The Biggest Mistakes with Marketing Your Apps

Not Planning Your App

After hearing stories about young programmers making millions from simple applications it’s easy to jump in with excitement and create an app that hasn’t been worked out. Even if you create a great app, you may release there are things you want to change afterwards to help market your app, but after its developed, those changes may not be easy to make. For this reason it’s important to plan out a marketing campaign before finishing development on your app so that you can adjust any code if need be.

Downloads aren’t everything
So you’ve made a killer app, you’ve marketed it well, and you seeing downloads pour in left right and center. Congratulations if you make it this far, but if you don’t do something to keep users interested in your app, those downloads won’t mean anything. You need to think that these downloaders are your customers, and you are providing an ongoing service that will need to be updated, tweaked and changed for your customer’s enjoyment.
Adding new content will help keep your customers interested, and making sure you read download comments and fix any bugs that may be spoiling your customer’s experiences. These two are the simplest ways to maintain good customer retention.

Paying for Free Services

A good way to market your app is to get a mobile/app website to review it. However, some of these websites will charge money for this service and although it makes sense that writers should be getting paid for writing a detailed review for your application, there are plenty of websites that will take app submissions for free. The websites that review apps for free usually manage to make enough money to pay their writers through advertising, and this is because these websites get more page views than websites that may charge for a similar service.
Not Reaching Out to New Customers
The app market is very dynamic, and this means that are plenty of places to gain (and lose) customers. If you want to make sure you gain customers after developing your app, you will need to spread your app out to as many platforms as possible. Getting it available for iOS, various Android markets, and even the Windows Phone market can dramatically increase the chances you will have to get downloads, so make sure you don’t limit yourself to one or two platforms.

Not Creating a Recognizable Logo or Brand Name

If you want your app experience to be memorable to a customer, the first step starts with your app page. Your app should have a unique and memorable name, and the logo should follow suit. Creating a ‘brand name’ for your current app and any future apps will help customers recognize you and your apps later on, so it’s important to create a memorable title label for any apps you plan on developing.

If you want to learn more about marketing your app correctly, you can read through our blog section.

Marketing is an important part of this, and it becomes even more difficult when every other competitor is marketing their own business as well as or better than you can. However, there is one area in marketing that is still relatively new, and if you can adapt to it quickly, you’ll find yourself with something that many business have yet to adopt.

How to Make the Most out of Mobile Marketing for Travel

Good communication between you and your customers is important for any travel business. Making sure your customers know everything they need to know when they need to know it is something you can value in your business and there are plenty of routes to take with this.

Whilst you could send emails or web messages to customers’ personal accounts on your website, these places are not often somewhere a person will look unless there are expecting a certain message. If you integrate an SMS service into your travel business that can send texts to anybody willing to sign up their number, you’ll be able to reach customers with the information you need much quicker. According to Ofcom, in 2011 97.5% of text messages were read within 5 seconds of reading them.

This just shows that not only do people now rely on their mobiles and smartphones, but they are also within arms’ reach, meaning that you can send messages to your customers and speed up communication a whole lot faster.

As a travel business, you could also hire somebody to design an application to show your services and offer incentives to those who make repeat purchases and those that share deals with their friends. Thanks to various social networking websites, it’s become a lot easier to get your customers sharing your service on their networks, and when even a small discount is available for grabs to those who share with sometimes hundreds to thousands of their friends, there is a big potential for benefit to be made on both ends.

Mobile marketing can be a tricky thing to perfect, but if you build a decent mobile marketing campaign, it can become a great asset to your business. Many of us now use smartphones each day for various different reasons, so being able to harness the use of something that is always within reach of your customers’ means that they are always within reach of you.

It’s a no brainer that this money is being spent for a good cause, as it’s being proven time and time again that dabbling in a mobile campaign really is a good marketing strategy for almost any business to adopt.

It’s also important to note that although money is being spent on mobile marketing, you may be surprised at how much you can gain from a very low budget campaign.

Mobile Marketing Tips for Retailers

The first, most important tip for any retailer that wants to get their business into the mobile space is to have a mobile friendly website. Studies show that the majority of smartphone users won’t return to a web page if it’s not easy to view or navigate, and as smartphone usage on the rise, this applies directly to smartphone mobile web pages as well.

Another great tip to not only establish yourself as a mobile-friendly business, but to also reap the rewards that lie within the mobile space is to use an incentive for your customers to visit your place of business via a mobile platform.

As a retailer it should be easy to offer price reductions or offers for the customers that come to your store regularly, and you can use mobile technology to help build a relationship with your business and your customers.

