Monetisation Models: Gain Big Bucks for Your Mobile App

You put your heart and soul into creating an app, to be part of the app store among the million others present. But, how do you make sure it reaches the target audience? What comes to the mind first is better user interface, simplicity et al but we all miss could be equally important – is your app cost-friendly?

Every business requires patience and above all strategies to drive your sales. At the end of the day that is the ultimate goal right? To get a good return on your investment.

2% of app developers claim about 54% of all app revenues. Now, if you aren’t part of this 2%, you need to seriously start considering where you’re going wrong and what needs to be the step ahead. If not, we can help you come up with one.

Mobile app Monetisation Models

The first step in creating a profitable business out of your mobile app would be to determine which model suits you the best. Some app business models earn more money right off the bat at the expense of quickly acquiring tons of users, while others result in high downloads first and profits later. So what you pick depends on the requirements of your app.

• In-app Advertising (Free with ads)

Apps annoy all of us but these apps are different. This model allows the user to download the app freely but gathers information about the people using the app along with a good user base so that this data can be sold to app publishers who then place specific ads in your app. So you see where these ads differ - it helps the developers make money apart from annoying you ofcourse ;)

Facebook leverages a vast amount of their data to sell highly targeted ads. And this monetization strategy has proven quite effective for Facebook.

• Freemium

You start playing a game – your interest builds but at your highest peak you’re thrown in for a quick surprise. You’re asked to subscribe for all services rendered henceforth. This really pushes you off the edge, but that’s where this model really works. The premise of this model is that you attract people to your app and give them a rich preview of what your app can do (without giving them everything). The goal is to accumulate and engage app users until they are willing to pay for additional in-app tools.

Angry Birds could be the most apt example. Being one of the most addictive apps, some of its features are only available if you upgrade by paying a small fee.

• Paid Apps

Apps make life simpler – agreed! But how do you know whether it will or it won’t unless you see for yourself. That’s the major disadvantage of this model – that the user cannot use your services until he pays for it. Therefore, it comes down to whether you are able to showcase your app to be something new and unique, one which is different from similar free apps available. The vital role here is played by the mobile marketing team which should be able to convince users to purchase the app instead of going for the free ones. Camscanner is one of the many paid apps out there.

• In-App Purchases

Selling extra lives, money, tokens are all ways for apps to earn revenue. In a nutshell, this app monetization strategy involves selling physical or virtual goods within your app, and then retaining the profits. In-app purchases can include a wide variety of consumer goods such as clothes and accessories.

One of the best examples could be of MeetMe - People can download MeetMe for free and use it to browse profiles, chat with people, and connect with locals. However, you can also purchase credits to enhance your visibility and gain new ways to interact with people.

• Paywalls (Subscriptions)

Similar to freemium, except the content here is gated. Service app focused model, Paywalls allow an app user to view a predetermined amount of content for free and then prompts them to sign up for a paid subscription to get more. This model allows brands to earn revenue on a recurring basis.

Lumosity could be another popular app with certain content free but rest available at a nominal cost. It consists of games claiming to improve memory, attention, flexibility, speed of processing, and problem solving.

• Sponsorship

In this new-age, as we enter partnerships entail the most important part of a business model, and this is exactly what this model does. Sponsorship entails partnering with advertisers, who provide your users with rewards for completing certain in-app actions. In this model, brands and agencies pay to be part of an incentive system. Your app earns money by taking a share of the revenue from redeemed rewards.

One of the newest models to be in use, RunKeeper is already keeping up with the trend and uses incentivized advertising to motivate its users to track their running activity with their app to unlock exclusive rewards and promotions.

Conclusion

Its very important that your app reaches out to the targeted audience but whats equally important is that you earn revenue out of it. Money, afterall, can be a good incentive to work harder and for the better in the future. So, before you dive into this world think of how you can achieve the targets you set out with. What incentives, strategies and model would be right for you – because at the end it is your app which goes out onto the platform and its your decision whether it should be under the limelight or not.

Importance of Marketing your Developed Mobile App and Few Steps to Follow

You are totally aware of the importance of owning a mobile application if you wish your organization to withstand the competition in the business world. But are you aware of the need to market your developed mobile application???

Yes!! you have to promote the application so that it will boost up your business operation.

Why do you need to market your mobile application??

