CHRISTY WHITE: Good afternoon. My name is Christy White. I'm a director in Worldwide Developer Relations. And we're here to talk about go-to-market strategies and services for developers. Now, if you're an engineer here looking for any technical content whatsoever, this is the advanced warning that you should leave, because there is zero technical content in this session whatsoever. This is a little bit of an experiment, actually. We get asked a lot of times why we don't talk to at Developer Conference about how they take the solutions they've worked so hard to build to market. And maybe somebody is new to the Apple community. Maybe they are new to selling software, period, and they've never actually had to take a product to market before. So we get a lot of questions in developer relations, and we thought that we would do a little trial this year and put in a session on the grid to see if this was the sort of content that developers at this event might want to hear. Thank you. I believe in ending on a high note, so thank you all for coming.

These are some of the questions we get asked all the time. My team specifically is responsible for seeking out new partners and taking partners to market and working with partners on an ongoing basis. So these are the questions that we get asked every single day. These are the questions that come into our developer program every single day. So we're going to go through the top ten questions we get about sales and marketing all the time. If you've been selling products for a while, some of them may feel a little rudimentary, but maybe there's a few things that are Apple-unique that you may learn this afternoon.

The first question is, what are the key components of a go-to-market plan? If you've never actually had to sell a piece of software before or try to sell a product before, all the different things you need to do to launch a product might be just a little bit overwhelming. So the things that we're going to focus most specifically on this afternoon are around marketing and sales. What are some easy ways or some not-so-easy ways to market your product? And what are the different options for taking that product to market? Retail, online, channels, direct, and so forth. So starting off with marketing, let's talk about PR. We get asked a lot how to best do PR. Should I be doing PR because I'm a small organization? Does it really make sense for me? Is it going to cost me a lot of money? PR, in fact, could be probably one of the cheapest forms of marketing and one of the most effective if you do it right. Press releases don't cost a lot to write or don't cost a lot to get out there and get posted, but you have to think very clearly about what it is that you're doing. The first thing you have to understand is who's your customer and who are you trying to get to and who do they listen to? So what are the publications you're targeting? Who are the influential journalists? How do you identify the influencers? And then creating a message that is very clear about your product and attractive to that market. Now that sounds really, really simple, but oftentimes it's not. We see a lot of press releases coming through that aren't quite that crisp and clear.

So you have to think really clearly about your value proposition. And then repeat, repeat, repeat. The trick is saying the same thing over and over and over and over again until everybody knows what your product and your brand stands for. So clear messaging, identify the influencers. One other thing you might want to think about, especially if you're just starting out, is maybe getting some professional help, and I don't mean medical professional help, although if you've tried to do this for a little while, you might require it. But we mean there's a lot of really good freelancers out there that make themselves available to smaller organizations. They're incredibly easy to find. There's a URL here for an association that freelancers make themselves available through. One thing we would recommend is find somebody who really understands the customers you're trying to get to. There could be a freelance person who's really good at talking to enterprise publications, and you're a consumer-focused product. That's probably not going to work out really, really well. So try to find someone who understands the market you're going after, and then try to get that clear message and repeat, repeat, repeat. We've listed a couple of the Apple publications. Some things you might want to think about are, do you want to talk to the Apple press, the people who write about Apple all the time? Or do you want to talk to people who are publications and journalists who are in the vertical market you're trying to attract? So for example, talking to the Apple publications or talking to someone specifically in the life sciences, like bio IT world, if you're writing an application that's scientific in nature. It's really easy, generally, to find the journalist that you want to target. If you go to any one of these publications and do a search on Apple, you're going to see who writes about Apple all the time. And now you know who it is you need to get your stuff in front of.

A question we get all the time is, how do you get Apple to endorse one of your press releases? And I'm just going to be really, really honest, it's incredibly, incredibly hard. We're really, really tough about press releases and putting our name on third-party things. Very few get Apple quotes. This event, for example, we had, I think, 18 at the very most, and this is a huge, huge event. Some of the things we look for is to make sure that the press releases that we're reviewing are very product-related. about your products, your customers. We never announce other people's things. We may support you in doing that. You're going to distribute them on a major news wire. So if it's not going through a major news service, we won't even really consider it. And that it's identifiable to some target market that we're looking at, and I know that's not on this list. We're going to talk a little bit more on how to get things in front of us, but these are some things to think about. And again, we're always excited to see partners doing press releases about Apple-related software.

