so people can connect with one another.

As you can see this is a pretty compelling solution for a church who is trying to stay relevant in the 21st century. Everyone is mobile so it is a great way for them to connect with their members. (This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the features BuildFire offers, but these were the features they utilized for this app.)

You will need to decide for yourself what features you would like to use for your vertical, but we will cover that in the next section so stay tuned!

MOBILE APP MANAGEMENT DASHBOARD

Having a mobile app is one thing. Being able to update content and keep it fresh is another thing. That’s where our app dashboard comes into play. Users can easily update their app with our click and edit technology. No guessing what your edits are going to look like, see it all in real time.

This was definitely one of the biggest selling points for Kaleo Apps. Their customers had the power continually make changes to their app without the need of a developer. The app dashboard is another great way to justify the monthly fee to the customer. It’s not just a one off app that never gets updated. It’s constantly being refreshed.

How you decide to sell this solution is completely up to you, whether you want to manage it for them or give the controls over to the customer.

SUPER ADMIN DASHBOARD FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Having a Super Admin Panel is super important for managing your business, especially as you start to acquire more customers. To give you a high level overview of how you can customize the Super Admin for your business needs as well as have easy access to your customer apps, I’ll list out some of the features.

SUPER ADMIN DASHBOARD FOR YOUR BUSINESS (continued)

• Access to all of your apps in one easy place. • Great for customer support and for building apps.

• Custom plans and configurations. • Decide what features each plan gets and how much it will cost.

• Robust business analytics.

• See how your customers are using the dashboard. • How often are they signing in? • What actions are your users taking?

• Offer In App customer support.

• With our Intercom integration you can offer in app support for your customers. • Built in CRM - (For those who use our automated signup process). • Integrated billing system.

• User management. • Register users and assign them to apps.

Tons of neat feature right? ….and that’s just scratching the surface! But now that we’ve covered what the product and solution is, we’ll go into choosing and developing a vertical market and why Kaleo Apps chose the market they did.

CHOOSING YOURVERTICAL

STEP 2

CHOOSING YOUR VERTICAL

Having a clear understanding of the vertical market you occupy, is crucial to delivering the products/ services most appropriate to your target audience. A vertical market is a type of market in which businesses offer their goods and services to a specific industry, trade, profession, or group of customers. Each of which have their own specialized needs and desires.

Businesses in vertical markets cater to a single niche instead of appealing to a broader audience. All of their business decisions keep in mind their intended target audience and what will appeal to them the most.

Kaleo Apps chose to work with churches as their target market for a variety of reasons. • Churches needs are pretty similar so it was easy to offer a scalable and repeatable solution.

• Word of mouth works great in that network. • Mobile apps are a huge value add for this industry.

• It helps churches be more effective.

• Better communication from the church to the member.

• More accessible content on the go. • Great retention and long term value of the customer. • Clear path to success for acquiring customers.

• Experience working within the industry.

Determining what type of vertical market you want to be in starts by answering the following three questions.

First, ask yourself “What vertical am I really passionate about?”. You are going to spend a lot of time in this space, you want to make sure that your time is not being wasted. Pick a vertical that catches your interest, one that makes every new piece of information a joyful discovery. The more passionate you are about your vertical, the more enthusiastic you will be with your work. Your enthusiasm will transfer over into everything you do. Attracting and inspiring others to feel the same as you do. Allow yourself to be joyfully contagious by working within the space you love.

Second, ask yourself “What type of people do I want to attract?” In every vertical, there exist a wide variety of people. Each with their own interest, attributes, personality, fears, and goals. Depending on who you are, picking who to go after can be a complicated numbers game to identify the most statistically reasonable answer. In which you analyze trends in your customer database and only go after the space with the most potential such as the type of customers that come back to your website the most. Or picking who to go after can mean going after the type of customers that are willing to spend more, even if they are not the majority. Whatever the case, you can be sure that who you currently are as a company is attracting certain types of customers over others. While it is entirely entirely up to you to pick and choose, it can be easiest to go after individuals that reflect the same values as your business. That means like minded individuals that stand behind the same mission, purpose, and characteristics that your company stands for.

