by wp-admin | Feb 7, 2014 | Blogs |
Digital marketing has in recent years proven to be one of the most effective forms of advertisement. It has not only grown to be a major source of revenue for app developers but also the best alternative for mobile device users. This is because mobile phone users spend more time with apps compared to the time spent with web browsers. Awarding In-App Marketing as one of the best options in the industry.
In-App Marketing can simply be defined as the online promotion of an in-app ad – an advertisement displayed within a cell phone application. Some of the common ad units used to display these ads includes;
- an overlay
- mobile interstitial
- a banner situated at top/ bottom of the screen
The reason as to why this type of digital marketing is efficient enough is because it engages the user more and as a result responds to an evolution that delineate how people are increasingly getting involved with their mobile devices. Research also shows that in-app marketing is more effective than the typical standard banner marketing.
The study further shows that internet users rarely click on ordinary online banners since they prefer to explore the world of in-app ads which have proven to be a one of a kind web browsing experience. As opposed to the regular banners, the ‘in-app’ does not contain visual clutter and instead is unobtrusive making it even more entertaining to explore.
The user has the advantage of interacting with an ad using a platform of his / her choice since in-app ads can be available in more than a single type of mobile Operating System (OS). This is made possible so as to cater for the different groups of internet users using different internet media.
Thriving brands today look at the mobile platform from a 360⁰ point of view. These brands try to figure out how to capture more users in the market so as to ensure that there is enough consumer satisfaction when it comes to marketing. Like any other mobile marketing strategy, in-app marketing is motivated by three main factors. Namely;
- Drivers
- Trends
- Constraints
Drivers are the implications – positive, for example larger digital budgets; the trends include latest technology that other marketers are trying out in the industry such as Rich Media and HTML5. Constraints include factors like fragmentation and privacy which to date hinder some of the brands willing to put an end to large-scale mobile campaigns.
A point to note is that in-app marketers need to ensure that their ads are engaging enough to draw the user attention and should at all costs avoid becoming intrusive.
by wp-admin | Feb 7, 2014 | Blogs |
With continued technological advancements and increased mobile penetration, mobile applications are also growing in popularity. An App is only as good as the people using it and people will not find it themselves. It seems like there is an App for almost everything you ever needed and for everything you didn’t. In this increasingly competitive space how do you get your App noticed above the rest and ensure it is relevant to your potential audience?
Mobile apps are generating more and more interest in Smartphone users; from social and messaging applications which recorded over 203% growth in 2013 alone. Overall app usage registered over 100% growth, with entertainment, sports, games and shopping driving this growth. This growth, which is set to go all the way into the future, means intense competition between players in the industry. As the market gets stronger and more saturated, user tastes and preferences keep changing and the developers of these apps find it difficult to know where to place their bets.
The benefits of Apps
Apps are popular with business owners and their customers. With modern business going digital, apps help you keep pace by offering your business and your customers valuable benefits. Here are some of the benefits:
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Businesses build lasting relationships, reinforcing brand loyalty, visibility and accessibility. Increased exposure across mobile devices connects a business to consumers on the go, generating repeat business even from social networks.
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Customers receive easy access to business inventory, notifications of special events, launches, and more one-touch access to business contact information, fast, seamless appointment scheduling and many more benefits to customers.
Generally a Mobile App is much better than web browsing applications because it is faster, flexible and more accessible. Apps are the essential element that all mobile hardware needs, can be easily customized to suit the developer’s needs and can reach a wider audience than is often possible with just a website.
Building a Unique App
Mobile apps have grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry with large corporations have adopting an increasingly hefty presence in it. This fact may worry some independent developers and startups, especially those that find themselves in direct competition with much bigger, better-capitalized, better-established enterprises. The fact that innovative ideas are always inconsistent with prevailing logic and beliefs means that for you to innovate, you need to must change what others think and believe.
