Mobile apps have emerged as an effective marketing solution. A mobile app not only helps automate business but also provides better customer service. With apps, brands do not have to struggle to establish themselves- they can foster a deep connection with netizens of all demographics and age groups, promote brand awareness and garner the right market visibility. 

Studies show that more than 50% of customers who regularly use a branded app are more likely to buy from the company.

It is relatively easy to target a mass audience base with other marketing channels but targeting each individual based on their unique preferences is the need of the hour, and it has become all the more possible through mobile apps. 

A branded app is a powerful approach to facilitate brand promotions in a persuasive way. By using a mobile app as a brand marketing channel, you can reap huge benefits. It keeps users engaged and you can enjoy higher conversion rates. 

Why should Brands go online?

According to a report, smartphones account for 70% of the mobile time out of which 90% of smartphone time is spent on applications. Most people today have access to their phones wherever they go, which implies that you can reach your target audience almost anytime, anywhere through a mobile app. This doesn’t necessarily apphttps://appinventiv.com/blog/mobile-app-as-brand-marketing-channel/ly to other marketing channels, some of which are limited by the restricted availability of the devices that they depend on.

Brands have realised the potential of what a mobile application can do and that goes beyond simply selling a product or service. This discovery has opened up new marketing avenues. It provides businesses the opportunity to engage with their audience in new and creative ways and turn them into loyal customers. 

Studies show that desktop internet usage is dropping and mobile internet usage is rising significantly. Although mobile websites get more visitors, visitors tend to spend more time on apps. 

Mobile app industry is flourishing. It is estimated that by 2021, there will be roughly 7 billion mobile users worldwide. (Source) With the advent of disruptive technologies such as AI, AR VR companies are finding new ways to market their products. Artificial Intelligence allows mobile apps to store user data in order to recognise and preempt their preferences, needs and choices. 

Mobile apps are a powerful marketing channel for brands. It helps companies connect with the audience, convey brand messages, keep users engaged and create customer loyalty in a crowded marketplace.

Today brands are using mobile apps to improve offline experiences for their customers and boost sales. According to a recent survey, 75 percent of customers engage more with loyalty programs that provide rewards in a mobile-friendly way. 

So, if you are still not going mobile for marketing, it’s time you consider the many benefits a branded app has to offer. 

Benefits of Mobile platforms as Marketing tools 

There are a number of ways how mobile apps help businesses. They humanise companies, lead to better interactions between brands and customers, and increase loyalty and sales. 

1. Enhancing Brand awareness and visibility

Businesses are often on the lookout for an effective platform through which they can market their brand. Apps enhance brand awareness and visibility and can strategically increase the customer base. 

Once an application gets installed on a mobile device, users will come across the brand logo frequently, thereby enhancing visibility and awareness. The more often a user interacts with a brand’s app, the sooner they tend to buy their products and avail their services. 

If you want to get users talking about your unique app, you must ensure that your app provides all the features that your target audience is looking for. 

The app should be interactive and keep users coming for more. Afterall, it all boils down to effective frequency- the more people are introduced to an app and the more they interact with it, the more chances that they will actually buy. 

2. Forming a connection with your Customers 

Engagement is extremely crucial and a mobile app helps you form a deeper connection with your customers and prospects. 

With declining attention spans, it has become significantly important to curate compelling personalised content and keep your users coming back for more. 

An effective way to engage your users is to frequently offer them fresh Personalised Content. Users are interested in content that is relatable and piques their interest. In this rapidly changing environment, user preferences keep on changing and to establish yourself in the market you need to keep up with them. 

Regardless of the type of application, a brand must invest in personalized in-app content. One way to ensure that happens is to create and study customer personas to better understand what type of content works best for your audience.

Another effective strategy is Push Notifications. Push notifications have the power to capture user attention and make them check out what’s new in your app. They encourage customers to use your app. The key with push notifications is to make them compelling. A push notification must be of some value to the end user no matter if it’s a copy, a promotion or some perk. Don’t overdo the notifications or it may irritate the users. 

3. Collecting Data about Customers

A good marketing strategy revolves around analysing customer behaviour. If your app solves a pain point for the user, they are likely to share their data with you. 