We don't think that they all necessarily need to be coded by Apple, but these are some of the things that we're looking for. Another thing to think about is what are some major events? If there's a lot of Apple media going on around a major Apple event, that may or may not be a good time for you to be talking about your Apple-related product. So what are the major Apple events? I'll give you a hint. This is one. There's actually three that we consider to be major Apple events. Apple Expo's in Paris this year in September. Macworld Expo in San Francisco, always in San Francisco, big, big event for us, even though it's not an Apple-specific and Apple-only event. And then WWDC. Each one of these events is very unique in how they work with third parties, but oftentimes they'll make demo opportunities available or booth opportunities. There may be PR opportunities. So you should go to the specific websites and look for what are the third-party opportunities around those different events. Another thing you may want to think about is what other events is Apple participating in? So for example, if you're writing education software, NECC is in two weeks. It's really pretty simple to figure out whether Apple's going to be at an event in a big way. You look at the exhibitors list, and if we're there, chances are someone from Apple's going to be around.

If you already have a booth planned and you're going to be showing Apple product in your booth, we'd actually love to know. We oftentimes sort of plot out what kind of Apple solutions are going to be showing on the floor of any major event. And if you're showing your product, we'd love to know about it. So we'll let you know how to do that in a little bit.

What are some of the most cost-effective and efficient ways to market a product? So we know that a lot of developers, well, that might be sitting in this room, might be doing this for the first time, and so finances may be an option. Marketing online is a great way to get the visibility for your product out, especially in the Apple community. A lot of our customers come to Apple online properties and other third-party properties to look for third-party solutions, and these are just a few examples. The Mac OS X downloads page from Apple.com, really easy to get to. In fact, some parts of our operating system, like when you look for more widgets, will actually go to the Mac OS X downloads page. We have over a million visitors per day. So if you're looking for a place to get the name of your product out, this is kind of a good place to start. There's a million people that might see it. We get over 200,000 downloads a day. So this is a very popular download site. So if you're looking for a way to distribute your product, depending on what it is, that may be something that you want to look at. Here's some URL and some information on some of the guidelines that we look for when you're posting your product and where to go look for it. It's right off of apple.com, and I would suggest that you should go and click around and take a look at what's up there right now. Another Apple property is the Mac Products Guide. This is probably the most comprehensive solutions guide. Now, it's not a download site. If you post something on the MPG, we're going to refer back to you when people want to purchase or download or distribute. We're really just trying to create a comprehensive guide to the different pieces of software, the different solutions for the Apple market. We have over 47 million visits per year, so another highly trafficked site. This is also a great option for folks who are looking to get solutions international exposure. So the guide is made available in several different countries. You can actually make very specific references to distribution or things that may be different in different countries, different messaging, so forth. So if you're a smaller developer looking for ways to get visibility on an international market, this is another great tool for you. 23,000 Mac platform products. As I said, this is the most comprehensive Mac solutions guide that we're aware of. This is how you submit your product, back off of developer.apple.com. We'd love all of the members who are using this tool to be ADC members. And it's very, very simple to get your stuff up there. Now,.Mac is a unique opportunity.

If you've actually integrated.Mac services within your application, and your application is syncing with the.Mac site or in some way integrated with the.Mac service, Dot Mac actually does a lot to raise the visibility of solutions that are a part of their economy. They've created a special software page, which I'm showing you here. But they also do other promotional activities-- and I'm not switching-- to make that software available to their over 600,000 members.

So we have over 600,000 paying members that are a part of Dot Mac. This isn't really just a way-- I mean, don't incorporate Dot Mac functionality into your application just to get access to 600,000 members. That's kind of not the right approach. But.Mac is a great differentiator for your application. It's a way to differentiate from an application running on any other platform. And if that's something that you've done, this is a very tried-and-true marketing vehicle. We've seen developers, very large brand-name developers, increase their sales by a couple hundred percent just by doing some co-marketing with our.Mac service. Some of the benefits, inclusion in the.Mac developer page, there may be an ability to do some sort of download if you work this out with them. Obviously, because it's off of Apple.com, it's very well supported, very well maintained, and so it's another great marketing vehicle for you. Here's a way to get started with.Mac, and there's a second email address there if you're participating in the.Mac program and you'd like to do some additional promotional work with them. There's a contact here for someone on the.Mac team who would love to hear about that.