You do this by being original, a virtue which when lacking, means that your chances of success are very slim. You need to be the first developer to come out with your type of app or present an existing category of app in a new, unique way. It might be difficult to come up with an entirely new idea or category because there are just too many of them in App Stores already, but it is good to have several options and how best to package it. Study the app you want to focus on, what it is missing and how can it be improved. Differentiate yourself by adding that unique feature that will immediately push customers’ attention to it. That will help push up your reputation in any app store. And because developing a great app is no easy task, you have to protect your idea – don’t let your hard work go to waste by failing to copyright it.
Factors to Consider in developing an app
Many independent developers have made money creating mobile apps and others have struggled or failed along the way. With hundreds of thousands of games, productivity tools and other apps already on the market, and thousands more launched every week; many startups are finding that their ideas aren’t so unique after all. In this environment, well-heeled companies with big marketing budgets hold sway.
Surely there is no secret success formula that will make your app 100 percent a hit. But there are many little things that will make your app different – and at the end of the day will decide between hit and failure. It is not rocket science to build innovative and thrilling mobile apps, but getting the right approach is critical to success. It all starts with matching your everyday passion and interests to develop something that is different and exciting. It could be a solution that can solve a common problem in a much better, faster and convenient way.
Focus and attention is another important consideration. Concentrating on every detail, even the slightest of it, could be the difference between success and failure. Brand yourself to beat the competition by building a good but short logo and brand name for your application. Make yours something fresh, eye-catching, and pertinent to the nature of your application. You’d probably do well to hire out for creative input on this, but if you have excellent artists, drafters, or graphic designers in house, then get at it and enjoy the experience.
Every day, new applications are introduced, and more and more consumers can’t function properly without these things that didn’t even exist a few years back. So how to the apps marketers simultaneously keep pace what is popular now and keep track of what lies ahead?
Having a good marketing plan and implementing it to the letter is what counts. Use social networks to create the necessary exposure for your product. Plan the groundwork very well; make your application unique from the rest to create the excitement you desire. It is actually very simple – more reviews means more downloads. Remember that before an app can be considered successful, it requires a lot of thorough planning. It does not mean that after releasing an app, the creative mind that went into its creation should stop thinking on how the end user will get and use the product. Work the extra mile to get good results.
Focus on App Launch
A key step sometimes overlooked when developing apps is coming up with ways to market your app. It’d be great if the keys to success revolved around writing good code and having a nice interface, but if the public doesn’t know your app is out there, it won’t be successful. So how do you go about marketing your app? You don’t need a huge budget to fill competing products with advertisements for your app, and in fact, you may not want to deal with ads at all. Luckily, there are a number of low cost ways to market your app and try to win out in the battle for app supremacy.
First you must develop a website for your app and consistently update it to have positive site rankings in search engines. Developing a clean and bug-free product, writing a good description for your app, planning the release dates well in advance, offering a free version to test the customer reception and getting the app reviewed is a good start – but you should not pay for the reviews so as to get very honest views. It is a big plus if you are able to produce several editions of your application, each one geared to a specific type of customer. If it is feasible, make one for different age groups, types of employment, different language-speakers or ethnicities, etc.
Word of mouth, beta testing are other very strong marketing tools. Give your customers more than words.
Things to avoid
Mobile apps are the order of the day. People are slowly moving from laptops and desktops to the mobile devices and tablets and in such an environment if you don’t have any mobile app or your app is not mobile friendly, you are losing on your marketing front. But there is a bitter pill for the marketers here. If your app is not compatible with mobile devices, i.e. it is not running properly on the mobile devices or there is some usability issue, your app will turn out to be marketing disaster.
However, with great power comes great responsibility. Since mobile is such a personal medium, it is the easiest place for marketers to make massive mistakes that will turn off a customer forever. Make sure you get everything planned out ahead of time, thoroughly test the app for bugs or just any other problems. Customers are the ultimate judges as to whether an application will be successful or not, so carefully listen to their feedback on what they think about your product.