Apps like Foursquare allow users to ‘check-in’ to places or business and this is a perfect way for you as a business to track an individual’s visits. You could offer more incentives for when your customers visits consecutive times or when he or she shares your business with their friends.

Mobile marketing can also be used to help share information about your retail business to your customers. For example, you could set up an SMS subscription service that allows customers to sign up with their mobile number and receive messages about your business every now and then.

You could also hire someone or learn to build an app for your business that shows retail notifications, sales and other important information that you would like your customers to be able to access with ease.

There are plenty of other ways to integrate mobile marketing into your retail business, however I think it’s safe to say that these ones in particular are the least damaging to your business’ income and have relatively low, if not no costs at all. Despite the lack of real budget needed to support these mobile marketing techniques, they can still be useful enough to give yourself an edge over your non-mobile competition.

If you want to learn more about how mobile marketing can help your business, there is plenty more information about it in our blogs section.

Best Apps for Seeking a Job

Monster Job Search

Monster Job Search allows users to search for jobs based around their area with the help of the embedded GPS search found within the app. You can quickly search certain keywords in your area, or other specified locations, and then read up on offered jobs, and save them for later reference. On top of this Monster Job Search includes a notification system that can keep you up to date by notifying you when a new job listing has been posted with the tags you have previously searched for.

Jobs You’ll Love

Sometimes looking for a job can be even more difficult when you are still undecided about what career you’d actually like to pursue, however, just like many things in life, there is an app for that. Jobs You’ll Love allows you to cycle through available jobs and ‘thumb up’ or ‘thumb down’ each job offering. Jobs You’ll Love will then remember which jobs you’ve said you’ve liked, and which ones you’ve said you didn’t like, so it can then show you more relevant jobs in the future.

Indeed Jobs Job Search

The mobile app for Job Search from Indeed Jobs takes the huge online job directory directly into mobile.  You can search for jobs by certain criteria, such as  the time you want the job to last, the qualifications needed, and any other key words that may relate to jobs you are looking for.

Just like with Monster Job Search, Indeed Jobs also allows you to save search results, and even email employers straight from a job listing.

Pocket Resume

Job seeking isn’t just about seeking a job, it’s also about being presentable to any potential employers, and working hard to ensure that they recognize your experience, skills and talents. This is where your resume or CV comes in, and for many, it can be a difficult task to lay out all of the most important aspects of your job experience and qualifications whilst keeping it readable. Pocket Resume can help by starting users off with a few different templates, which users can then fill with details, and once done, it can be edited, saved, and sent off to employers via email.

Thanks to smartphones and mobile, it’s  now a lot easier to keep an eye on what jobs are available in your area on the go, and many job seeking apps have been designed so that instead of crawling through hundreds of jobs you’re not interested in, you can stick to choosing between  only jobs you want.

Top 4 Reasons Google Play 4.0 Rocks

Easier downloads

If you’ve found an application that you want to buy or download from the Google Play store, previously you would have to go into the app, find or search for what you’re looking for, and then proceed onto the download page of the app. This was a terribly long process, and although at the time many didn’t take much notice, it certainly needed an improvement, and Google Play 4.0 is the improvement we’ve needed. If you see an application on the app list, you can now tap on an icon to bring out a list of options. These options include the ability to buy, download and add the app to your wishlist.

Better Recommendations

Google is a huge search service that has over the year’s turnt into a user experience like none other, and now that many of Google’s services are now linked through your Google profile, recommendations on the Google Play store will reflect your browsing habits. One example of this is if you listen to a lot of songs by an artist on Youtube, you may now get a recommendation based upon this.

Better UI

The Google Play 3.0 user interface was blocky and most icons took up much more space than they needed to, meaning that more scrolling and page changes were needed to find what you were looking for. On Google Play 4.0, everything has been shrunk down, and the home page now has room for a scrollable list of categorized apps, movies and other media. All the previous accessible categories such as top grossing and top free are now a lot more navigable as well.

More Readable

One of the drawbacks of Google Play 3.0 was the dark colors and poor font choices. This made it at times harder to read than was necessary, and I personally found myself trying to get in and out of the Play Store as quick as possible when I wanted to install an application. The new Google Play 4.0 is much more pleasant to scroll through, and the new interface along better picked out colors and fonts makes it much easier on the eyes, and I found it both easy and enjoyable to browse through the store.

In my opinion, Google Play 4.0 is certainly the best update for Play store yet, and it has made the overall experience a lot smoother than before. If you haven’t got Google Play 4.0 yet, there are a few places you can get the .apk from, such as Droid-Life.com.