You can use mobile app as a brand marketing channel to monitor users, their personal shopping behaviors, engagement levels, browsing habits, locations, mobile app usage, favorite hours and much more.

This way you can collect valuable user insights, analyse through the data, understand the needs of the customer and improve your product quickly. 

You can collect user data in the following ways: 

• Onboarding: You can have a basic questionnaire during registration which includes pertinent information about age, preferences, habits and more. 
• By offering Bonuses:  It is an ideal approach to swap discounts, bonuses or special offers as a reward for completing small questionnaires. 
• In- app Behaviour:  Marketers can always keep track of the marketing process in a closed loop by monitoring and analysing user’s in-app behaviour. For brands it has become relatively easy to collect user data based on purchases and reviews of the product. 

This way you can evaluate the data and change your brand development strategy based on user feedback. 

The Starbucks mobile app widely uses this opportunity and monitors in-app user behaviour. As of April 2019, Starbucks claims 16.8 million active loyalty program members. It all became possible by analysing user data, looking for new avenues and rolling out strategic data-driven initiatives to target users.

It is essential to have a review/ feedback section. Allow your users to tell you what exactly they want from your app. Iterating and improving the product the way your target audience wants it reaps excellent rewards. 

4. Increasing Customer Loyalty

Rewarding frequent customers is a great marketing strategy. Getting customer loyalty has become a challenge for a number of brands. A mobile app is the right tool to increase your customer loyalty. 

When you reward frequent customers, it encourages them to buy more and they are more likely to share your brand with their fellow friends. This strategy can be easily implemented using push notifications or via in-app messages.  Loyalty rewards help in establishing a strong connection and turns users into loyal customers.

5. Scaling up your target Audience 

The Internet is not just breaking boundaries but making things that were impossible a decade ago happen in real-time. Mobile apps enhance the user base, not just in their country of origin but also across the world.

Through geo-targeted push notifications, localisation and location based brands can send specific messages to their target user audience. Location based call to action via region or location mapping feel more personalised to the user, grow the target audience and can drive more sales. 

6. Increasing Sales Ratio 

Applications enhance customer experience by making the buying process simpler, convenient and intuitive, thereby resulting in the increase in sales ratio. 

But an app doesn’t have to necessarily offer purchases to boost sales, it can do so by offering loyalty programs and additional services. 

Domino’s faced a serious sales issue back in the mid-2000s. With the wave of digitalisation, Domino’s decided to go mobile. Besides making significant improvements in the quality of their product, Domino’s created a branded mobile app that was extremely responsive and rendered a delightful experience. 

It resulted in the app’s contribution to half of the company’s online sales in 2015. 

When Domino’s started facing issues with retaining their customers and witnessed a rise in the bounce rate, they came to us. We worked on their UX, refined their UX Strategy and brought a steep rise in their conversion rate by 23% and significantly increased their session time.

7. Social Network Marketing through apps 

Mobile connectivity has become essentially important and the ability to synchronise it with social networks provides businesses a higher chance to disperse the content and make it go viral. Mobile apps allow users to easily share the brand’s content across all social networks. 

For instance, PUMA’s empowering Propah Lady campaign created a ripple effect on the social media and gained a huge amount of followers and brand customers. 

Common Mistakes to avoid when making a mobile app for Brands 

The advantages of a mobile app for business are endless. Sure, you can create a unique app and get users to download it but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the user will return to your app. 

According to Statista, 25 percent apps downloaded by mobile app users worldwide are only accessed once after download.

So, how do you ensure that users keep coming back to your app for more?

The underlying reason why most users abandon a branded app is either poor UX or it focuses more on novelty value and lacks functionality. So, here are some common mistakes that you should avoid when creating an app and to establish it as an effective brand marketing channel. 

1. The app doesn’t provide any value to the user

Every app operates on a pain point and it is designed to solve a specific user problem. This holds true for branded apps as well. If your app is a means to place advertisements on your customers’ mobiles, you are doing it wrong. 

A branded app should solve user problems in one manner or another. It is only when you create a useful product that provides some value on an ongoing basis, that users will keep coming back to the app. The ideal approach is to know your target audience, study their needs and determine what they expect from your app. 

