As the number of smart phone
using population is growing at a rapid pace, mobile application development has
taken a form of a new industry. Both at individual level and at organization
level there is a rush to launch mobile application for the smart phone
platforms available. The result is intensified competition. Once you have
decided about the platform and technology to use to build your mobile app, the
most difficult phase comes with marketing and monetizing the product.
The open source platforms available
nowadays have allowed developers to build and promote their applications in
easy steps. It has also significantly lowered the time required earlier for
developing mobile games. As a result, everyday hundreds of mobile games
and applications are being developed and launched. In such scenario, it becomes
difficult to reach out to and target your audience in effective manner. To
resolve this issue you need a strategic approach towards marketing your app
effectively and making it commercially viable. In this article we have
discussed the effective ways to market and monetize your mobile app.
Timeliness: Being timely can instantly make your application a
success. Judging market requirement and eventually designing an application to
cater to user need will help you stay ahead of your competitors.
Deciding about audience: Identifying the right market is the most
crucial aspect of turning your mobile application into a success. Your
marketing strategy would depend upon the audience who will use the application.
Offering greater user experience will keep your audience engaged to your
product, such as – if you are developing a game, then offer unique and fun
experience to user to make it acceptable to them.
Free vs paid: This is one crucial dilemma that every app developer
needs to deal with. Available free platforms have allowed game developers to build
app without investing fortune in it and therefore, there is also a large number
of free applications available to users as well. While most users like the free
versions of apps there are also a few who wouldn’t mind paying for upgraded
version of the application. You can tackle this issue by offering ‘free’ or
‘lite’ version of your app with an option to upgrade to paid version with subsequent
update.
In-app purchases: You can offer a few freebies and then indulge
your audience to pay for in-app novelties once they get the hang of it. If you
can successfully engage your audience to use your app or game, they wouldn’t mind
in-app purchases for better experience.
In-app advertisement: There may be other developers who would be
interested in promoting their application through your platform. You can earn
through in-app advertisement by signing up for an affiliate program. However,
you would wish not to bombard your audience with advertisements that will
interfere with their experience with the app.
Cross-marketing: Get in touch with other developers who can help in
promoting your application through theirs. This can work both ways and
eventually will help you in gaining more visitors. This is also known as ad exchange
program and is subtler but effective way of marketing your app. You can also
monetize through selling user data captured during registration to marketing agencies
looking for such information.
Use analytics: Mobile app analytics will help you measure progress
of your application. It will help you better understand audience behavior and popularity
of your product over a time period. Using analytics will help you gaining
insight on user experience so that you can work towards improving it.
No comments:
Post a Comment