O2’s Placecast

Now that a huge portion of the population has access to GPS enable mobiles or smartphones, O2, a phone operator in UK, has made an interesting move and developed a service that they have already thrown £1 million into. The service draws invisible geo-tagged lines and borders in certain areas and will trigger an SMS message to be sent to anyone using the service when they enter a new border. Currently Starbucks and L’oreal are on board, but this is certainly something that could be adopted by many more businesses with the help with service providers like O2.

McDonald’s Foursquare campaign

McDonald’s has the funding to push out any campaign they feel necessary, and because of this, if there is a new marketing method in town, McDonald’s will be there. One interesting campaign that caught my eye was the use of Foursquare check-ins. McDonald’s randomly awarded 100 people who checked into their restaurant using the Foursquare app, and afterwards, the press went crazy. According to the results, McDonalds landed a 40% increase of Foursquare check-ins, a 99% positive feedback, and over 600,000 new followers on their social profiles. This just shows that if you have a decent and rewarding location based advertising campaign, people are going to talk about it. Thanks to foursquare being available for free to the public, it’s incredibly easy to set up a campaign with this.

Boloco Burrito Campaign

Boloco teamed up with SCVNGR, a development team that offer challenges and rewards for users via a location based system. Customers that consistently visited the business would receive rewards such as half price off their burritos, or $30 worth for just $10. This encourages customer loyalty through reward programs, but ensures customers don’t just visit for one off deals. The location based advertising part comes into play when customers come close to the store, adverts and challenges will be displayed to the customer, which of course can then be completed by entering the store.

Hopefully these location based advertising campaigns have helped spark inspiration for your own campaigns, and if it has helped, be sure to read through our blog section to learn more about the market.

What are the basics of mobile advertising?

It would take thousands of words to cover everything you would need to know about mobile advertising and the results you can get from it, however as a newcomer to mobile ads, there are most probably some questions that pop up a lot more often than others, and below you will find the answers.

How much money can I make from mobile ads in my app?

This is a question that you are never going to get a solid answer to, and although as the mobile market evolves, you may have a better understanding of what rates you could earn from your application, you are still never going to be certain about what kind of money could be gained from your application. Right now there are many factors to take into consideration when exploring the possible revenue you could make from your application, but if you’re going to stick ads from a well-established advertising platform into your mobile app, then you can make a ‘rough estimate’ about how much revenue you may earn per number of active sessions on your app.  Placeplay has developed a mobile ad revenue calculator to help you get that ‘rough estimate’ you are looking for.  Revenue will start off very small, but if you manage to increase your daily user sessions, and get them to stay on your app for 10 to 30 minutes, you’ll easily sit with 2 digit earnings per day.

How do I choose a mobile advertising platform?

The mobile market as it is now is fragmented, and it’s extremely difficult to set out a ‘best’ mobile advertising platform, however, there are a few categories to pick between, and some app platforms stand out in their own categories slightly. As a beginner to the app world, the category that will be most beneficial to you are blind networks; an ad platform that usually pays in CPC (cost-per-click) at a rate as low as $0.01 CPC. There are dozens of names that could be mentioned here, but the most notable would be Adfonic or LeadBolt.

Should I pay for advertisements?

The decision to pay for ad space on another application is a difficult one, and as a small business or startup, it may be unviable. However, if you start to make profit slowly from your application, you could try your luck in feeding it back into the app’s success by placing a few adverts up. Before doing this, you should ask those that have used your app, or ask a review site to have an honest look at your app so that you know how to improve enough to match up against your competitors. This way you will be able to gain new downloads for your app, but also improve upon your daily user sessions because your customers have a better experience with your app than they do with its competitors.

There are a lot more details to dip into when considering mobile advertising, but these few pointers should help you get on your feet.

Apps to Help with Mobile Marketing

Glyder

Glyder is an iPhone application that starts with a basic package at a cost of $0.99, and offers extra features through in-app purchases. Glyder allows users to create a quick advert using the editor found within the application and then send it off via different platforms, including social media websites like Twitter and Facebook, via email and SMS. If you have a few followers on your social profiles, or customers that have signed up to email or SMS subscription, Glyder will prove to be a handy app to reach all of those that you need to with a fair amount of ease.

Taap.it

Taap.it is a service similar to Foursquare that uses location based technology to help users find certain things in their proximity, however unlike Foursquare, business owners can put up rewards for users of the app that visit their business. Using Taap.it is an innovative way to market your business through your community and offer incentives to those visiting. Taap.it users can then share the business info through social sites, which could in turn bring in even more customers.