Third, ask yourself “What can you offer to meet their needs?”. Selling to a specific group of people means you are quickly able to learn the ins-and-outs of what works and what doesn't. You begin to slowly master your message to meet the exact needs of your customers. Had you picked a broader or vague customer audience, it would have been incredibly difficult to pinpoint what will connect with your customers and what will be tossed aside.

By intimately knowing your customers, you are able to create a product or service specifically tailored to them. Creating your product/service should be among the last things you do. If you haven't first gotten to know about 200 people within your ideal space and asked them what their needs are and their expectations then you have not done enough research. By thinking of what to offer your customers last, you give yourself enough time and data to come up with a product/ service that you know mathes your customer. Your research will help you see a need in your current strategy, maybe one that has never been done before. No matter what you choose to create, by the time you begin shaping your offering, you will have a much greater understanding of what perks, products, and services you should be working on.

BUILDING AWEBSITE

STEP 3

BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE

Your website is single handedly one of the greatest advertising piece you have. A fully functioning and well put together site tells your customers that you are both capable and serious about doing business with them. Your site is a reflection of who your company is, what you do, and why you should matter to the visitor.

Before all other sales and marketing activities, the Kaleo Apps team built a high quality website to help attract customers and build confidence in their prospects. Luckily building a website in this day and age has become pretty easy with the number of tools available.

First, they chose the website solution, Wordpress, which is one of the most popular ways to develop a website. You could also choose from tools such Squarespace, WIX, GoDaddy etc… The most important characteristic in a builder is having the freedom to convey your value proposition with superior quality.

After Kaleo chose Wordpress, they needed to find a theme for their site. Using ThemeForest by Envato, they were able to find a great theme that went well with their business motto: “Mobile apps for churches”! In order to shorten the time to market, find a theme or template that is consistent with your offering and target market. There are thousands of options to choose from so just take the time to find something that works for you!

As a side note: BuildFire does offer an out of the box website with our reseller program that’s completely customizable for your brand to ensure quickest time to market.

BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE (continued)

After you have browsed the internet and picked both a website builder and a theme, you are ready to go live. Or are you? There are still a few concepts to think about before bringing in customers. Such as a value propositions, multi-platform compatibility, ease of navigation, and homepage headlines. Having mastery of these concepts will help you present an easy to use website that answers all of your viewers questions.

First, ask yourself “What is my value-proposition?”. A value proposition clearly outlines why your product/service solves your customer's problems and improves their overall situation. It list out the clear benefits of choosing your business over close competitors. Value-propositions have a headline explaining the end benefit given to the customer, sub-headlines explaining further details of who you are targeting and why this is ideal for them, a few bullet points listing out the various benefits/ features, and lastly some type of visual media such as a picture or video that reaffirms your information.

Second, ask yourself “Is my website multi-device compatible”? Customers are no longer limited to only accessing information through a personal computer. These days, customers are able to easily access information from their smartphones and tablets. Having a website that is responsive to their needs will give you a fighting chance in retaining your mobile viewers. If they are forced to struggle through your website while on any of their devices because the screen is not adjusted properly or the words are not the right size, they will be frustrated and look elsewhere.

BUILDING YOUR WEBSITE (continued)

Third, ask yourself “Can customers easily navigate through your site?”. Exploring through your site should be seamless and self explanatory. Including navigation tools such as tool-bars and search boxes will help you make your site search friendly for your viewers. You want to create a system that will allow them to wander your site freely without the frustration of not being able to find what they are looking for. Your system should entice your viewers to explore your site freely all the while subtly guiding them towards your product/ service page. This can be done by including calls to action at the end of your content, or at the bottom of the page or the top of the page.