In short, make sure, the app does exactly what you say it is going to do. Any app problems indicate hurried and poor development as well as lack of proper testing. Be as thorough and methodical as you can possibly be, and your chances of reaping the rewards will increase tremendously. If you are qualified, do it yourself, but it is always good to look for an experienced and successful team of app developers and marketers to partner with you so that the job can be delivered well.
by wp-admin | Jan 29, 2014 | Blogs |
What is the most difficult step in building a mobile application? It is not developing the application, but rather getting the app found by search engines. Nowadays many users are interested in different kinds of apps which they can get over their iPhone, ipad, Android phones etc. We have hundreds of thousands of iOS applications, and the real challenge for developers is how to have their apps rank higher than the hundreds competitor apps in search results. This explains why App Store Optimization (ASO) is important to mobile application marketing. It is represents a form of SEO used by developers to generate leads or extra downloads in app stores.
App Store Optimization can be divided into three distinct parts: finding the most appropriate keywords, ranking highly for those keywords, and converting visitors into users. When describing your app in an app store, there is need to strategically position the keywords in the description. For example if your app is called ‘musica’, you might want to include that keyword in the title of your description and then subtly in the body. Experts might place the keyword in the beginning of the title and then three or four times in the body relative to the size. This way, once customers visit the app store and search ‘musica’, your app will be among the first on the results page. This is a white hat app store optimization technique that has had positive results for many app marketers.
But one thing you must try and avoid is the keyword stuffing, a black hat technique that is very common with many app stores. As the word suggests, keyword stuffing is the excessive use of keywords in any content so as to achieve high search engine rankings. This may earn you more downloads in the short term but it is what app store optimization experts call marketing suicide. When you stuff keywords there are myriad things that could happen; the app store might ban you and the possible customers might get confused instead of informed.
It is important to remember that ASO is not just limited to keyword techniques only; it also involves using all the Meta data you can find in the app stores, from icons, update texts, screenshots, description and many others.
In a nutshell, white hat techniques are considered genuine, whereas in black hat ASO may involve falsifying downloads or rankings by employing techniques that make the app stores to believe that an app is more dominant than it’s worth. This explains why companies like Apple continue to fight against black hat ASO. For instance, sometimes in early 2012, the company issued a press statement carried by The New York Times warning app developers against using what it called third-party services to gain more visibility and top placement from app stores. It threatened to ban such app makers from the store for life.
But is it possible to achieve good results from black hat practices without engaging in any immoral actions or completely jeopardizing the long-term business objective? A matter for great debate. What is clear is that engaging in some black hat ASO strategies could earn your app a ban from app stores and exclude you from traffic referrals on the net. On the other hand, some tactics are amazingly very effective, such as content automation, link manipulation, domain and sub-domain duplicate content creation and so many more.
It can thus be summed up that black hat ASO is a technique that increases rankings in apps stores by employing means that violate the prescribed terms of service. It is actually used to distinguish the bad guys from the good guys who blend the white hats.
Are you trying to build a long-lasting business? If your answer is yes, you should probably avoid black hat ASO. Rather, you should look for alternative means of improving your rankings. Instead of automating things that will trick users, search engines, or both, why not leverage on software to automate processes that are both Google-approved and that will help you to rank higher on apps stores?
There are many different agencies that will offer you great search engine rankings for a price but it can be difficult to know who to trust. White Hat ASO techniques that are implemented well can bring worthwhile search engine results for a sustained period of time. Black Hat ASO on the other hand do not stick to the rules and over time, may even have the app black listed due to their use of unfair techniques. If an agency offers these services that it can severely harm your app.
by wp-admin | Jan 29, 2014 | Blogs |
App localization is essential to maximize the marketing potential of different apps. It may not seem that app localization is necessary at first glance, but it is often so difficult for users around the world to find the information they need, and thereby find the apps that they need. Using app localization in conjunction with effective app translation can dramatically increase sales. When it is broken down into an easy to understand concept, it is relatively easy to understand why app localization is so important.