Ooomf

If you are developing an app, and you’re looking for a way to ensure you do all the “rights” of a good app developer and avoid all the “wrongs,” Ooomf is a perfect app to cover you. Not only will it take you through the steps of marketing your app correctly, but it will also give you a lot of advice on why you should be doing each stage and how to do them successfully. Following the steps given on Ooomf will certainly help you to market your app and your development team as a whole, especially if you haven’t launched an app before.

Elephanti

Elephanti is an application that allows businesses to put their products and services up onto a localized online store front that gives users of the app information on your business, as well as discounts that may only apply when using this application. It allows users to easily find your business in their area, as well as leave positive reviews and ratings about your business to help customers find you in the future.

Mobile marketing is still young, and many developers are working behind closed doors on intuitive mobile marketing apps right now, but as it stands now there aren’t many truly innovative apps out there that can help to market your business via mobile, so making use of what is currently available will be important to your business, and it’s something you should work towards, as many of your competitors will be looking to do the same.

Please visit also our German site: Agentur für Mobile Marketing

What is Local Mobile Marketing? How Can I Use It?

The word ‘local’ in the term local mobile marketing is the only thing that sets it apart from average mobile marketing and it’s as simple as the definition itself. A local mobile marketing campaign makes use of resources available that can help to boost a business’s profile in their local area, and not anywhere else. Being able to make a ripple in your local community can be hard, but local mobile marketing is a step in the right direction.

There are plenty of innovative ways for a small business to integrate local mobile marketing into their business, but here are a few examples.

Own a customized app

You don’t need to have your own app development team to build an app for you as you can find many WYSIWYG app creators on the internet. Although some cost, these programs will allow you to create an app how you see fit, and then push it to the app stores. Most app creator services have limited functionality, but you’ll have plenty of room to put in directions to your store, product/service details, contact information and mobile couponing and social integration. A good WYSIWYG editor is named brickandmobile, and they have plenty of prebuilt apps that have been based around certain businesses that you can inspect and then build upon.

SMS Subscription

Everyone hates spam SMS messages that contain dodgy looking links and information about saving money, and for this reason many feel uncomfortable with receiving SMS messages from businesses. However, there are those that want to keep up to date on latest business information without having to check their email or call you directly, and this is where SMS subscriptioning comes in handy.
If you have an app, email address or website, or even just a plain business card, you could use one or more of these to point out your SMS service, so that customers of your business will know how to keep updated. When you have a list of numbers, you could either send them out manually or use an app to do it. Don’t be too aggressive with the texts as most of your customers will want to drop out, however sending a text about your services once a month or two could make a big difference.

The greatest strategy with all local campaigns is to try and build relationships with your customers. If you can provide more details about your services, and reply quicker to questions and queries on Facebook, via text, twitter or by email than the corporate businesses sitting in the busy part of town, then customers will build a preference to you over those other businesses, and this is something that you should try to capture with local mobile marketing.

There are many methods of marketing via mobile, and the examples above should hope tick your brain into thinking of innovative ideas to involve your customer’s mobile into your business.

Examples of App Marketing through Social Media

Collect Likes and Follows through competitions and other incentives

It can be hard as a small business to offer rewards for your followers, but without an incentive to like or follow your page, you’re going to have a tough time bringing in new customers. You may think that by offering incentives to follow your page, your followers won’t be interested in your products, and will only lean their ear towards you when you are giving away more, but if your product or service, or in this case your app, manages to spark curiosity when offered for free, it’s likely that they are interested in what you have to offer at a price as well.

Involve your social presence in trending topics

Posting about your application regularly is important; however it isn’t enough to bring in new followers to your social profile. A good way to move out of your own territory is to look for trending topics that could be relatable to your applications and discuss them with others online. Just writing a reply on twitter to a tweet that has a relation to your mobile app could bring in followers from the social profile that you replied to.

Spread yourself across multiple social networks

One social profile may be hard work, but if you’re going to get anywhere, you’re going to have to push your presence to varying social media websites. It takes less effort to manage a second social profile than it does managing the first one as you can usually copy and paste across multiple media websites. By having your profile on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and others, you are able to reach customers that may not notice your presence due to only being active on their preferred social media sites.

There are many other examples of how a social media campaign could help your app marketing, but above are some key examples of what is needed to start up your social media campaign, and as with everything involving business, it takes time, patience and persistence to receive good results from your work.