Lastly, ask yourself “Does my home page have a headline?” The headline and sub-headline are the first things your customers will see when they first arrive at your home screen. If those two are not conveying the message properly about who you are, what you do, and why you matter, then your visitors are not going to stick around. Your visitors need to know in those few seconds they are introduced to your site, that you are relevant by bringing solutions to their problems. A user friendly site should be easy to access and enjoyable to explore. Keep your customer in mind as you move through the process of creating a professional website.

SETTING UP BILLING

STEP 4

SETTING UP A BILLING SYSTEM

Before you can start selling to customers, you’re going to need a billing system to collect revenue. Since mobile apps can be sold as a monthly subscription there are some more complexities than just accepting a check.

Kaleo Apps decided to choose an Enterprise level recurring billing system, Recurly, for their business. BuildFire has even implemented a native integration with Recurly for our reseller program, so setting up billing for your customers is as simple as dropping in an API key.

A billing system ensures that you keep an accurate, on time, secure, and manageable record of all your transactions. Whether that be company expenses or selling to customers, your company needs a reliable way to handle all cash flow. The billing system you choose should be able to cover your current and future growth plans.

Due to the wide range of systems in the market, there are a variety of tools that can be in a billing system. The following are three suggestions to keep in mind.

First, look for a system should allow you to experiment with various revenue models while still being organized and efficient. This should be a system that can handle your one time charges and your subscriptions. If you run a company that sells items on an individual, one time basis then your system should be able handle those cases without continuously charging your client or forcing them to go through a rigorous process just to check out one item.

SETTING UP A BILLING SYSTEM (continued)

Likewise if your revenue model operates on having continuous cash flow through a subscription model, which is the foundation of SaaS. Then having a system that can manage various payment plans (month to month, yearly, etc) is absolutely necessary. Your billing system should also be able to run discounts and coupons in case you ever want to try levering those to your customers.

Second, find a system with dashboards that allow you to view and easily understand your billing data. Look for billing systems that give you a wide variety of analytics so you can better understand how your customers shop. Knowing when your customers churn, how long they stay, how much they buy, what they buy, which discounts/ offers they use, and what payment plans they are leaning more towards.

Lastly, your billing system should be easily integrated into the rest of your business. The system should be a piece in a much larger platform that can be used in addition to your other business tools. All the while helping you with the power to find patterns to better aid your customers. Your billing system makes it possible for your customers to shop on your site and for you to gain revenue making it a core system as you grow your business.

Your Brand

Your brand is presented in prominent fashion throughout the product experience for administrators and customer apps. Leverage the presentation of customer app dashboards to recognize your brand, your company, and your support organization!

Scalability for YourBusiness

Managing 10’s, 100’s or thousands of apps is not a trivial task. BuildFire understands your need for efficiency, flexibility and control to scale your business. BuildFire’s own DIY platform uses these same capabilities for our daily app management. Here are a few of those features.

White Label Super Admin Dashboard

The Super Admin dashboard is where you will spend your time managing your customers apps and customizing the platform for your business needs. You will be able to Create Apps, Clone Apps, Assign Users, Create Templates, Create Custom Configurations and much more….read more as we dive in.

SALES TEAMSTEP 5

ASSEMBLING A SALES TEAM

Now that you have you have a product to sell, a vertical market chosen, a professional website and a billing system set up, you’re ready to start generating sales and revenue!

Every business owner will tell you that getting your first sale is no easy task. It is nerve-racking, but you’re just going to have to get out there and do it!

Getting your first customer is a big milestone but they will also serve as a customer reference to help acquire more customers. There is somewhat of a snowball effect to this, and each time it gets easier and easier.

In the case of Kaleo Apps, one of their founders had reached out to their personal network to find a few churches who might be interested in doing an app. It’s always easiest to reach out to people who are warm leads and can help you through the process of refining your product and business model.