It is important to remember that technology has advanced to a point where people all over the world that share the same interests and the same needs have use for many of the same apps. However, many app developers completely miss the mark when they fail to use localization and translation in order to increase the market. Failure to do so effectively eliminates potential sales from other countries. In some extreme cases, it can even eliminate potential sales from a certain part of the country where the app is available more widely in certain locations than in others.
It is relatively easy to understand what a dramatic impact app localization has on marketing, and thus on sales potential. By localizing an app so that anyone can use it anywhere in the world, sales that may only be possible in one country are suddenly possible the world over. It is much the same as the way the different operating systems were with smart phones several years ago when many apps would be available on one system, but were not available on any other system. It effectively eliminated all of the potential sales from customers that were using the other operating system because the app was not made available to everyone.
Therefore, businesses that want to capitalize on the potential to make money from the sale of apps should use app localization in order to make them available on every operating system and to make them available to every individual in various countries that speak different languages. By doing so, it is possible to dramatically increase their sales potential and see their profits soar.
by wp-admin | Jan 22, 2014 | Blogs |
Crafting an app is much different from making it popular in the App Store. Many of the developer don’t know how to get success by listing the app effectively. Writing sales copy is the most difficult part but if you can deal it in the following parts, things can be sorted out well.
Title and Description
Keyword optimization though required in the app name, should not be dealt with aggressively. It is important to create a robust app and then use the name of the app in the title of the content of description.
Keyword optimization to some extent is important when your app is based on a certain thing, like camera or music player. However, it is more important to concentrate on the description. The app store will display only the first part of it, and keeping it short and crisp would definitely help. Apart from description the image of the app is the most attractive part for the users. Make sure to choose the best five images that describe your app.
It is important to make the first paragraph as compact as possible with key features of the app, rather than the new things in the latest version.
[rev_slider App_Store_Listing]
The following are the part that you require taking into consideration while drafting app store listing
Link
You are allowed to use only 3 links, link to your website that contains the product, support for app and license agreement. Make sure to utilize them well. Each of these are important and the support system has to be efficient enough to deal with the problems faced by the user.
Icon
Visual appeal of the app matters a lot to people and thus, this marketing element should be fabulously design. Make it as lucrative as possible.
New Features
While writing what is new in your app, focus on the main and attractive features that really make a difference.
Price
You have to be very sure about pricing your app. If the price is too low, or the app is given out free without any paid and lucrative update, then developing it to the next level would not be possible. Very high priced apps are generally ignored by potential buyers.
Screenshots
Make sure to provide screenshot of the app because you cannot use video. The screenshots should be such that the customers get a good idea on what to expect from the app. You can use more than one screenshot and can edit them to show the function of buttons.
Rating
You also require including the app rating in the listing. If you app is high quality and bug free, you will get good ratings. The potential buyers get influenced by the rating and reviews. Though you can manipulate the rating by creating fake account and providing fake rating, it is better to look back into the details and omit the possibility of negative review. That way you can actually provide something good to the buyers and they would rate you high, naturally.
The order of the rating and review received requires to be organized well. It has a great influence on the customers and if you want the users to pay for your app, it is important to determine the order of the reviews. The negative review should never feature first on the list of reviews. It is always better to avoid any wrong path. You can get good reviews and rating if you provide after sales services to the customers. You need to have more reviews than a low priced or free app, if you are charging higher price for the app. Make sure that your rating is good enough because otherwise, your customers will not pay you for the same.
It goes without saying that rating has some impact on the buying nature of customers, though no one is sure how much. When people were asked if they consider the rating of the app as a determining factor in actual purchase, 48% said it is very important, 43% said it is a little important and just 9% said that it is not that important.
It is important to consider each of your customers well because they will have a great impact on your publicity. You can use blogs, articles and word of mouth publicity for spreading awareness about your app and in that case rating won’t matter. Test your app to make it error and bug free and then launch it successfully. If your app is free from error and it delivers a great game or utility to the user then nothing can stop it in the long run.
