Think of anything you need, be it tracking your sugar levels to buying your groceries, there is probably an app for it.! It is the age of apps and marketing professionals cannot overlook this. Hence, mobile app marketing is crucial for businesses because it helps to increase brand awareness, drive user engagement, and generate revenue. That is why organizations look for professionals who can help them reach their target audience effectively and efficiently by leveraging the widespread use of mobile devices.
According to Statista, mobile advertising expenditures are expected to surpass $339 billion in 2023. It illustrates the rising demand for skilled professionals with relevant experience in mobile apps and marketing strategies.
Mobile App Marketing
This type of marketing refers to the process of promoting a mobile application to reach a larger audience and increase downloads. The process happens through various channels, such as social media, online advertisements, app store optimization, influencer marketing, email marketing, etc. So, mobile app marketing aims to increase visibility and attract users to download and engage with different applications.
It is a crucial aspect of app development and involves promoting a mobile application to reach a wider audience and drive downloads. The ultimate goal of this exercise is to increase visibility, drive user acquisition and engagement, and increase revenue generation.
Importance of Mobile App Marketing
According to Statista, mobile devices generated around 59.16% of global website traffic in the fourth quarter of 2022. The current rate of mobile usage is one of the primary factors that has supported the rising demand for mobile app marketing.
Here is a breakdown of points that will help further analyze the importance of this kind of marketing in the digital era.
UserAcquisition
Marketing on apps helps to prompt more downloads and increase the user base for a particular application, which is critical for its success.
Visibility
Marketing strategies help increase the visibility and discoverability of mobile apps, making it easier for potential users to find and download them instantly.
User Engagement
Mobile app marketing promotes different applications and their respective features through various marketing channels. The process helps to increase user engagement and guides them into coming back to the same applications.
Revenue Generation
A well-executed marketing campaign can drive downloads and increase user engagement. It leads to increased revenue generation for businesses through in-app purchases, subscriptions, and other monetization methods.
Competition
Mobile app marketing helps differentiate an application from its competitors and stand out in the crowded marketplace.
Brand Awareness
It helps to increase brand awareness and reinforce the brand’s presence in the market.
Customer Insights
Marketing of this kind provides valuable data and insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can be used to inform future marketing strategies and improve the user experience.
How Does Mobile App Marketing Work?
Marketing on apps involves a comprehensive approach to promoting a mobile app so that it reaches a broader audience and drives downloads. The process typically involves the following steps.
Step 1: Understanding the Target Audience
It is important to understand the target audience, their needs, and their behavior before starting a campaign. The information can be gathered through market research, customer surveys, and analysis of app store data.
Step 2: Defining the Marketing Objectives
The marketing objectives should align with the overall goals of the app and the target audience. Examples of marketing objectives include increasing app downloads, user engagement, and revenue generation.
Step 3: Choosing Marketing Channels
The next step is to choose the marketing channels that are best suited for reaching the target audience. The process could include app store optimization, social media marketing, influencer marketing, online advertising, and email marketing.
Step 4: Executing the Marketing Campaign
The marketing campaign can be executed once the marketing channels get chosen. The process involves creating and distributing marketing materials, such as advertisements, influencer collaborations, and promotional emails.
Step 5: Monitoring and Optimizing
The marketing campaign should be monitored regularly to measure its effectiveness. You can then optimize it based on the results. It involves analyzing data such as app downloads, user engagement, and revenue, and making the required adjustments.
What are the Steps Involved in Mobile App Marketing?
Mobile applications have shown the power of computing and the outcome of using it for business success multiple times. The mobile app marketing strategy is therefore very significant in today’s highly competitive digital world.
Here is a breakdown of the steps that have proven to work in the industry.
- Prelaunch Marketing
The app is still in the development stage during this period. So, a marketer’s job is to create awareness of the application by instigating a ‘buzz’ about its features across different platforms.
- Postlaunch Marketing
This is the phase where the application is completely developed and ready to be rolled out for customer use. Marketers need to use different methodologies to encourage prospective customers to download the new application.
- Customer Engagement and Retention
This step involves rigorous mobile app marketing campaigns to ensure that customers only uninstall the app after using it once. The campaigns should prompt them to return to the application and engage with it.
- Application Monetization
Marketers must ensure that the applications involve paid subscriptions for users and other exclusive services. They can also drive further finances easily by introducing in-app purchases to provide more features and deliver a rich user experience.
Essential Marketing Tools to Make Your Life Easier
- Planning
A vital part of any marketer’s job is planning. It’s the foundation that everything else is built on, so you need to be sure you’re getting this part right.
For those unfamiliar, Trello is essentially a digital organization board where you can break bigger tasks down into individual steps, and assign steps to different team members. On the surface, it’s super simple to use, but the more familiar you get with the tool, the more you realize how flexible and deep it can be.
One huge benefit we found is that what seems like a huge, complicated task at the beginning can look really simple and manageable when it’s all broken down, and assigned to the different team members.
Deadlines are easily applied, and there’s a satisfying flow to this marketing tool. Once you set a flow for your workload (planning, in progress, awaiting authorization, and complete, for example), it’s oh-so-satisfying moving the task cards along, until they reach the complete column. Then, when the cards in ‘complete’ start to stack up, you can proudly look back on all you’ve achieved.