Other online marketing opportunities, so not all the ways to market with Apple are through Apple. So, for example, Version Tracker is another very well-trafficked site for third-party products. We get a lot of folks that are looking at the Version Tracker page and then coming back and talking to us, so I've put the URL for that up here. Other Apple.com sites. So we get asked a lot how you get on different Apple pages. So, for example, sometimes we reference third-party software on the server page or on the IT Pro page or on some of the other creative markets pages. The answer is get your products into MPG and the downloads guide. When we're looking for new solutions, maybe things we've missed, maybe new solutions in emerging markets, that's where we go look. You know, the MPG, as we said, is the most comprehensive software guide. And so when the teams that are responsible for vertical markets are looking for new content, that's kind of where they go. So I would suggest you start there.

Other online marketing opportunities, sometimes banner ads. Banner ads obviously are not necessarily free, so they're not as cost effective as some of the other things that we were talking about. But they can be equally effective. Some other things to think about are, as I was saying before, try to identify the target site. Is it a Mac community you're looking for, or is it a vertical community you're looking for? So does it make sense to post some sort of banner ad on one of these very Mac-specific URLs that we're listing here? Or do you want to try to identify sites that are well-trafficked for the target customer you're going after?

The other thing to think about is whether you're really just trying to build awareness or whether you're actually trying to capture people. And so are you just trying to put your graphic or your logo and get your message up there? Or when they click through, is there something specific you want to do with them?

So then that kind of leads us to sales. If somebody clicks through and they want to buy something from you, what is that call to action? So I would have to say that by far the biggest percentage of questions that we get are around sales of products and what is the most effective way to sell products out to the Mac customers. Obviously, there's many different paths to market depending on what your solution is and who your customer is. There's direct, retail, online, through resellers or influencers or VARs. Direct, we're not going to talk all that much about this afternoon. If you're doing direct sales, chances are you know who your customers are. It's probably one of the most expensive ways to go and sell your product because you have full-time people going and doing it. We're going to spend most of our time this afternoon talking about retail, online, and resellers. Thank you. So is retail right for me? Apple, as a company, might know something about retail. If you were in the keynote, we definitely know how to make very cool demos about our retail team, because you saw that in the keynote.

But actually, we've gotten a lot of attention for retail. And so to talk a little bit not just about Apple retail, but some things you might want to think about in approaching retail in general, I want to introduce Carl Smit. Carl is the retail merchandising manager for the Apple store for software products. and he's going to talk a little bit about retail strategies.

Good afternoon. So I'm the product merchandising manager for software in the Apple retail store. So all the software products. We have a few merchants. We have a different one for hardware. And then we have some for overseas, but we all work pretty closely together as a team. What I'm gonna start with is just weighing the cost versus the benefits of entering retail all together. It's pretty costly. It's a pretty big step that you have to take. And the first and most important consideration is, is your product consumer friendly? I think so frequently when we talk to vendors, as you work on your product and you develop your product, you get so close to the product and so frequently a lot of the opinions you solicit are people that are a lot more technically savvy than the average consumer, that sometimes when it actually hits the consumer market, it's hard for them to understand or digest. And it doesn't have that broad-based consumer appeal that suits retail well.

So my advice there is solicit opinions anywhere. It's so easy to really just start in your own circle and not go out to someone. The average Joe on the street, if they actually understand your product and that's part of the PR that you're working kind of before you even consider retail is are people getting the message and are they really endearing themselves to the product?

As you look at retail when you finally start deciding to make that plunge, you have to remember that there's a lot more steps involved. Packaging becomes a consideration, distribution, how it's going to enter, and really who each of those people along the way, the retailer, the distributor, any sort of promotional or whatever efforts you may have in packaging, they're all going to eke away at your profit. So you have to think about that. Of course, you have great exposure. It gets in front of a lot more consumers than you would on online, and a lot of them are actively buying. They see the product, they pick it up, and they purchase. So the different partners that I'm going to talk about are the three main entries. Again, we're not necessarily talking about direct.

There are some retailers that will take you direct no matter how small you are. But most retailers are working through either a distributor, a publisher, or a vendor rep or a sales rep. So when you're talking about distributors, these are the big guys, Ingram Micro, Navar, a couple that Apple Retail works with.

But they basically act as a holding house for your product and for the retailers. So they hold a bunch of software titles, and as they buy, the distributor is going to ship it out to the different retailers. This is the most common method of entry we have for most of the vendors that we receive. They're working through a distributor, at least in the earlier stages. They're not really involved in helping you with your packaging. They're pretty much assuming your product is ready for market. So it's really just moving it. It's a holding house is the best way to think of it.