2. The app lacks special offers 

The idea behind a branded app is to create awareness and enhance customer loyalty. If a branded app doesn’t offer discounts, special offers and other app usage benefits, customers will most likely abandon the application. 

3. The app is difficult to use

The simplest way to identify a good app is how convenient and intuitive it is for the customers. If the app is complicated to use regardless of the functionality it offers, it won’t appeal to a mass audience.

4. The app lacks updates

It is essential to keep up with the rapid shifts in technology and implement the same into your app. If you change your marketing strategy, website design or provide better branding, you must ensure that you have enough resources to make the same updates on your app. 

5. The app doesn’t move beyond the desktop experience 

If you consider an app as a smaller version of the website with the same features, you aren’t leveraging the app as a right marketing channel. A branded app is more than a novelty value and must provide important features and information. 

6. The app doesn’t provide a personalised touch 

Today a wide variety of content is available on the Internet and with ever decreasing attention spans, it has become significantly important to provide a personalised touch with your application. 

Through a branded app you can target each individual based on their unique preferences and get closer to your customers. By sending personalised push notifications you can retain your users and turn them into loyal customers. 

How to establish a Mobile App Marketing Strategy?

Having an app marketing plan is extremely crucial when creating a branded mobile app. So, dig deep and understand what your business needs. There are many types of mobile apps but the crucial factors that come into play when creating a branded app are as follows: 

Acquisition: You must ensure that when a user onboards and shares their personal information on your app, they come across a variety of useful mobile features that add some value to their life. 

Engagement: Your app should be able to capture user attention, engage customers with the brand and keep them coming for more. 

Conversion: Besides engaging customers, your app should focus on driving users to conversion.  

Next thing that you need to figure out is the product pricing strategy. Product pricing strategy or mobile app monetization plays an instrumental role in getting your app the initial traction and visibility in the app store. The app pricing model determines the success of your product  in terms of the number of downloads and user retention in the long run. It is essential to take into account the cost and value, run a competitor audit, gauge the estimated demand and analyse the cost of user acquisition before opting for a pricing model. 

Making a branded app is one thing but you also need to understand that the mobile app ecosystem is a challenging environment. 

It is a given that regardless of how well crafted your application is, it will not get its spot under the sun until it is marketed right and there is a buzz around it much before it hits the stores and users’ devices. 

So, how to promote your brand with mobile apps? 

A Brand Marketing Channel for the world’s largest Furniture retailer IKEA

The lack of mobile app as a brand marketing channel is often felt by startups and established enterprises. 

For IKEA, we developed an impeccable solution that helps walk-in customers go through the products catalogue. With a simple and comprehensible user interface, the application displays the products straight from the inventory, eliminating the chances of disharmony between the customer demand and the product supply. 

Moreover, it offers customers access to product discounts and offers all in one place.

We solved the problem that IKEA was facing, and with our effective solution customers got a catalogue that displayed all the store offers and discounts in one place and retailers got the contact information of hundreds of store customers for sending them marketing collaterals.

Conclusion

A mobile app is considered a brand’s own marketing platform. It establishes a direct marketing channel and allows marketers to reach a wide range of users around the world. If you are still not leveraging mobile apps as your brands marketing channel, you are certainly lagging behind. It is time you explore the new marketing avenues and jump on the wagon. 

The post How To Use Mobile App As A Brand Marketing Channel appeared first on Appinventiv.

One of the biggest fundamental mistakes an entrepreneur preparing for the top spot can make is not paying attention to the mobile app promotion stages. Or treating the process less than the number of effort required for the design and development process.  

The question in the present mobile app state is not What is mobile app marketing, why is it necessary or how it works? But, what are the right app engagement methods. 

It is a given that no matter how well crafted your application is, it will not get its spot under the sun until it is marketed right and there is a buzz around it much before it hits the stores and users’ devices. 

Achieving the promotion utopia is not easy. But let us help you get there. 

Here is an app marketing guide to help you market your mobile app.

But before you get to the stage of mobile application marketing, there is some homework which is required to be done to answer how to market an app successfully.

Prerequisites for Mobile App Promotion

Identification of app objectives and target audience 

Much before you get to the stage of finalizing the right app marketing strategy and determine associated budget, you should flesh out who your target audience is. You need to explore and learn what are their pain points, what are the existing solutions available in the market, where are they lagging, and how your application can overcome them. In other words, you need to invest your efforts into product discovery, creating user personas, and much more.