They ended up acquiring their first 5 customers just from personal connections. As those apps went live, they were able to deliver value to their customers and prove that their business had merit. From their happy customers they were able to get more leads from their customers networks. Word of mouth is definitely one of the most effective forms of marketing, especially early on before having a large presence in the industry.

After building a small client base, it was time to start scaling their efforts and building a sales team.

ASSEMBLING A SALES TEAM (continued)

The Sales Team operates a special place in the organization by acting as the bridge between the products/services you offer and the people whom would benefit most from your offerings. They establish trust and build meaningful relationships to grow and propel your mission. Your sales team walks alongside your customers from the early stages of the introduction to the final sale and everything afterwards. They are a critical part of the customer development process and a proper sales team can drive your company's growth or act as the greatest barrier you will face. Building out your sales team will help your app selling business find and nurture the customers you need to continue your growth

A sales team can be broken off into four sections. The first section are known as the lead response reps or market response reps. They are in charge of all inbound sales, often referred to as the lead qualification group. These individuals are the first point of contact for all leads brought in through the inbound marketing process such as your website or your telephone number. Keep in mind that these sales people do not go out and search for customers, they simply qualify the leads and determine if they are good enough to pass on to the next sales person.

The second section are known as the business development reps (BDR) or sales development reps (SDR). They are in charge of all outbound sales and are generally in charge of prospecting and cold calling new potential customers. These individuals are the first point of contact for all new and inactive accounts. Keep in mind that these sales reps are not trying to close the deal, instead they are trying to create new leads and qualify them. The qualified leads are then sent out to those sales reps who can close.

ASSEMBLING A SALES TEAM (continued)

The third section are known as the Account executives. These are the sales reps who are in charge of closing deals. They carry the face of the company on their shoulders since they are the most engaged and most active with the qualified customer. Account Executives will stay with the customer all the way through the sale, making sure to create a foundational relationship with the customer to gain their trust and ultimately, their service. Once the sale is over they will begin moving the customer on to the last stage of the sales process.

The last function of sales is the Customer success or Account management professionals. These individuals are in charge of keeping customers along for the long run by building a deep relationship with them and staying dedicated to their success. They provide additional value to the customer beyond the sale and are there to reduce churn, promote future sales and create long lasting relationships.

Before you decide to set up your sales team you should first think about the individual roles you wish to place your workers in and the desired outcome you would like. If you are only bringing on one person, then that one individual will have to take charge of all four aspects of the sales process: Inbound lead qualification, outbound lead generation/ qualification, closing deals, and customer success.

Regardless of the amount of people you bring on, remember to separate your sales team to have some reps specialize solely on lead generation and prospecting while others specialize solely on closing customers and aiding customer success.

ASSEMBLING A SALES TEAM (continued)

It may be tempting to have all your sales reps working on every aspect of the sales process but by doing so you create a system that pushes too much stress and chaos onto your team. Forcing them to juggle all those hats will only slow down your process and it will increase turnover in your team.

When hiring on additional sales reps, have a detailed job description that clearly outlines everything your reps can expect from the position. Be sure the compensation packages are clearly expressed. No worker wants to feel cheated out of their fair wage or caught off guard when pay day comes around. Your sales team will spend their time advocating for your product, by equipping them with the proper tools and guidance you are doing all you can to ensure your business achieves the best possible growth it can through maximizing sales.

REFERENCE CUSTOMERS

STEP 6

REFERENCE CUSTOMERS / CUSTOMER ADVOCATES

Buyers want to know what your customers really think of your products and services. They are more likely to believe complete unbiased strangers than your biased marketing campaigns. Having customers who are willing to lay down their own reputation for your gain will be your strongest resource as you expand your presence and establish your credibility. This level of dedication from your customers comes by developing a reference customer/ feedback group.

As we mentioned earlier, Kaleo Apps leveraged their first set of customers as a customer reference group, which served as a great sales tool for them. They were able to prove to other potential customers that their solution had provided value to their current customers.