Publishers. So there are a lot of different publishers, and a lot of them have different levels of involvement as to whether or not they pick up your product. Some of them want to be involved in actual development of the product and finishing the product along. Others want to be involved in packaging. Some are taking a very active role in the marketing. But some of them don't do any of that. They really are acting more like a distributor, and it's just an easier method of entry if you're having difficulty working with one of the distributors and you want to get into a retail channel more quickly.

So it can vary. And there are publishers that work through distributors, and there are publishers who are direct. So there's no definite. A good example of a publisher is Aspire, who does all the EA games, and they pick up smaller titles. I don't know if any of you are familiar with iSale, which is a new product that helps you sell products on eBay. But they're working through Aspire, and Aspire is currently with Navarre, and so that's how Apple retail procures, say, iSale. It goes through the publisher, through the distributor, and then to the retailer. And the third general category are vendor reps.

And the best way to think of them are like sales reps that represent more than one company. And they're really, they can give you some valuable advice on what your product, as far as packaging, marketing, PR. They usually have very good contacts within the different retailers, and general sales channels for that matter, and also work with publishers and distributors. So they can be very, very helpful, depending on where you are in the sort of chain of development and how much help you want. They tend to actively push your product in the sales channels. I think when you're thinking about all of these-- distributor, publisher, and vendor rep-- it's important to remember that, you know, like anywhere in any business, the level of service they're providing you, they're going to expect a level of return for that service. So depending on, you know, that's going to eke away at your profit, but they're providing something that's valuable to you. So it's really where you are and what you're looking for specifically, who would suit you best. And I would recommend explore all of them. Don't rule anyone out early on because only in conversation will you really learn what who might be best for you because you'll find that, you know, sometimes a publisher may make sense for you and you may not have thought that was the case when you first started looking at it. So same thing with all the others, of course. So.

So the Apple store. I know most of you have been in Apple stores. We're pretty proud of our stores. We're pretty excited. The growth's been phenomenal. We've got 109 stores, some of you probably at keynote on Monday. We just entered Canada in Toronto. We have three stores in-- we have two stores in the UK now and three stores in Japan. And things are continuing to grow, and boom, this is a picture of our Regent Street. Now we're seeing over a million customers a week, which is just that visibility I was talking about in the beginning. There aren't a lot of, I mean, there are online click-throughs, but you're not getting the same kind of visibility that you do with retail, where they're actually walking down the aisle and picking up your box. and a million customers a week. It's 140,000 a day, 1,400 customers per store. So the visibility you're getting in Apple retail is incredible, and it's that target audience you're looking for. You know, they're all Mac users, and they're interested in Mac products, Mac-specific products. Just showing you our sales, and sales are continuing to grow quarter over quarter. We're really pleased.

All retailers are different. As I'm sure you guys have seen in our stores, we care about some things a lot more than other retailers. Best Buy, Comp, you'll see they're a lot more promotional than we are. We're not about discounting. We're much more -- we want the products to stand for themselves. And because we don't have as much space as, say, a Fry's or a Best Buy, we're really trying to get the best best products. And so while some things are general, some things we care about a little bit more than some of the other retailers.

So when you're thinking about product, it's again going back to what I said in the beginning. Consumer-based products. While we carry some more high-end products than other retailers, they still need to have consumer appeal, broad-based consumer appeal. When they start getting too specialized and too professional, it probably starts making less sense to be in the retail space. We always think about being related to the digital hub. If you look at how our stores are spread out, you have the home section, the pro section, music, photo, movie. Those are the different zones. We sort of see how a consumer interacts with their computer.

And so the products that are related to that are typically our most successful products. And we also are always looking at carrying the latest operating system. We're not interested in products that were popular a year ago. We want the stuff that is the latest and greatest and works with the absolute brand-new systems that we have out there. So those are just sort of our restrictions.

There we go. Packaging. We care a lot more about packaging than any of our competitors. If you look in our stores, we want it to be more of an experience than an active selling environment. We want the packages to be attractive, to look good on the shelves, to be informative, so that if a customer picks the product up, they can quickly figure out what the product is about.