Whilst this is the first step towards developing a mobility solution,it won’t hurt to revisit the findings when you are nearing the stage of mobile app marketing. 

Do the keyword research

Identifying the right set of keywords is a very important part of the app promotion process. One that you’ll find in every app marketing guide. Your application will stand a much better chance if you know what language your users will use to reach your mobile app through natural searches. 

Since this is just the homework stage, you need not pay heed to the positioning portion of the keyword as of now. 

The promotion strategies for mobile app are primarily made of two stages – Pre-Launch and Post-Launch marketing. Now, unlike the design and development part of the process, where the efforts reduce once the app is deployed, the efforts needed both before and after the app launch stages, in case of app marketing, are the same. 

Let us look into the pre and post launch mobile app marketing tips.

Pre-Launch App Marketing Strategy

This is the stage which would enable you to create awareness about your application in the market. Here are the things that will have to be covered in the pre-launch app marketing stage.

Finalize a release date 

A good starting point would be to finalize the release date of the application. Having a time frame in mind would help devise better mobile app promotion strategies. When deciding on the launch date, consider all holidays and events happening around the date, this will help ensure that the app is not getting overshadowed. 

Build A Great App Landing Page

Mobile app landing pages have become some sort of a must-have for businesses looking to generate eyeballs right once the development phase starts nearing its end. The benefits of creating a promotion landing page can be manifold. First, you can use all the information collected on the page for conversion purposes. Next, you can use the content on the page for SEO purposes – improving the app’s ranking on the search engines.

Outreach initiatives 

One of the app marketing tips that works best in favour of promoting an application is the outreach initiatives that a business takes. While it would be a lot more beneficial for a startup to start rolling out Press Releases (PRs) and Articles from the stage where the app’s beta version is out, it’d be beneficial to start creating a list of prospects to reach out, in advance.

You should have a ready list of PR professionals, bloggers, and social media influencers before you start with steps to promote an app. It’d also help your mobile app marketing strategy to keep a few pitch ready with you beforehand to then send to the agencies. 

Open social media profiles 

While assumed to start once there is a link to download the app, ideally, the stage where you create social media profiles should occur 1-2 months prior. This will help you with avoiding mistakes while promoting your app on social media channels and leverage higher benefits.

Now, when talking about the same, you should start with identifying who your target audience is and which platform they frequently visit. On the basis of that information, open social media profiles and start posting content on them to keep the users’ interest in place.

Besides these pointers, there are a few things that you will have to cover from the development front as well. Let us look into them. 

Make the app easily shareable

On the development front, it should be made easy for users to share your application to their friends and family. For this, you will have to ask your partnered mobile app development company to add native elements, which would make it possible to share the app through Message, WhatsApp, or other social media platforms. 

Implement app analytics 

When talking about app success, it is not always about higher app downloads. Various other mobile app KPIs must be taken into account. 

In relation to the same, there should be an app analytics section inside the application which would make it possible for you to keep track of how the app is performing when the time comes. Adding analytics at a later stage will be a lot more difficult compared to adding it at the development stage.

Enable push notification

The prominence of the role that push notifications play in reaping higher benefits of marketing an app is undeniable. It can be your go-to tool for ensuring the app is always on the top of users’ minds. But in order for it to perform what you expect of it, you will first have to incorporate it in your application:

• Register with the push notification service of the operating system;
• The OS service offers an API that enables the app to interact with the service;
• Add SDK to the app. 

Post-Launch App Marketing Plan

The efforts that you put in the name of pre-launch app marketing is only half of what you will have to do for post-launch marketing. Now, when we talk about post-launch app promotion techniques, we basically talk about two primary approaches: Organic and Paid. 

The idea here is to get as many downloads on your application as possible. For, the ranking of your app on the store will ultimately depend on the number of downloads it has received. But a thing to note here is that there is no list of the best ways to promote an app. It will all ultimately depend on your app type, what you are looking to achieve, and the budget you have set for the mobile app development process.

