Marketing your business, brand or service with an App is very popular at the moment with the boom of the smartphone and tablet markets. This trend is not going to go away for sometime as devices continue to develop and change the way we consume information.
To give you a little food for thought before you jump in and create your App, here are a few points that we think you need to fullfill with your App before you release it to the marketplace.
- Super Useful – Your business App should make life easier for your target market. Determine information that they desire on a regular basis and give it to them. For example, if you are a holiday destination you might want to provide them weather reports, accommodation and activity specials along with suggested places/things to do while on holiday.
- Interactive – If your target market can interact with your brand and business on their phone you will form a relationship with them and increase brand loyalty. Nike have a great example of this with their App called NikeWomen Training Club. It lets users customize their workouts, access videos, and invite friends to compete.
- Entertaining – Make your App amuse people, again you will build brand loyalty by allowing your target market to feel good about your brand by entertaining them. Coca-Cola has a great example with their spin the bottle iPhone app. A review on the Apple’s App store says that he and his roommate use the iPhone app every night to decide who takes out the trash.
- Mix it up – The more birds you can kill with one stone the better! Why not do the same for your target market with your App. Kraft’s iFood Assistant suggests recipes, lets users upload their own and share them with other users, you can then create a shopping list to make sure you get everything you need for your new found recipes.
- Free is loved by all – The App industry can make a developer some pretty big pocket change, but for now you are better off considering the development costs as a marketing expense and giving the app away for free. If you try and charge people even a dollar for it they will hesitate to purchase it and you could miss a new potential life long consumer. Give it away for free and you will increase your chances of your iPhone app going viral within your target market.
This post has been revisited and re-posted. Originally posted on the 9th of November, 2009.
Good ideas Brad. The beauty of apps is that your ideal guests will tap into your brand from time to time in the “in between” moments. The trade of is that operators need to invest in producing a stream of content to feed the app. Easy peasy for those who blog, but new skills, time need to be committed along with an app.
Working on some ideas for an app for our business and excited about the potential!
Hi Todd, thanks for your comment.
Connecting during those “in between” moments is essential and the App is giving you another channel to connect and build a relationship. In relation to the travel industry, I also feel that having the ability to deliver information during the “in town” moments could also be the difference between your customers having a holiday and a experience that will create a lifelong advocate for your destination and or brand.
Looking forward to checking out your app.
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Hey, interesting points. I think relevance will finally decide which marketing/branding apps will finally survive the race for “screenshare”. I’m afraid a lot of apps will be tossed away after a few days or weeks of playing around with them because they just don’t add enough value. On my blog, I discussed a few corporate apps: http://www.finn.be/blogs/mobile-applications-marketing-tools-race-%27screenshare%27.
Hi Kristien, thanks for dropping in and leaving a comment.
You’re exactly right in saying apps will be tossed away after a few days or weeks because they dont add enough value. I do this all the time and that was the main reason behind our first 3 points, Super Useful, Interactive, Entertaining. If you can achieve these 3 points with your app, you will really have a much higher stick rate for your app.
Positive customer reviews and star ratings in the App Store help more than online advertising. The best way to market your app is to build a positive in-store image in itunes with customer reviews. Try using this service if you want to build your app’s image: http://isales-boost.com/
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