You'll see we don't carry jewel cases. We don't have bulk stacks. We don't have POPs. We don't have end caps. We want the product to sit on the shelves and sell themselves is really what we're looking for. So we're not interested in bells and whistles. We want a product to really speak for itself and its packaging. We prefer the smaller boxes. And I put that in because some people get surprised when they've spent all this time working on a product and they come out with this big box. Shelf space is a consideration for all retailers.

And the smaller box allows us to carry more merchandise. So whenever possible, we prefer the smaller box. And it's not that we want to give one an unfair advantage over another. It's that we just have limited shelf space and we want to be as fair and representative to all.

Price points. I talked a little bit about all the different levels of people that are looking to get some of your profit. You're going to have your distributor and your publisher and your vendor. And then you also have the retailer and other resellers, and they're going to expect to make a profit on your product.

When you think of all of those when you're entering retail, you have to also think about what is a logical price point for your product. So you want to make money. Everybody else wants to make money. But having a price point that's $62.48 in order for you to make the money that you want to make, it isn't going to resonate with the consumer. It's a $49.99, a $99.99. And you also need to think about, is your product a consumer app, or is it more of a professional application? When you start getting into price points that are-- sometimes they can be too low, believe it or not. If you have a product that's really appealing to the but you've priced it at a lower price point, they're not going to perceive the value of the product to the level that it should be, and so they're going to think it's not a serious application, and they may dismiss your product. So you really need to think about what price makes sense, and is it going to make sense to a consumer? And that's another one where polling people, unbiased opinions-- don't ask your mother, don't ask the people you work with. You need to go out there and really try and get an unsolicited opinion of does that price point make sense? Would they buy it for that? Who's going to buy your product? Right store, right market. So that's been Apple's strategy all along.

We aim for the 50-yard line in all of our retail spaces, and we have four general footprints that we go in with. The San Francisco store here is one of our high-profile stores. It's the two-story store, which you'll see in Japan. You see on our Regent Street store in the U.K. We have one in Soho, L.A. It is our biggest store. It gives us the flexibility to be able to carry more titles in those spaces. So, you know, a lot of you think, okay, am I going to make it into Apple retail and am I not? And it's not an all or nothing.

If you make it into Apple retail, that doesn't necessarily mean you're automatically in all of our stores. Typically what we do is we try you in those high-profile stores. And as you get more successful, we roll you out to these other footprints. The mini store is an example that you'll see more in malls.

The Stanford Mall, Oak Ridge Mall are mini stores. Small stores like the Burlingame store, if any of you are in the area, you may know that store. And a large store is like our-- kind of our-- more of our standard store, which is like the Palo Alto store, if any of you have seen any of the Bay Area stores. That's about it.

Thank you, Carl. I have to say that I think getting into the Apple retail store is probably the number one question that we get all the time. Anybody who's got even the smallest interest in getting in front of consumers sees the Apple store as an excellent way. You're looking at it and you're thinking, all of those people, all of that exposure, Apple Retail, any retail sounds like a great option, but all of those people that want a part of the profit, all of those things I have to think about, distributors, vendor reps, yada, yada, yada. Maybe that's just a little too hard for me for where I am right now. Maybe I'm not ready. Or maybe there's a better way of selling my product. So what about online? We see a lot of our vendors doing various different online strategies, online themselves, online through partners. And so to talk a little bit about some online strategies, Sometimes it doesn't always work on the first click. Eric Ronberg. Eric is a senior manager for worldwide online Apple retail.

I don't have a mic, so I'll be on the mic right here. Thank you, Christy. I'm Eric Ronberg, as she mentioned. I manage third-party products for the online store. And much of what Carl touched on is very similar to what we go through from an online store standpoint. There are definitely many ways to go to market online. There is the opportunity to sell direct through your own store, if you will, through your own online distribution.

There's also websites, obviously, like the Amazons of the world, the buy.coms of the world. And there's also through Apple Online Retail, which would be another option. There's also the great opportunity for direct downloads as well, directly from your site or potentially from other sites, which is a very large and growing market. I believe there's even a breakout tomorrow afternoon to talk about that further. Selling through your own website, obviously a very profitable channel. Less concern about packaging. Just really the key things there becomes content and making sure that you're addressing your market and your target markets. Obviously, there's incredible growth history with the online sales. We continue to see the same results within our online store here at Apple. It's great exposure to the masses, so depending on where you want to target and how you want to target it, you can definitely hit a little bit of everybody through the online retail opportunities.