Paid Promotion Activities

App-install campaigns 

The app-install ads when driven with the right app marketing strategy and in the right place and time tend to draw massive benefit for the application on the download count front. What is difficult in this method is determining reasons behind higher app uninstallation rate and take preventive measures for the same. But the returns that can be expected from this approach are massive. 

Pay per click  

Pay per click tends to have a massive impact on mobile app promotion, if and when done on the right platform. While one approach would be to promote the app on search engine, what we recommend is promoting the application on other applications – this has shown to offer greater benefits to businesses.

Email campaigns 

Depending on the demographics of your target audience, eMails can be a great start for establishing your marketing strategy for app launch. By sending the details and values of your app to people who either subscribed to your landing page earlier or through cold emails can be a great way to get attention on your application. 

Organic Promotion Activities 

App Store Optimization

When we talk about organic Android/iPhone app marketing, the foremost strategy that strikes the mind is ASO or App Store Optimization. The idea of ASO is to work on the app’s store page in a way that it is fit to appear in the search list and enticing enough to be downloaded by the users in one go. The end goal of ASO, however, should be to ensure that the application gets featured on the Play Store. 

Apply for awards 

Awards are a sign that the product is quality focused and is bound to add great value to the app user acquisition marketing strategy for apps. In many ways, they also play a role in getting greater downloads. 

Here are some of the websites that accept awards application on the basis of its design, features, and other criterias:

Here are some of the websites that accept awards application on the basis of its design, features, and other criterias:

• Appy Awards;
• Best App Ever Awards;
• Apple Design Awards;
• Appsters Awards;
• The Webby Awards;
• Best Mobile App Awards.

Gain visibility 

There are a number of app marketing ideas you can turn to for gaining visibility on your application. Here are a few of them – 

• Submit the application on promotion websites like Rate My Startup or Launching Next. these will help you in gaining reviews from entrepreneurs and other users. 
• Publish the app on alternative app stores like Amazon etc. (Note that this can only be a part of your Android app marketing strategy) 
• Conduct contests and giveaways to push the interest that you app is getting. 
• Keep in touch with the press to continue keeping your brand in the news. 

Localize your mobile app

Though English is mostly the language that an app is drawn around, do not restrict the language as the only language. Many people in the world, even in the USA itself, do not use English as their native language – an event that affects the mobile app usage charts. 

It is important to localize your mobile app according to the relevant regions – ones where your users belong. But when doing it, do not rely on auto-translation. There are a number of app localization agencies like  ICanLocalize, Babble-on, Tethras, Localeyes, etc, which can help bring the app to a global market. 

The pre-launch app marketing strategy and post-launch app marketing plans you read above work amazingly well for getting million downloads on your app. But the hard work and effort doesn’t end there. You will still have to work around ensuring that people who install your app don’t abandon it. 

While it would help to know the reasons why people uninstall apps, what we recommend is investing your time in mobile app reputation. There are three primary ways to attain it: Setting up listening tools, setting a team to reply to users in real-time, and bring troubleshooting tips on app and the landing page. But before these three, you will have to guarantee an optimized app performance. 

FAQs About Mobile App Promotion

Q. How to prepare for mobile app marketing during the development phase?

The answer on how to promote an app is something that has to be accommodated from the app discovery and development stage itself. Here are a few things that you should do to ease the process:

• Incorporate push notification 
• Make the app easily searchable 
• Implement app analytics

Q. How do you increase the visibility of your mobile app?

There are different avenues you can head on to for gaining visibility on your app – 

• Submit the app on promotion websites 
• Publish the app on alternative app stores
• Conduct contests and giveaways for pushing the interest your app is getting. 

Q. How to increase app conversions?

One of the most sure shot ways to increase mobile app conversion is two sided. On one side, you should market your app enough that people know about it. And on the other side, you should develop the app in a way that it offers real value – one which would back the marketing efforts. 

The post Effective mobile app promotion strategies that Startups Must Consider appeared first on Appinventiv.

But, suddenly a new application with better options and lesser cost enters the market and is continually trying to gain the attention of your target audience. How will you react in this situation? How will you ensure that your targeted audience remain hooked to your brands despite alternatives available in the market?

The simplest yet proven way to do so is to look into how to create a buyer resonance using marketing psychology – something about which we will discuss in detail in this article.

