To say mobile apps are popular is an understatement. A mammoth 89 percent of media time is spent by men and women on mobile apps. If you already have a mobile app strategy in place, you can congratulate yourself for making a good decision. A pat on the back is permissible, but don?t pop the champagne just yet. A reality check is in order. There aren?t a lot of apps making money. In fact, the failure rate for apps is very high.
While there are lots of reasons why even good apps fail to deliver ROI, one big reason is ineffective marketing. Yes, in the hyper competitive world of mobile apps, you must bake a mobile app marketing strategy into your mobile app development process.
If you think your app has “success” written all over it, courtesy of its usefulness, but you ignore marketing, you?re in for a rude shock. Your app won?t succeed without good marketing to back it up.
The keyword here is “good”. So, here are three pre-requisites of an effective marketing strategy:
1. Plan ahead.
An app marketing plan needs to be developed before you actually start building the app. This is important because you need to leverage the potential of your existing assets (web presence, social media profiles) to market your app. If you don?t have these assets, you need to start creating and using them.
For example, your website landing page should be used to promote your app. Once you start building your app, you can give information about its impending release to target customers who?re already in the habit of checking out your website?s landing page.
You can also use your Twitter account to give regular updates about app development, so that target users know it?s on the way.
Another idea is to publish press releases on a regular basis talking about the app you are developing, its benefits, the tentative release date and so on. These activities need to continue after the launch. As can be imagined, you need to plan them well in advance and must follow a clear plan of action to meet your marketing objectives.
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