1. Relevance rules.
If you want to be in the set that's considered as 'appsistance,' you have to make your company, your products, and your services relevant to the task at hand or the decision being made.
2. Borrow the wisdom of the crowd.
Recommendation algorithms will take into account what other people think of your brand.
For your brand to be recognized, you have to listen to what the crowd is saying and respond, before you try to follow them.
3. Make it simple — ridiculously simple.
Make it easy for appsistances and users to understand what you do and where they can use you.
4. Mindset matters.
Find out when and where people switch into buying mode.
5. Stay where the audience is.
Break your brand down and distribute it where the audience is, so that it covers every relevant category of decision-making.
6. Do not interrupt.
7. Act as (digital) content.
8. Test everything.
9. Track everything.
The decision-making process of appsistances may look opaque, but the inputs and outputs will always be explainable. Track everything and you'll know when and why your brand is — or isn't — being recommended.
10. Let the data decide.
When you're thinking about which product or positioning will help you inside the recommendation algorithm, please don't play the 'you versus me' kind of silly game. Let the data decide.
11. A brand can also be the answer.
If you want to be the answer, you need to know what question you're answering.
12. A unique selling proposition matters.
13. Your competitors are broader than you think.
14. You can learn a lot from queries.
15. Sex sells.
16. Sell altruism.
17. Highlight your brand assets.
Hold many digital assets to solve the unmet needs that decision engines and recommendation engines might surface.
18. Secure as much display space as possible.
Widely distribute your assets — via APIs and the like — so that appsistances can access them on review sites and in other third-party spaces when making decisions.
19. Make your company a great story.
No matter how well the appsistances make recommendations, we'll always ask friends and family for their opinions.
Give them reasons to talk about you. Give them stories to spread around.
20. Don't pin everything on one thing.
Don't fixate only on SEM. In the future, SAM (search and action) — search and action marketing — will lead. And appsistances will mostly act at the lowest layer. People still need the trigger that nudges them to receive a recommendation or give an instruction.