What is Brand Resonance?

So, let’s begin with the simplest definition of Brand Resonance.

Brand Resonance refers to the type of relationship you have built with your customer and the resonance strategy you followed. If you have a strong and positive relationship with your brand, your customers will stick to your brand – no matter what happens. Whereas, on the flip side, they will not take a second thought before switching to an alternative.

And the most relevant example to understand this concept in the mobile industry is iPhones.

iPhones have built such a bond with the targeted audience that even when the third-party agencies are providing almost the same features into their smartphones at nearly half the price, they continue to buy and use an iPhone.

While this might have provided you with a hint of what the concept actually is, let’s look into Keller’s Brand Equity Model to get a clear and comprehensive brand resonance idea, prior to looking into how to build brand resonance using marketing psychology and create a successful mobile app brand.

What Brand Loyalty Means for Your Business?

Brand loyalty is all about your customers and your brand. It is an emotional tie between the consumer and a brand that prompts a customer to proceed and grow their purchase for items from your brand. Companies utilize brand loyalty to drive extra purchases both with current items and across brand expansions.

Brand loyalty can likewise drive their consumers to be brand ambassadors through word of mouth by sharing their experience and feeling for the brand to their colleagues, peers, friends, and family.

Having a loyal consumer base helps businesses to push past its competitors and give the upper hand it needs to prevail in the marketplace.

Organizations with solid brand loyalty sees its customers repeatedly purchasing its services or products, irrespective of changes in cost or convenience. Continuous buyers of one organization’s products are more averse to being influenced by the advertising messages of its competitors, thus, expanding the odds that those consumers will keep on conducting business with that organization.

A Descriptive Introduction to Keller’s Brand Equity Model

Keller’s Equity Model, also called Customer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE) model, revolves around getting a comprehensive understanding of how your target user base look and feel about your app product.

This implies, looking into the type of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and perceptions that the customers have about your mobile application. It further means building the type of experiences that makes them feel great about using your application, and in the long run, keep them hooked to your brand.

This brand resonance model is basically in the form of a pyramid where each level represents a question that customers ask consciously or subconsciously about your brand. The model works with a ‘bottom-to-top’ approach and can be a great weapon into determining what strategies to apply and giving a WOW experience to your audience.

But, for reaping the best advantage of it, you need to be well-versed with all the elements of the equity model of the brand and should have the knowledge of how to apply them to enhance your brand marketing strategy and deliver an exceptional experience to your app users.So, considering the same, let’s look at these elements of this customer based brand equity pyramid in detail and understand what can be different ways to turn the situation into your favor.

1. Brand Identity – Who You Are?

Brand Identity, the first step of the CBBE model, defines how customers look at your app and what criteria they follow to differentiate you from others. It represents what image your brand holds in the eye of the target audience and is helpful to gain success in the market, when the mobile app is:-

• New to market
• Targeting customers who are unaware of its existence
• Striving to build trust and loyalty
• Looking forward to enhancing its work culture
• Planning to drive higher sales
• Making efforts to get the limelight in the marketplace.

While various brands have worked on building a better brand identity, the best example to consider in the mobile arena is Apple. The brand has built an image in the eye of the customer much beyond a tech giant – a proof of which is this video:-

Now as you know what all it entails, let’s jump into the right brand awareness strategy to consider to create brand identity.

When talking about working on building brand identity, you need to dig out the following details about your audience:-

• Who are your customers?
• Which market segment do they belong to?
• What are their needs and expectations?
• How they decide between your brand and that of your competitors?
• What decision-making process do they follow?
• How well your brand stand out at the factors they consider while taking a decision?

In a nutshell, you need to invest in creating Buyer personas questions and get a comprehensive detail about your user base. This will help you to determine whether your audience recognizes your brand the way you want them to, and to get a hint of what is your USP according to them.

2. Brand Meaning – What You Are?

While the last level of the equity model signifies what your customers think about you, this element will be focused upon what you want to convey about your brand.

This implies you will put your best efforts into making the right changes in your product/solution and the corresponding marketing strategies to bring clarity between you and your targeted user base and build a significant impact in the market.

When talking about Brand meaning, you will be working closely on two factors, Performance and Imagery.