Let's start by first defining reference customers as customers you can call on as references to help sales reps obtain new clients, provide proof of product performance, and promote your business. Building out a reference customers starts with developing a system to foster their development and continual support. Keep in mind the following four suggestions as you build out your system.

First, accumulate a list of as many customer as possible. These are all the people you have sold any products and services to. Build out an individual profile for each customer and populate it with info such as: name, industry, employee last spoken to, notes about last call, can we contact again, what can we contact them again for.

REFERENCE CUSTOMERS / CUSTOMER ADVOCATES (continued)

Second, after you build your list, begin reaching out each of those customers. Ask for just 5 minutes of their time over the phone to ask them what they thought of your product, what they liked about it, what they disliked, and what they would include to make it better. Include some type of offer that would appeal most to your customer. It can be anything from an ebook to having their quotes and names appear in a case study. By the end of each interview you should determine if the customer falls into either the feedback or reference category. Feedback customers are those that provide insightful tips on problems, suggestions, and other data that can be useful for improving your product but they are not interested in advocating for your company.

The reference category love your product, enjoy being advocates of your company and they can provide you with feedback. The reference category can be broken up into more sections to include what types of feedback or promoting they would be willing to do for you. It can be anything from customer reviews, videos, testimonials and sharing on social media. After interviews thank them for their time and ask them if they would like to be a part of future calls like this or in having a say in what gets fixed and developed for your product. All information collected should be added to that customer's profile. Once these profiles are complete, be sure to allow any of your sales reps open access to edit and view any of this information.

Third, keep a constant relationship will as many customers as possible by checking up on them and sending them relevant content that would interest them. Keep them in touch with that you have done with the information, especially if your published anything that includes their name, face, or quote in it.

REFERENCE CUSTOMERS / CUSTOMER ADVOCATES (continued)

Customers love to see a company taking their ideas to heart and making visible changes that they can experience and share. Sharing your development with the customers who contributed is one way you can begin to convert more feedback customers into reference customer.

Lastly, create a system that allows your customers to match the info they are looking for with that of a past customer. This system will also greatly benefit both your sales team as they convince new prospects and the marketing team as they create promotional products. Building out your customer reference program / feedback group will help you establish a strong track record that you can leverage to future investors and the information you need to continue making your business successful. Be mindful of what your customers think of your company, nurture your customers to become promoters, rewards those who promote you organically and establish a bridge so that others can see the success your customers have experienced through your company.

Your Brand

Your brand is presented in prominent fashion throughout the product experience for administrators and customer apps. Leverage the presentation of customer app dashboards to recognize your brand, your company, and your support organization!

Scalability for YourBusiness

Managing 10’s, 100’s or thousands of apps is not a trivial task. BuildFire understands your need for efficiency, flexibility and control to scale your business. BuildFire’s own DIY platform uses these same capabilities for our daily app management. Here are a few of those features.

White Label Super Admin Dashboard

The Super Admin dashboard is where you will spend your time managing your customers apps and customizing the platform for your business needs. You will be able to Create Apps, Clone Apps, Assign Users, Create Templates, Create Custom Configurations and much more….read more as we dive in.

SCALING YOURBUSINESS

STEP 7

SCALING YOUR BUSINESS

A company that can scale is one that has build systems, networks, and processes that give the business the power to handle growth by multiplying revenue while maintaining or increasing its performance and efficiency. Building a multi-million dollar business starts and continues with building sustainable systems and processes that will continue to scale your business long after you are gone.

Companies are ready to scale when they know they have a proven product, service, and business model that gives them the capability to grow past their current limitations. Your business must bring real value to your customers. Promotion is not enough to scale your company. The following four steps will aid you towards properly scaling your company.

