Mobile applications or ‘apps’ as many call them are a trend of the present. Dating back to 2008 since their initial conception, apps are now quite possibly the most talked about of topics among the most basic of mobile users.
The evolution of apps can also be credited back to the evolution of mobile technology and smartphones alike which have seen a heavy rise in usage and overall prominence. But a smartphone wouldn’t be all that ‘smart’ if it wasn’t for the apps that power them. Today, everyone has a smartphone. So the question is, why use a smartphone? The answer is quite simple really. It makes life easy and doing tedious tasks a convenience. And it all comes down to the apps we use.
It’s no wonder that many big money companies and marketers alike saw this coming and jumped on the ‘app train’. Every firm, whether big or small, try to go mobile with their services and why shouldn’t they? A majority of the people today would rather get their work done over their phones. Marketing a brand through mobile applications could gain you a considerable following. It’s a no brainer in this case.
Mobile installs are now a common practice in marketing any brand to a desired consumer. While making more apps available to the average consumer can be a good thing, it could prove to be a head spinner for marketers. Developing an app is just one step in this long process. What makes it harder, is making the app visible to your desired audience. This is where things tend to get delicate and could considerably make or break all your creative efforts so far.
Launching your apps are dependent on 3 factors when determining your target audience and therefore take a considerable amount of research pre-launch. This will ensure that your app gets not only the maximum reach but also to the desired audiences:
1. Keywords
This can never truly be overstated enough. Keywords are important for almost anything you publish on the internet today. Whether it’s an app, an article or an ad, it’s the keywords associated to it that will get you the relevance you truly desire from a search. For example, you’re looking for grocery services. Note that ‘buy’ and ‘grocery’ are keywords here. Google will automatically show you a list of the top grocery services in the area.
Keywords play a key role in that the marketer here would have to use the right words and phrases based on what a consumer may need. Therefore, in order to increase an apps relevance, a marketer would need to use the right keywords that correlate with app in itself.
2. Competitor Targeting
This method is what many marketers look into as well when going in for the right audience. When keywords really don’t quite cut it, this can be seen as a great alternative. It’s also considered quite an aggressive marketing tactic but in it proves to be quite efficient and effective. Let’s take the case of buying groceries as mentioned above. Let’s consider that you’re trying to start your own online grocery business (no market is ever monopolized these days. There’s always another competitor).
You’d like your app to get relevancy and visibility in the app marketplace. The best way to go about this is to target your competitors. While deciding the keywords, you as a marketer would obviously know that a considerable amount of users would be searching online for Zopnow since they are top in providing similar services. While you may be just starting up, it would be impossible to compete with them directly. So the next best thing to do would be to increase your brands visibility. Using a competitor’s brand name in your keywords would put your brand on the list closer to them. This would increase your brands visibility in the app marketplace and could in fact increase user installs.
Taking into account competitor targeting, we see that Grofers has used competitor targeting as well. Those looking for Zopnow will be featured Grofers first.
3. Brand name
This is a more common practice in terms of determining an apps relevancy in the app marketplace. This method is most useful for companies that have already been established and have decent momentum in the market. Building an app for their services only increases their share in the market. Therefore, it’s quite common for a consumer to search for your brand in an app store. Let’s take the case of Grofers once again, an online grocery app that allows shoppers to place their orders online and have them delivered to their doorstep.
Grofers has built its way up and holds a decent following of reliable customers that will keep using its service because it’s convenient. Therefore, it’s fair to say using a keyword like ‘Grofers’ would only increase its visibility in the app marketplace purely because many would try searching for it. It’s that simple.