- Social media advertising
If you want to be where your audience is, some sort of presence on social media is absolutely essential. Now there are options and advertising tools on every major social platform too, so you can access a wide range of totally different demographics.
The best tool depends on which network is best for your audience. If you’re selling direct to customers, Facebook is fantastic. If you’re a business to business…business, LinkedIn is a good bet. If you’re selling clothes, or something more visual, Instagram works really well.
Overall, though, which marketing tool works best, and makes advertising on social media a breeze?
That would have to be Facebook.
Firstly, it’s the network with the biggest user base. As well as having over a billion users, most businesses can be found there.
Secondly, it’s really simple to advertise. The programmatic options are extensive, and you can drill down into really fine detail based on user behaviors and tastes, but actually publishing and targeting an ad couldn’t be easier. It’s all self-explanatory and intuitive.
Thirdly, it allows you to advertise all over the web by checking a single option. The Facebook network is extensive which means your ad will be seen on a huge number of different sites, as well as Facebook itself. If you want it to, of course.
There are options whatever your budget and the reach can be astounding.
- Display Advertising Tools
When it comes to online display advertising, there is a whole host of display advertising tools out there to help you. Even if you focus solely on the production of banner ads, a number of options can seem almost staggering.
What are the most important things to look for in a display advertising marketing tool?
The display advertising tool or ad creator needs to be easy to use, and intuitive. It also needs to produce all ads in HTML5. From there, you want to be able to implement video, animations, and rich media quickly and easily. You also need to be able to create a number of different sizes and translations ideally with just a few clicks, so you can scale your ads without any hassle.
From there, the tool needs to be able to publish your ads with minimum fuss, and you need to be able to edit your ads after publishing if necessary.
Which display advertising tool can do all of this, and more?
Bannerflow.
It’s an incredibly powerful tool, but one that’s easy to use. Everything is in HTML5, and scaling up campaigns takes a matter of minutes.
Through Direct Publishing, you can get your banner ads out to more than 20 of the biggest ad networks, and in front of your audience, in just a few clicks.
The variety of banners you can create is huge, too. Whether you want to use video, rich media, or animated widgets, all you need to do is drag and drop the appropriate module onto the canvas.
- Content Marketing
With content marketing tools, it’s not so much about which platform you use to produce it, but more about how you draw attention to yourself.
Tools for production, after all, can be as simple as typing in Google docs, or even using a notepad. At Bannerflow, we use Google docs extensively in the marketing team, as it’s so easy to share and comment on documents. This means it’s quick and efficient for other team members to edit articles before publishing.
The most important aspect of content marketing is actually getting your content out to the masses. Of course, you can do this by promoting content on your social channels, and via email, but there are tools out there to help you get your content out to a variety of audiences without any trouble.
There are solutions and tools which can help if you don’t have the time to produce your own content, too but are looking to use this marketing method to raise the profile of your business.
The recommended tool for this part of marketing is Contently.
It’s a tool that can help you in every aspect of content marketing. They have a creation tool, which is clean and easy to use and allows others to leave notes and authorize your work if needed.
If you need help with the actual creation, there’s access to a huge bank of freelancers ready to write great content relating to your business as well.
From there, it’s easy to publish across many different channels like blogs and social networks, and their analytics tool is great for tracking how well the content is doing.
- Email Marketing
Despite what you might hear and see, email marketing is very much alive and well. In fact, over half of all respondents to this survey actually preferred companies to contact them via email over any other method.
What are the things to look for in an email marketing tool? There are quite a few things to consider.
A private IP address is necessary to overcome being blocked by spam filters. Also, a simple but flexible creation tool can help save huge amounts of time and also allows you to develop a certain theme and tone with your emails.
As an aside, it’s a good idea to have some general guidelines laid out in your email strategy. This should include the fact that you always need permission from the user before you start emailing them, and a strict policy on how many times to email per week or month. You don’t want to spam people with endless emails, as they will just unsubscribe.
The analytics also needs to be robust enough to allow you to see how to optimise future campaigns, and you ideally can segment your database, and send different emails to different audiences based on their buyer profiles.
A few email marketing tools have these capabilities, but one tends to stand out from the rest, both in its branding and its user base: Mailchimp.
They have over 15m customers and look to be growing all the time. The tool is intuitive, and the user experience is a pleasant one. They also have features like recommended times to send emails, as well as reports which let you see how much actual revenue your email campaigns produce.
The Future of Mobile App Marketing
The future of mobile app marketing may be influenced by advancements in technology and changing consumer behavior. Moreover, multiple key trends are expected to shape the future of mobile app marketing.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
AI and ML will play a significant role in automating and personalizing mobile app marketing, making it easier for marketers to reach and engage with their target audience.
- Increased Use of Chatbots
Chatbots have become increasingly popular for customer service and engagement in mobile app marketing, and they are expected to influence campaigns heavily in the future.
- The Growth of Mobile Wallets
The increasing use of mobile wallets is expected to drive the growth of in-app purchases and mobile commerce, leading to more opportunities for mobile app marketers.
- The Importance of Privacy and Security
As privacy and security concerns continue to grow, app marketers need to focus on building trust with their users. They can be efficient in this process by remaining transparent about data collection and usage policies.