Step one, start at the end by visualizing where you would like to be and then work your way backwards. Growing your business should mean that you are moving one step closer towards your goal. If your goal is to exist forever, your actions will vary greatly from someone who just wants to grow the company as much as possible for the next three years so they can sell it off. By visualizing the end, you can begin to explore the different roles you need in your company, the various connections, technology, infrastructure, employees, capital, and time you will need to build up your empire.

A company with a clear goal makes every step intentional and makes sure to stay within the path they have chosen to follow. Dare to be great and challenge your business to run towards a clear finish line. Step two, showcase the story of yourself and your employees. Your company is more than just a bunch of computers transmitting information.

SCALING YOUR BUSINESS (continued)

While it may seem trivial to write out the personal journey and struggles of yourself and your employees, it is those obstacles and dreams that shape the work we do and our ambitions for tomorrow. Your readers want to know you are more than just a machine. They want to know the people and the heart behind the company.

In addition, having a clear story of who you all are and where you hope to be will not only instill personal pride into the work you do, it will remind you all of the love you each share to build something great together. Caring about your employees and laying out your story will help you strengthen your business and fortify it against any issues that may come. Having the story of your employees will also help when it comes around to hiring additional workers. You will better know if the prospecting worker will fit with the company if you clearly understand the people currently working there. This also aids the prospecting workers in knowing exactly what they will be getting themselves into and what to expect from the people that they will be surrounded by.

Step three, create packages in which customers are given a certain amount of product/ service for a given time at a flat price. This could be something along the lines of one copy of your entrepreneurship book in addition to three sessions of one hour growth strategy consultations for $2,000 dollars. Packages give customers a clear understanding of what they can expect from you. Creating packages will also help you determine exactly how much it is going to cost you to provide a service and for how long you will be working on it.

SCALING YOUR BUSINESS (continued)

This allows you to plan ahead adequately and it will also help you distribute your work more efficiently once you begin to break down what needs to be done by you and what can be outsourced to one of your workers or a third party. Establishing different types of packaging or putting in place level systems can greatly aid your business growth by helping you organize resources properly.

Lastly, create sources of recurring revenue. While selling individual one time purchases is a great start, having to rely extensively on these one time sales will eventually place a cap on the business. The reason being that having to stress so much about making the next quota of sales stops your company from focusing entirely on growth. Companies that don’t have recurring revenue start with $0 each month and need to fill a pipeline. What’s great about SaaS and selling mobile apps is that the name of the game is recurring revenue. It’s nice knowing that you’re going to be bringing in a set amount of revenue each month and then building on top of that.

A growing company needs time to experiment and see what works and what does not, therefore securing as many sources of recurring revenue will help you ease the transition and give you a cushion as you try to scale your business. Try instead, to create buildable products that grow with time and your customers. Pricing these products should then be transferred into the subscription style payment plan in which customers either pay on a month-to-month basis or a one time yearly fee. Scaling your business is an exciting next step for the entire company. Have a plan in place in place of where you want to be, showcase the story thus far of your entire company including the people in it, create packages and levels, and create sources of recurring revenue.

MULTI-CHANNELGROWTH

STEP 8

USING A VARIETY OF CHANNELS TO GROW

Every company has its own needs needs and channels under which it thrives the best. There is no one size fits all for a marketing or business strategy. Kaleo Apps didn’t just use one channel to grow their business and neither should you. On the other hand, each channel takes time to perfect and you should approach them in manageable amounts.

Kaleo Apps started with outbound sales to their personal network, then assembled a sales team to do outbound sales in a scalable fashion. Once that channel was producing they were able to experiment with tradeshows to generate leads and pass them off to the sales team. Outbound sales became one of their primary methods of growth. The continuous acquisition of customers opened the door to partnerships. The team up spiked even greater growth and propelled Kaleo into the next phase of the growth process. Each business is different, but if you follow the money trail and experiment, the channels of growth become very clear and you will be able to build a sustainable business.