Do you know how many applications get uploaded on the play store every day?

How will your prospective customers seek you out from the sea of applications?

There are over thousands of applications, covering all most every sector or product. So creating a unique idea for business and develop an innovative app is just not the end of your work. Rather your journey begins from there. If you wish your application to boost up your business firm, then you need to push up the app in the ladder and place it in front of your key viewers. In short, extensive marketing and sales promotion is highly crucial for your application.

Two key reasons to advertise the mobile app:

• To reach out to a large number of viewers
• Make your app easily visible

The reason is very simple and obvious. However, to achieve this objective can be a bit tricky. So you need to develop proper strategies and find out ways to market your business application. However, the tools are not much different from the ones we harness to promote any product.

Let us get a brief understanding of the different options that we can explore.

What are the different ways to promote your mobile app???

There are multiple options available for you. It is up to you to choose the best ones among them.

• Good and landing page- Make a simple and clear one liner intro for your app

• Start your app blog- Post regular updated topics with focus on your core objective

• Social media marketing- Harness the social media platform like creating facebook page.

• Mobile advertising- Google offer mobile ads to target users searching from Google web page. PPC can work for you.

• Guest blogging- Target different tech and other blogs to post your niche content of your company as a guest to draw key viewers.

• Video intro for the app- Instead of words, you can put a video intro on your landing page. Visualization exert greater impact on the viewers.

• Ask for app reviews- Besides tech blog sites, there are other app review sites where you can post an article about your application and request for useful feed backs and reviews.

• Create and share interesting info graphics- Info graphics Tool such as Visualize.me can create one for you that you can post on any social media platform

• Start a community- Social media platform such as Facebook allow you to form communities with like-minded people, sharing similar interests.

• Work on App store optimization strategy- Optimize your app icon, title, description and screenshots in ways  to make your app visible easily to the end user.

• Create a video channel on YouTube- You need to regular feed in interesting video content, user surveys, news flashes, user content etc.

• Communicate within your personal circle- Requests your friends and families to promote your app through ‘word-of-mouth’ or through social media sharing.

• Grow your subscriber list- Grow your subscriber list and collect email addresses who will, in turn, push your updates to thousand others.

• Offer discounts- If your application has in-app purchase option, offer them occasional discounts and inform them via push notifications or email newsletter.

• Cross-promote with another application- Team up with another application to cross-promote both the partners’ business apps.

• Encourage customer ratings- Request your happy app users to leave a fair rating on your app that will pull in more users.

• Place your app in the right spot- Choosing the appropriate app keywords and categories will decide your ranking.

• Regular monitor your performance- Keep a close track on your app performance analytic to study the customer behavior towards your mobile application. Based on such analysis prepare your future course of action.

• Re-engage your current users- It is important to keep your existing users to remain hooked up on your app for a long time. Google has launched a new initiative to allow you to run ads and compel your users to again return to your app and pull in new ones.

You can also view the video link below to get a clear idea

Summing Up

Customer feedback can be an important tool to upgrade your application. Apart from that, the above mentioned points are just a few common steps you can undertake to market your business mobile application. If you have higher budget, then appoint Mobile marketing agencies who will promote your work on your behalf. Appspire.me, Appency are few such agencies.

So begin your application journey by first establishing it properly in the play store and increase your daily users.

Strategies to Launch Mobile App Marketing

The minute you have made up your mind to create the app, you must be fit in order with the marketing app strategies. Although it has been observed that many developers prioritise the part of development rather than strategies to make it available to the users and overlook strategies to ensure its long term survival. It seems sound enough when your app has to compete with 500 or 600 apps while considering the entire app store. Although this scenario would be the most admirable one for every mobile app marketer, isn’t it!

But with the evolution of mobile apps, there should be some modifications in your thought process i.e. apps have moved away from the standalone platforms and gradually getting incorporated with the extensive mobile strategies. Left those days when companies were engaging with the apps just for sake of having it. Now that it has left no room to recognize the magnificent impact of mobile application development, but still there are few pitfalls which must be acknowledged to evaluate the marketing of apps. Following are few of the strategies that must be regarded to ensure its long term survival.

Effective Pre-launch mobile app marketing strategy

Don’t wait for the D-day to market your app

With the uncertain future of the new masterpiece,consisting of more than 15 features and fabricated by the most experienced mobile app developers, your marketing efforts should start the moment you have got an idea to create an app. This concept is the most cardinal part as far as marketing strategies are concerned.