Here's a couple of other retailers from an online standpoint that you can do. So obviously there's direct through your stores, through your own stores if you were to sell it. But then there's also the other players like Mall, Buy.com, and Amazon. They carry pretty much everything. They offer very competitive pricing, in many cases too competitive. And they're broad focused. The content is varying. So the content which we find on Apple retail is one of the most important things. So we're making sure that we provide all the specifications, all the content, and everything that's needed to make the purchase decision very easy and let them find what they need.

So, you know, what about our channel here, the Apple Online Retail Store? You know, it's something we try and present the premier online experience. You know, we try and provide a dedicated site for Mac enthusiasts, a premier destination point that's there for everybody to find the latest and greatest items for the Macintosh or iPod, for that matter. They're obviously focused towards the Mac customer. Our pricing is consistent. Typically we go to market with what you suggest from a retail price point standpoint. We have millions of unique visitors on a weekly basis versus just the million that you get at retail.

So it is a great exposure place. And, again, it's one of the first places that people who are using a Mac or considering the Mac that they go to, obviously they go to Apple.com, and then they check the store to see what else we sell. So it's a great opportunity. And there's also huge international opportunities where we have stores in Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific, Canada. So we're continuing to grow and expand those markets as well. So it's a great worldwide opportunity. And that's just an example of one of the learn mores that we have. when I talk about content and how critical it is, really highlighting the key features and benefits and assets. And we continue to adapt the functionality in our store on a regular basis.

You know, things to think about, obviously, packaging, less of an issue. The bigger the box, the better as far as I'm concerned. But the content, again, very critical. Attractive and informative when it comes to image shots and features and benefits. You know, must have the right information for the Mac customer. And again, we have relatively unlimited shelf space, but at the same time, we are still very selective because we wanted to make sure that it supports the Apple platform and the Mac platform.

Again, very similar to the retail, things to consider, price points. But I think there's opportunity because people are checking Apple online retail for higher price points, a little bit more of a niche market where we can address as well. It's also, in many cases, if it makes sense for the Mac, the online experience is a great test platform as well to see where your success is within that market. to consider are very similar to what Carl had mentioned. Who would buy it, you know, and why is this product right for the Mac customer? And the same philosophy again, consumer versus pro applications. We have two definitely distinct differences between the two and we support them both with the online experience. A couple other things to talk about within Apple Online Retail is we have -- there's consumer, we also have an education area, we also have small business, government. So there's a lot of other avenues that you can also attack versus just attacking the consumer market. We also have a fantastic telesales group that we have up in Sacramento, California that does a great job in selling products as well, especially from a third-party standpoint and add-ons to the Mac products. Again, Apple Online Retail Store. That was pretty quick, but that's pretty much it, I believe. And Christy? I think you're up.

So we've talked about online, we've talked about retail, primarily in the instance of more consumer-focused products, although Eric did talk about the fact that we have some very vertically focused online stores for education, for small business, for federal, for government, for various different markets. But what if your business is more-- or your solution is more business-focused, you're looking to sell more to business or enterprise customers, what are some other ways that you can hook into influencers by working with Apple or for your Apple-based solution? We have a couple of different programs that you probably should be aware of. One is the Apple Specialists. The Apple Specialists are Apple-authorized resellers. We have about 160 across North America. We invest a lot of time and attention into training, certification, making sure that they have a very high level of knowledge on the Apple platform. They are all very passionate about Apple technology.

Many of them are very vertically focused, and so if you have a solution that's focused on a specific area of the creative market or a specific business solution, We have specialists that focus in various different areas. They're very flexible. One of the benefits of working with the Apple specialists is that they're very well organized. You don't have to go and find 160 different resellers across the country in order to market with them. They've organized themselves into a marketing co-op where a bunch of the leaders among the community have put together a small board, and they launch cooperative marketing activities for the specialists. So that means our resellers can participate against shared mailings. They can do shared events. They have technology centers. They can do trade shows together. And so if you have a solution that you want to plug into a vertical market or into a more direct related sales organization, this is a great place to go look. I put a URL on the bottom for how you can find more information about them. And the marketing co-op is always interested in finding new solutions. So here's some contact information for folks within those organizations who are very interested in hearing about new applications and new solutions for their customers.