As you consider which channels to use as you continue to grow your company, we would like to give you four suggestions. We will start with Inbound marketing which focuses on attracting customers by creating content they will love. Then we will explain the role SEO plays in determining your searchability on search engines. Next we will focus on Outbound which practices taking the initiative in reaching out to potential customers then walking them through the sales cycle. Lastly, we will move into paid advertising as a means of increasing traffic and awareness.

USING A VARIETY OF CHANNELS TO GROW (continued)

Note: While starting a business selling mobile apps, we would recommend starting with outbound sales. It takes you through the process of identifying the customers you would like to attract, figuring out your value proposition and getting customer feedback. All of this can happen in a much shorter period of time than any of the other channels.

First we’ll start with Inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is focused on creating content that will attract and convert new customers into qualified leads. It takes away the traditional role of the sales rep who would go out and search for clients. Inbound marketing believes that by creating the content that people want to see, customers will stumble onto them at a time in which they need the company. It all boils down to the belief that customers are tired of being beaten over the head with advertisements. Inbound marketers believe customers would much rather spend their time learning about a topic they are interested in that offers a product/ service that perfectly solves their current issues.

The hope is that by creating great content the company will attract qualified customers in like a magnet. There are generally three components to an inbound marketing strategy. The first is the creation of content. Content creators typically start a blog, uploads videos, distributes white papers, and put together e-books.

USING A VARIETY OF CHANNELS TO GROW (continued)

Second, SEO is focused on optimizing your website to increase visibility, credibility, and awareness in search engines. This is done through two major components, On Page SEO and Off Page Seo. On Page Seo focuses on changing the contents within the webpage to best work with search engines. This involves increase loading time for pages, top quality content, continual content, title and descriptions, internal and external links, proper image size, and user friendly navigation, and verified authorship with Google. Off Page SEO focuses on everything that happens outside of the website and it tells the user and the search engines that your site is valued by others.

Off Page Seo focuses on social media, link building, and social bookmarking. Linking building is when other sites reference your site on theirs and therefore create bridge which links their site to yours thereby increasing your search engine popularity. Social media profiles create a following behind your business and any links, pictures, and words help establish a higher ranking for your business. Lastly social bookmarking is centered around creating a virtual bookmark online in a popular public website that then tags you in a certain category. These tags will then accumulate followers who are looking specifically for that tag and therefore stumble onto your content.

USING A VARIETY OF CHANNELS TO GROW (continued)

Third, Outbound marketing is focused on reaching out to customers, cultivating them, qualifying leads, and then having someone close the lead into a paying customer., Outbound takes the initiative by finding the customers, establishing a relationship, and then persuading them to buy, Outbound marketers are not afraid to walk into people's lives. They will often do so through purchasing list, cold calling, emails, telemarketing, and networking. The belief is that by leading the conversation and establishing a relationship with the client, the sales rep is able to walk the customer through the sales cycle by nurturing them and personalizing the message to fit their needs and close the sale.

Lastly, paid advertising is focused on being present in the spaces most relevant to its custom audience. While traditional advertising focused on big billboards that reached out to a wide audience, paid advertisement are usually located within niche websites, on search engine searches such as Google and Bing or as targeted ads on Facebook and other social media accounts. The hope is that by being present within the space most comfortable to the target audience, it will increase the likelihood of lead generation.

WRAPPING IT UP: BUILDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS

I hope this guide serves as an inspiration to you and your business. We invite you to show the world your capability, your determination, your passion, your will, and courage. We know the road ahead of you is long and uncertain. We also know that often times the road is lonely.

You will be faced with countless obstacles and endless doubt. Yet we know that as you build out your apps and you begin to helps others bring to their dreams to life, that you will experience the same joy and fulfillment that we feel every day. We are dedicated to your success in everything you do. We hope you will join us in building a fire this world will never forget. Thank you for your time and know we are always dedicated to your success.

Ian BlairBuildFire Co-Founder

For more information on BuildFire’s reseller program. Visit http://buildfire.com/white-label

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