Marketing BeatFactor, Part 2
Marketing. Hard work.
The first thing I like to report on is the biggest marketing machine in history. Google. I thought, Google AdWords might be worth exploring.
So I set up an account, create a campaign, and shortly after I am thrilled to see that if I searched for “iphone metronome” BeatFactor showed up in the advertisement list on the right.
But only for a short while. I am not paying enough, at least that is what the keyword analysis tool tells me.
But, search is not the only thing. There is this huge content partner network, and maybe that comes to the rescue.
The following day I see that I got > 500.000 impressions and over 900 clicks on my add.
I was soooo thrilled. I went to itunesconnect, and looked at sales. Ah. Oh. Uiiii… no change at all. So i spend like 50$ on clicks with nothing to show for.
Why?
After careful research it seems that the content network and my keyword list are only very lightly coupled. I see that i got clicks from spam sites, porn sites, advertisement sites. But no clicks from anyone I care about.
To do this better, you need to generate a list of sites that you want to advertise on. I used the AdWord tools to get a suggestion list, download it, modify it (there is a LOT OF CRAP in those suggestion lists), and then upload it again.
After having done that, the next day I got 4 clicks. Uiii. I let this continue for two weeks. Overall I got 1700 clicks and nearly 1 million impressions.
Did I get a single sale out of it. I doubt it. I can’t see any improvements at all in my sales using this.
Furthermore, much more important is that AdWords is just too expensive for this kind of business. For those 1700 clicks, I payed 9000 cents, so a good 5 cents per click. To make a profit, i need to have a better than 1:20 conversion rate, as I make a good 100 cents per application.
Even with the highly focused content network add system I used, assuming I got a 1:20 conversion, I should have sold 90 units at least due to AdWords. I have not sold 90 units total in that time 
. So AdWords for iOS niche applications seems to be a total loss in terms of usefulness.