Another direct related program that you should be aware of is the Apple Consultants Network. Now, consultants in our Consultants Network are not necessarily resellers. So they don't necessarily resell product, but they may offer other services. So they may do training, they may do onsite services, they may have a number of other third party certifications, they may be aligned around a specific set of third party products. Oftentimes they team either with our direct sales organizations or with some of our other reseller channels. And they have a breadth of services. There's really three different ways to engage with these influencers. And really, you should think about the Consultants Network as a team of influencers. It's a very broad community. And though they're not, again, directly reselling products, they can influence a lot of direct sales if you educate them well on your product and give them the opportunity to participate by either making them a part of your beta program or offering specific training benefits to them. Here's a URL to engage them, and these are all links off of the consultant.apple.com web page. You could also become one.

If you have a lot of access to direct customers and you think you may want to actually become an Apple consultant, here's a URL for that, or you may want to hire one. As I said, they actually have a breadth of other services that they can make available to your customer, and some of them may be very complementary to the application of the solution you're trying to sell. So I would encourage you to go to these URLs and take a look at what they can offer and and see if there's some way that you can enhance your direct or your reseller strategy by working with these folks.

Now, each one of these are very specific programs, and it's a lot of sort of point places to go and look. Within our developer program, we try to look for very broadly applicable programs. So are there programs that we can offer through the Developer Connection that are very broadly applicable to a large number of developers? And so to talk about a few of those is Ed Prasek. Ed is on our Developer Connection team, and he's the senior manager for Developer Business Services.

So in ADC, you know, the thing we're all about is you guys being successful. You guys have spent a lot of time developing your products, and we want you to be successful. We want you to make money, lots of money. The more money you make, the more successful you are in the platform, the more you can continue coming out with those great products that you do for the platform.

And that makes us more successful. After all, the platform is only as good as the products you guys come out for. So it's all about money. Everything we do is about trying to enhance your success in the marketplace. and there's a lot of programs in addition to what's already been spoken about that you can take advantage of to help you do that. As Christy touched on earlier, one of them is the Macintosh Products Guide. You know, the guide has 47 million users a year, and that's nothing to sneeze at. One thing you guys got to remember is that when people buy into the Mac platform, one of the first places they want to come to look for products for the platform is back to Apple. They want to come back to Apple. They want to say, okay, I got this great computer. What are the solutions that are available for me to use? So they come back to Apple and, you know, that's where -- that's the strength of the guide. You know, it's got over 23,000 products available for the platform.

It's -- they're all there. And you guys, it's free to put your products in there. It doesn't cost you a dime to list your products in there. And customers are actively looking for your products and trying to make sure that they can -- they know the new products are available for them to use on the new machines that they're buying. And the projects and solutions that they're looking for for the tasks they want to do.

You know, we have an ad program with the guide, too. So you guys can, it's not just about listing your products in the guide. It's also giving you guys the ability to market your products under Apple's umbrella in the products guide. You know, advertising, web advertising generally has a click-to-purchase rate of, I don't know, 0.1 or 0.2%. And that's the industry average. The guide gets between 7% and 8% click-to-purchase rate. That's huge. That's well above the industry standard. And again, under Apple's umbrella, you have a very active and qualified audience that's coming to look for information on your products, what the things you guys are offering to the public, what they can do with their computers.

Some of the types of ads you can take advantage of is a homepage sponsorship ad on the guide. Remember, the guide has, like Christy said earlier, 23,000 products. That's a sea of products. How do you make your product stand out from the sea of products that are in the guide? Well, you know, with the sponsorship ads that we have in the guide, it draws immediate attention to your product. You can use this type of program to build awareness for your product or to drive sales and incremental revenue. Homepage sponsorship is one of the strong ones. Another great one is spotlight ads. You know, these are, these, the bottom ones, the spotlight ads are driven more for actually driving incremental sales. Another good one is all the guide, the back pages are all category pages, whether it be hardware or software. Customers go through and troll and they're looking for specific products for a technology. So, you know, the ads here, if they're looking for product or productivity utilities, for example, those ads right there jump out at them. They're immediately drawn to them and they get an exceedingly high click-to-purchase rate. Another thing a lot of people do is, you know, they don't know the specific product they're looking for, but they have a general idea, so they use our search pages.

The ads that are there get an extremely high, I think, you know, like 18% click to purchase on this particular page alone. And it's consistently in our top ten most visited pages of the guide. So that pulls exceedingly well for you, too. And then all of the ads in the guide drive back to your product description page for your product. And it's not anything that we put in there. you guys can go in there and put this information in about your product anytime you want.

