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Giacomo Balli
The Mobile Guy

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Mobile application strategy for big brands

It's no longer enough for brands to just have an app (or a suite of apps) and promote it through traditional channels. Now that brands recognize the impact mobile apps are having on business, their focus is shifting to employ a strategic marketing approach to their apps.
Top-tier brands like Coca Cola®, Sephora®, Wal-Mart®, and many more are all publically talking about the central role apps play in their marketing strategy. Here, we'll describe what some of those brands are doing, how they're doing it, and outline 10 strategic moves brands are employing to get more strategic about their mobile apps.

work as a team for mobile app successBring App Stakeholders Together As One Team

Try to steer clear of territorialism and unite all of the app stakeholders to work as one team to align overall goals and avoid power struggles. Pulling a team together from different departments and divisions can often be difficult, but it will go a long way towards making your app marketing strategies more successful.

Put Dedicated Marketing Resources Behind Your App

Capturing and maintaining app market share requires marketing resources, just like any other product. It's no longer enough to simply market your apps at your traditional customer touch points. To build market share, brands must go out and get app users through proactive marketing – and this takes resources.
According to the Mobile Marketing Association, marketers currently allocate less than one percent of their marketing budget to mobile advertising. However, based on the MMA's detailed ROI analysis of mobile, the optimal percentage of a marketing budget to spend on mobile is seven percent, on average, and up to nine percent for brands with higher app involvement.

Set App-Oriented Marketing Goals

As with any marketing program, mobile app marketing programs should be measured against specific, measurable goals. App marketing presents an entirely new range of marketing goals, with different corresponding strategies and tactics. Some examples: rank, downloads, users, cost per download, revenue, KPI, competition, location.

Market Your App On Mobile Media

The impact of mobile ad buys cannot be underestimated. Apps with high app store rankings and market share are almost always backed by continuous marketing in the form of paid media buys through mobile advertising networks and real-time bidding exchanges. These dedicated mobile channels enable brands to achieve an initial rank boost then maintain that rank over time to drive discoverability and installs.

Target Optimal App Store Rank

Mobile media advertising will drive users to download your app. But it's just as important to reach users who are browsing the app store for new apps – and the way to do that is to get your app into the top of the store rankings. If you're not near the top, you're not likely to be seen, never mind downloaded. App Store optimization plays a key role to maximise ROI.

Target Loyal Users

A download, or even an app launch, doesn't mean that you have a loyal user that translates into a business result. Data shows that many users abandon an app after one or two uses, and that high download numbers are often just part of a high churn rate. To truly drive business from your app, loyal user acquisition is more important than driving large volumes of downloads. And there are technology solutions available that help you identify and target these loyal users.

Use Optimization Technology To Drive Marketing Performance

With optimization technology, you can gain detailed insights into the marketing sources that are delivering on your goals. Whether that's driving loyal users, minimizing cost-per-download, or attaining optimal rank, optimize lets you zero in on those outcomes during the campaign. An optimization solution will help ensure that your ad spend is focused on the marketing sources that are delivering the results and ROI you're seeking.

Test, Learn, Implement, Repeat

As marketers, we often rely on extensive testing of promotional strategies, messaging, creative, and other aspects of our campaigns and programs before launching them on a grand scale. The same holds true for app marketing, but it's more important in the app marketing world not to fall into the trap of “analysis paralysis” over long periods, because the market moves so quickly.
Because mobile apps are a relatively new space companies can easily fall into the test and retest trap. What marketers need to understand is that the opportunity is large enough and happening fast enough that it's more important to get out there in the marketplace rather than to test and refine marketing programs over extended periods. You don't want to get stuck in test and learn mode because the market is developing so rapidly: you need to be getting results now, before you may know the perfect approach.
It's okay to test and learn what does and does not work, and to then make adjustments. That's a key component of the optimization described in the previous section.
As you see what works best you can then start to scale and refine your campaigns.

Establish A Feedback Loop With App Development And Business Stakeholders

You can do a great job marketing your app but, at the end of the day, if the app doesn't provide value to your users and doesn't work well, the app will not be successful. In addition, even the most widely adopted app must be updated regularly in order to provide new motivations for users to engage with it. Marketers are in a unique position to gain insights to improve the app, as well as the business impact of the app.
App marketers can add strategic value to the app business by establishing a formal feedback methodology with both the app business stakeholders as well as the app development team. Set up a monthly or quarterly feedback session with the stakeholders and review your findings and recommendations.
via Fiksu

#app marketing, #big brand, #corporate, #mobile app, #strategy
Published: Mon, Jun 3 2013 @ 12:01:47
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