The app will become the number one engagement channel for many of the most forward-thinking businesses in 2016. For now the app charge has been led by mobile-centric businesses such as Uber and JustEat, as well as platform-essential sectors such as mobile gaming. We expect a sea change in 2016 with many retail, financial and travel businesses placing mobile at the centre of their business, and mobile marketing will therefore become important.
The app is becoming the Swiss army knife of service provision for businesses manifesting in payments, 24 hour engagement, social sharing, content and relationship-building. So for many serious businesses the light bulb has switched on. Why carry out the activity that’s getting harder and harder to generate effective ongoing engagement, when the app ecosystem can do it better? It’s providing single deployment to globalise incredibly quickly on a readymade High Street called the App Store.
The challenge, though, for the business wanting to live in this land of milk, honey and Apple Pay is that every other business is wanting to be there too. That means there are tonnes and tonnes of businesses trying to do what you want to do on the same App Store High Street. This means the App Store is as busy as London’s Oxford Street, the week before Christmas. So creating the virtual “Golf Sale this way” placard directing them to your app is essential.
Mobile marketing: the way forward
Clearly mobile marketing is an excellent, tried-and-tested way of generating this app footfall. The problem is that everyone else thinks so too, so the demand for effective ad inventory is pushing the unit price of a download up. And the difficulty of finding the “pockets” of quality inventory is making it harder for businesses to scale using mobile ads alone.
Other techniques and tools need to be employed to get that High Street visibility. Along with the essentials of App Store Optimisation (ASO) and searchability, there are a number of other activities that add to the overall discoverability of your app via mobile marketing. We’ll be considering these in more depth over the next few months in the Yodel blog.
Want to find out more about optimising your app and keeping up with the latest OS capabilities? Get in touch by visiting the Contact Us page. Follow us on LinkedIn, chat with us on Twitter @yodelmobile, and join our #mobilemarketingUK LinkedIn group.
Read more by Mick: The impact that mobile is having on our decision-making is huge and Case Study: The Economist World in 2015
