Basis of app marketing: how to choose a marketing strategy for your app

Nowadays mobile phones are the center of our world. And app developers are struggling to create the best app ever. This is the reason why this era is also called the app economy.

This run among developers involves the fact that there are around 2 millions apps for the IOS devices and around 2 millions and 3 thousand hundreds apps for Android system devices. I image you are asking what’s happened to the app for Windows Mobile Phone devices. But as you know, this kind of operating system doesn’t have a lot of customers.

So, if developing an app means having costs, app developers must choose very very well their strategy, because if they develop an app for Windows Mobile Phones and don’t have enough customers, they don’t gain enough money.

But, before thinking of gaining money, you have to think about the wining strategy in order to push your app into the market. And, regarding this topic, you have to pay attention on more than one aspects.

For example, if you want to develop an app for Android operating system devices, you have to know that you are facing a very fragmented world. Because each device changes for the hardware, for the software, for the screen resolution, so you have a large amount of costs, in order to fit the app to each different device. So you have a very high developing complexity.

Instead it is easer for IOS devices, because you have the same software, you have a short rage of screen resolutions. And another hot point is that IOS users update their operating system around in three months, instead Android users update their operating system in 8 months. So you have different costs on launching your app updates.

The most downloaded app category is represented by video games. In fact, it said that mobile phones are the console of the future. One of the first player on this field was Nintendo when it launched Super Mario Bros for mobile phone. An app aimed to children, in order to exploit their power, in order to gain money.

In order to unlock achievements, children have to pay, so they ask money to their parents and their parents make in-app purchases. Video games are also the first type of application which developed a stickiness system. What does it mean? The stickier an app is, the more engagement it can create. But more engagement means also more conversions, so more money. As you see on this statistics, the 90% of the time you pass on your mobile phone, is spent on applications. Instead only the 10% is spent on browsers.

That means the most part of people surf on the Internet through applications and not through browsers. So we can deduce that if you buy a smartphone and you don’t find apps inside, it is only a phone. That’s why Microsoft is paying developers, in order to gain apps in Windows Mobile Phone Store. But how can you be competitive in an app store which counts in over two millions apps?

You need surely a launch campaign and a very strong strategy. So that’s my advice: Depending on the specific lifecycle of your app, you will have different marketing strategies, different framework approaches and also different maintenance costs.

You have mainly four types of life cycles: long-life, campaign, seasonal apps or apps which depends on trends or modes. For example, if I decide to develop a long-life app, I have to know that I have to update it every time a firm decides to update its operating system.

If I don’t do it, I’m toast. But that means having a large amount of costs. It is different for seasonal apps: if I develop an app for Christmas I don’t have to update it so fast. So I will have also lower costs.

The second step is to choose the model of revenue you want. And also in this case, you have four choices. You can choose a model of in-app purchase which exploits the user experience or you can choose the pay to unlock which means that users allow the store to periodical app purchases. Instead the pay per download model is easy, because you simply pay to download the app. But it works only for very exclusive applications.

Regarding the last choice, of course, you can choose a mix model which blends together all the previous strategies. In order to gain more money from your app, you can also add other five strategies. If you choose an advertising strategy, you will simply gain money by inserting in your app third party ads. Instead, if you want to boost your positioning, you can choose a sponsorship, but you have to personalize each ad.

Again, you can establish a core paying service or gain money upon a fee. Finally a free model is always used for marketing campaigns, but the earning is not money, but positioning, users data, brand awareness and so on.

As found on Youtube