Although you have organised press releases, sales pitched to every inbox and voice-mail, but it can be quite temperamental relying on outside forces to advertise your app to success. Hence this must be regarded from the day one and must focus on making your marketing timeline augmentative. Initially the marketing investments seems to be emollient, as the time passes it continues to build and eventually it reaches the pinnacle point ensuring its arrival in the app stores.

Create effective strategies to engage potential customers and interested people early and often

It is quite essential to sieve out the potential customers as soon as you get your hand into the app creation. This step is quite essential to find the real users who can render the critical assessment to improve the app performance.

Although top mobile app development companies have identified twitter as the most essential tool to discover initial contacts since it is occupied by the technocrats who are known to be the early adopters as well as influencers. And in case if you are concerned about the industry content then there are few tools like Social Crawlytics, Topsy and Buzzsumo which helps you to  distinguish most important people in the concerned industry. Just because the tools are free of cost and provides the most influential content which can be twitted and as well as easily share, you must focus on the customers and their related problems as well as identify potential solutions. At the end, monitor the best practices that can help your brand to move forward.

Do not underestimate the power of blogging

In this impulsive competition, blogging has become an inherent voice of communication that would establish interest around your app. It also solidifies search visibility. Hence start dedicating a blog in order to give regular updates to your growing fan base on the succession of app’s development. Potential customer’s can be engaged by asking their precious inputs. In order to make your job simplified, there are various tools like Squarespace, WordPress and Tumblr which havealready come up innumerable options to use. There are various strategies which can improve search engine ranking of your blog for instance quality content, target keywords and other industry influencers that can be targeted in order to understand the competition. Hence, it must be clearly delineated that you must create a content that your customers want and need.

Get your hand into beta testers

Although the importance of beta testers have been identified from the startups to top rated mobile application development companies world-wide. It is quite difficult to expect an apps without any bugs. Every app is exposed from minor to major bugs which must be identified be employing beta bugs. But if these bugsare passed on to users, then it would fail to retain the apps. You must consider that if you ship something buggy, never expect to come back. These testers are effective enough to discover unique resources for further identification of targeted audience.

Effective post-launch mobile app marketing

Concentrate on user engagement and retention

In case you are concerned about the key marketing strategy, then paid user acquisition should not be your ultimate strategy. It is irrespective of what qualitative app you deliver, pumping in some money to get the initial downloads is quite satisfactory. But in the long run, you must reckon a robust marketing strategy to focus on the user engagement and retention.

If you are concerned about the paid user acquisition, then top mobile app development companies have identified paid channels that can best accommodate with other marketing strategies.  Top paid channels for best marketing of the app includes press release, online ads, App-cross promotion network, Facebook Targeted ads etc.

Proper delineation of metrics for mobile app

Although revenue can be regarded as the great indicator as far as success of the app is concerned, but it would be somewhat fallacious to indicate it as a long-term mobile app marketing metrics. Your team might sometime overwhelm to see the increasing amount of money with the increase in the number of downloads. But do you really regard it to draw the maximum people? Then it is the high-time to see the essential marketing metrics.

Customer support should be emphasized

This is something irrespective to the number of users, since you are a part of this impulsive market and every users must be given equal care. Your future survival depends upon the word of mouth which is considered to be the compelling tool for any marketer and can prove to be detrimental if you are not paying sufficient attention to the users.

Give sufficient freedom for push notifications

Although it has been observed that push notifications can boost app engagement considerablyand is considered to be the best way to drive users to readily engage with the apps on a regular basis. This is considered to be the optimal channel to nudge your users by taking photos or check in. But push notifications must be planned very carefully and must be provided way to the users in case they are looking to turn them off. Hence time zones must be emphasized enough while you are looking to send push notifications.

Verdict

Mobile app marketing is considered to be as complicated as mobile app development which looks for the proper combination of time, creativity and efforts. It is capable to enough to yield the maximum benefit benefits if these strategies are executed properly. Hence aforesaid strategies can be implemented in order to ensure your app’s long run survival.

If you have any doubt or feedback, please let us know. Our representatives at Fluper are skilled and experienced enough to entertain your queries and regard your suggestions in future.