Can Apps Enhance Mobile Brands’ Marketing Strategy?

Question: Can Apps Enhance Mobile Brands’ Marketing Strategy?

Answer:

Absolutely. With so many new smartphones coming into the market on a daily basis, mobile apps can indeed play a major role in complementing the overall mobile brand marketing strategy. There are various ways brand manufacturers can use mobile apps to improve their own sales.

The most common is of course with SMS and the Mobile Web. Other techniques also include pay-per-download, app subscription features, in-application micropayments, ad-supported promotions and so on. Mobile applications provide brands a ready source of income and also a rich media experience to the user of the brand.

Gone are the days when owning a mobile phone was a style statement. Now, it has become a basic necessity for everyone. Mobile applications have become a core component of mobile devices, as they perform several functions at a time, without users having to spend time and energy over them.

Mobile advertising is “in” today and brands are investing in it in a big way. Google’s acquisition of AbMob and Apple’s iAd network are solid proof of the true power of mobile applications in the context of mobile brands.

Some mobile brands have entered rather late into the game. The primary reason is that the fragmentation of different platforms is too much for them to handle. This creates confusion. Some brands are still struggling to work out methods to effectively implement apps into their framework, so as to fit into their mobile marketing strategy. There are now too many app platforms and that can overwhelm the brand manufacturer.

The good thing about all this, though, is that users now have a much wider choice of both apps and brands. Users are no more limited to the iPhone. Nokia, Samsung, BlackBerry and Android are all in the fray, each promising the user more and more features and facilities.

A brand chooses a certain set of apps. Then what?

Mobile brand marketing also includes sponsoring applications or even purchase in-application media to reach a built-in audience, instead of struggling to create and maintain their own audience.

The brands who decide to create an application will constantly have to focus on the specific goals and purpose they want their app to serve.

The problem with Apple's App Store, as most analysts see it, is that it is giving the consumer just too much choice. There are too many apps in the App Store right now and that itself, they feel, may end up interfering with its popularity. Other app stores, on the other hand, are free of this over-proliferation. Concentrating on these apps will go a long way in helping the brand get noticed for offering fresh new apps. App platforms have understood this trend and continue to woo developers, publishers and brands to make the most of this app market boom.

Some brands give apps for free, monetizing by way of a commerce engine and such, while others choose to give a “lite” version of the app free, while charging a nominal fee for the full version.

Integration is the key

Apps are no longer a standalone entity for brands. Brands hence have to integrate apps into their marketing strategy as a whole.

Brands should also note that they should choose apps which will enhance the consumer’s overall experience of the device. Only then can they truly succeed in their marketing efforts.

Including some fancy app just for creating a show will never help either the brand or the app. Consumers have an unending choice of products and are more aware than ever before and so, they will stay only with a brand that constantly offers them benefits in some way or the other. Manufacturers who understand the above-mentioned mobile brand marketing strategies are the ones that win in the market.