How to Brand Your App
As mobile device applications are now comprising a multi-billion dollar industry, mobile marketing has now become a cutting-edge business tool and a premier branding resource. Smartphones are now the top form of communication. In fact, consumers spend close to 90% of the time on their smart phones using mobile applications. Many researchers also predict increased surges in the number of people with access to smartphones and the amount of time spent on smartphones and smart devices in the coming years. All these findings make app development and mobile marketing techniques that much more valuable. Here are three helpful tips we think can help professionals and business owners welcome the mobile marketing frontier to better brand their marks.
1. Know Your Market
The wake of social media marketing can be intimidating for any promising entrepreneur or growing business as mobile market behaviors seem to be constantly readjusting. Fortunately, there is an abundance of resources available to business owners to help you understand and respond to shifting market patterns. One easy tactic for businesses to understand their market is to search for how consumers are discussing their good or service on different social media platforms. Some industries may need to wish to appeal to broad markets on Facebook or Pinterest, while other businesses may aim to target younger audiences on platforms like Twitter or Tumblr. Experimenting with different social media outlets and connecting with clients through through social media can be an excellent way for businesses to understand the interests, values and quirks of their audience. Surveys, polls, and live-feed videos can also be a helpful tool for businesses to directly connect consumers with their brand. Some companies may even interact with related businesses or competitors to study their marketing tactics and better understand the surrounding community of their audience. In any case, the best way to understand a market is to begin directly interacting, participating and contributing to the community of consumers that are discussing that topic.
2. Set Goals
While it is crucial for businesses to take the initial step and begin connecting with their consumers, it is equally important for businesses to set marketing goals. Some goals may be content-based, such as uploading a certain number of posts within a given time frame, and other goals may be engagement-based, such as aiming for a certain number of followers, likes or shares. It is important in any case to make sure that these goals are clear, realistic and measurable. Many businesses are now making use of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to help quantitatively measure the volume of traffic, interaction, sales and visibility. It should also be important though to set qualitative goals along with KPIs so that a business can incorporate its mission and values into their marketing strategies.
3. Take Risks
As the social marketing empire is constantly evolving, it is not uncommon for a trendy apps to dominate the screens of consumers for a few months and then to suddenly fade into obscurity. In turn, many of the most successful social media campaigns involved taking risks that seemed unwise at the time and later came to receive unexpected success. Businesses should remember this principle when developing mobile marketing plans and always try to keep their branding tactics dynamic and flexible.
Final Thoughts
App branding can be a difficult job to balance since the rules seem to be regularly redefined. Nevertheless, a smart trademark name and logo can skyrocket into fame at any moment so long as businesses remain aware of their market, set goals for influencing that market and take educated risks along the way.