The only requirement is that the product be shipping, that customers can get their hands on it. You can go in there, enter the information as much as you want, anytime you want, change it anytime you want, have your ad look any way you want, and have it click through to wherever you want it to go. If you've got it carried in the Apple Store, you know, you can have it click to the Apple Store, give the customer a one-click purchase that goes right to their shopping cart in the store. If you sell it directly from your website, take it there. It's up to you. It's an exceedingly powerful marketing program for you guys to use under Apple's umbrella. Take advantage of it.

And, you know, we have an online media kit that tells you about all the requirements for the guide, ad size and everything. We make it as easy as possible. The cost is pretty nominal. You know, it's not a revenue-driven service. Everything that we make goes back into servicing the guide. So, you know, we'll build something that fits your budget. Again, the whole thing is there to help you guys be as successful as possible in the marketplace. URL for this is right here. And, you know, if you don't want to write the URL, you can go to the home page of the products guide. And at the very bottom, it has a link there for the media kit. The next thing we do is we have a program set up with our retail partners, whether they be online like Magzone, ClubMac, or the Apple Store itself, and also some of our vertical partners like B&H and Sweetwater and AudioMidi.

And what this program is, is it allows us to offer your products to your customers an exclusive deal that Apple markets them. So we tell our retail partners, hey, you guys, you come up with some great deals in conjunction with the developers. Let us know what they are. We'll market them to the world. And we do market them to the world. As a matter of fact, these are the retail partners that are involved in it. There's 19 of them. the strongest, the favorite of the install base of the Mac platform.

And over 1 million people use Hot Deals to look for exclusive offers on the products that you guys are offering to the retail partner. And this is even bigger than the Products Guide. You know, the Products Guide got 78. The Hot Deals program has a 32% click-to-purchase rate. That is astronomical. Some of the participants have a 45% to 50% click-to-purchase rate.

The lowest one in the program is a 15.91 click-to-purchase rate. That's absolutely massive. These people are coming in, they're looking to buy, they're looking to buy your products, and this drives huge. And whenever the retailer updates their offerings on their Hot Deals page, we let the world know about it. So if you come up with a new offer, Apple is letting the world know through a variety of third-party websites that such and such retailer has the following special offers on such and such a product. And it drives huge traffic. If you guys could see it, you'd be very impressed with the traffic stats. Again, there's some requirements for Hot Deals. It's free. It doesn't cost you guys anything to do. But there's some specs and some regulations that you have to follow.

And it's just something you set up with your retail partners that you normally do business with, and they'll let us know what you want to offer. So the URL, just take advantage of that and get all the information is right there. If you don't want to write that URL, it's easily accessible from the homepage of the Apple Developer Connection website at developer.apple.com.

And there's been a lot of programs that you've been given information on so far today. And instead of making you guys click through all of the website trying to find all this stuff, there's a real easy quick start guide at this URL here that has links to all the various programs we've talking about and tons more. We've only scratched the surface of the stuff that's been available for you guys. So take advantage of it. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Christy. And we'll be there to answer questions for you later on. Thank you.

think I'm in trouble. They all told me, make sure you tell them that we're going to put the URLs on the website so they don't all sit there writing them all down. So sorry about that, if you guys were sitting there writing them all down. So this was our developer top 10. These are the top 10 questions we get around sales and marketing, different programs that we have available. We have people here to answer any number of questions you may have. So we wanted to make sure we had lots of time available to get to your questions. But the number one question that we know you're all asking is, can I talk to someone right now? So I've come, I've built my product, I've heard about all these great programs. Is there someone in the room that I can talk to because I don't think Apple knows about my great solution? And the answer is absolutely yes. So we're gonna do a little bit of Q&A. I have a whole panel of folks. We've also set up some specific URLs, especially for the attendees of this conference. These are not email addresses that you're gonna find out on the webpage anyways.

These go anywhere. These go straight into our partnership manager's team over the next little while. We wanted to, as I said, use this conversation as a way to gather input for what we could be doing better around business and marketing services and content around the developer connection. So we've organized them according to the kind of solutions you're trying to build. These will obviously be in the slides that you'll get later as well. So with that, I wanted to mention one other related session. There is a session tomorrow morning on the Power Users Guide to the Apple Developer Connection. So they'll talk a little bit about some of the marketing services as well as all of the other benefits of being an ADC member, and that session will be tomorrow morning. So we would strongly recommend you go and take a look at that.