The day is finally here! After months of nursing an idea, building, coding, re-coding, nervously sharing your prototype with friends and family, you now have a working version of your app!
Developing an application is exciting. However, it’s not without its challenges–like how to get the word out and market it through the right channels to gain traction and popularity. The fact is that the mobile app market is crowded. As the industry continues to explode, Apple receives around 1000 new app submissions every single day–let that sink in. If you want to avoid having your application slip through the cracks and go unnoticed in the app store, you’ll need a solid plan.
So how can you get your mobile app out into the world and stand out from the crushing crowd? The key is to have an effective, well-designed mobile marketing strategy. When done right, your efforts will result in your app’s ranking improving considerably and users downloading and using the app often. App designers will need to earmark a significant amount of their marketing budget to promote and advertise the application.
Your key demographic? Smartphone users. Getting smartphone users to notice and use your app is the Holy Grail of app marketing. So getting a mobile app marketing strategy in place is crucial.
Here are some details about mobile app marketing and more important reasons why you need to focus on marketing your mobile app today.
How to Reach Users
The main purpose of mobile app marketing is to inform smartphone users regularly about your app and make them aware, through ads and personalized notifications, of the features of your app to incite them to download and use it.
The most common ways to reach potential users is through:
- Text messages (SMS)
- Mobile websites, email, searches, applications and social media
As you can see, the real marketing arena is mobile phones and associated channels. These are the best ways to reach your target market; now let’s look at why mobile app marketing is so critical.
Smartphones Are the Future
The numbers don’t lie; smartphone usage is increasing dramatically, with users spending more and more time on their devices. Purchases made through mobile devices are on the rise, and SMS click-and-open rates are higher on mobile devices than via email. For all these reasons, mobile commerce-including selling apps and their paid add-ons–is tied in closely to mobile marketing.
Increase User Engagement
When rolling out a new app, it’s essential to consider the limitations of the medium on which potential users are using it. For example, many workplaces have blockers in place that make it impossible for employees to access certain web applications. Even at home, people are less likely to be in front of their desktop or laptop than they are to be on their phones. Creating a user-friendly mobile app and marketing to smartphone users is one of the most effective ways to create and maintain user engagement.
Understand the Competition
A key facet of any mobile marketing strategy is identifying who your competitors are and what they are doing to reach your target market. By studying their methods and taking a look at their successes and failures, you’ll have a better idea of how to tweak your own marketing strategy to reach the right people in the right way while also retaining users. Another advantage is that marketing is usually done while development is still ongoing, allowing you to adapt and adjust your app in response to user feedback.
Build a Positive User Experience
When users have a positive brand experience with your app, they are more likely to keep the app installed, recommend it, purchase additional in-app features and contribute to building brand loyalty. The opposite is also true.
By crafting a personalized, effective marketing strategy, you provide users with a positive brand experience–which translates to exponential growth and maximum profitability. Make sure your app is free of bugs or usability issues, which is the main obstacle to a positive UX. Another key takeaway is to ensure your marketing strategy allows users to clearly understand the value the app brings to them–if it doesn’t seem useful or helpful at all, it will get uninstalled quickly.
Marketing your app with an effective mobile marketing campaign will result in reaching the maximum number of users possible to get your application known and downloaded. Once that is achieved, your challenge is to continue investing in mobile marketing by striving for the best user experience possible, ensuring the longevity (and profitability) of your app.
Need help with developing and implementing an effective marketing strategy for your app? Techmate Labs is your ally to get from where you are to where you want to be: profitable and growing. Give us a call and let’s put together a marketing plan that gets your app on the map–fast.