Performance

This subcategory represents how effectively your app is performing in the market from customer front. It mentions how well your solution meets their needs and enhances their experience, which is calculated based on five factors – primary features; reliability and durability; style and design; efficiency and effectiveness; and cost.

When talking about the working of this factor, the best example to take inspiration from is Amazon. Considering the growing competition in the sector, Amazon app revamped its customer strategies and added various new features including Cash on Delivery, Free shipping to even other cities, Delivery on the same day, Search by Image, and is even working on introducing drones to make the shopping experience effective for the customers in every aspect.

Imagery

The Imagery subsection will help you to look into what is your brand image in the minds of customers from social and psychological perspective. That implies determining if they are using your application only for getting their needs fulfilled or have some sentiments associated with it.

For example, Facebook app has created an imagery of building new relations among the customers. So, whenever it comes to finding new friends, they turn towards Facebook. Likewise, when they have to connect with someone at a professional level, they look ahead to LinkedIn even when there are various other applications available in the market.

3. Brand Response – What about You?

The next tier of the brand resonance pyramid, just prior to Brand Resonance, is Brand Response. This element covers everything about how the customers respond to your brand, which is primarily divided into two categories:-

Judgement

Whenever a customer across an application, they invest their time to dig out some details about your market reputation and the type of experience they will be delivered. They make a judgement based on different factors, such as Quality, Consideration, Credibility, and Superiority and take the decision.

So, to ensure that customers do not judge your brand in the wrong way, here are the mobile app reputation management questions you need to work upon:-

• How to enhance the actual and perceived app quality?
• What are the ways to improve your brand’s relevancy with the customer’s needs?
• How is your app different from those of your competitors? How can you make it rise on the top?

Feelings

Customers often respond to your brand on the basis of what they feel. If they, let’s suppose, feel negative about your application, they would never consider your application even if they are having a dire need of the corresponding services. Whereas, if they feel elated, they will look forward to employing the app more often and do ‘word of mouth’ marketing. So, it is again necessary to watch out for which of the following feelings they experience when they think or interact with your brand:-

• Warmth
• Fun
• Excitement
• Security
• Social Approval
• Self-Respect

4. Brand Relationships – What about You and Me?

Brand Relationships (Also termed as Brand Resonance) is the topmost stage of the Keller’s brand equity pyramid and is often considered as the most difficult level to achieve. This is because this level shows how deep a bond you have built with your customer at a psychological level.

This level is further categorized into four subparts, called as components of Brand Resonance:-

Behavior Loyalty

This focuses on how regular customers return to your app and the finest example is Instagram.

Attitudinal Attachment

Here, we focus on how lovable your app is to your customers and how eagerly they look forward to hearing news from you. The best examples are Google and Apple.

Sense of Community

This looks into how connected your target audience feels to your app, your employees, and other customers of the same brand.

Active Engagement

This entails how actively engaged your customers are, when it comes to anything related to your app. For example, do they participate in polls you lead, or join the groups/clubs you refer to, or look forward to the events organized by your brand?

With this attended to, you are familiar with what comes under the term of Brand Resonance and the different levels of equity model of brand and what are the elements of Brand resonance. So, without further ado, let’s look into how to create Brand Resonance using Marketing psychology.

Ways to Build an App’s Brand Resonance Using Marketing Psychology

When it comes to developing an app brand resonance model using marketing psychology, various principles and techniques are taken into consideration to introduce the benefits of psychologically-driven insights about target audience to effectively communicate with them, deliver an impressive experience and reap higher benefits.

The 5 most popular marketing psychology principles that are preferably considered and the associated best practices to create strong brand equity are:-

1. Reciprocity principle

This principle is based on the idea that to drive higher sales, you firstly need to deliver something to customers. You need to provide them with the services and products that fit their desires and needs, and induce an emotion of returning the favor. Only then you will be able to acquire new users and build strong relationships with your customers.

So, look forward to providing them with some value first. For example, apps like Zomato offers heavy discounts on the first order.

2. Information-gap Theory

This theory declares that if the audience is unfamiliar with anything related to their favorite brand, they will put efforts into gaining adequate information at the earliest.

So, considering the same, put your best efforts into different marketing strategies, including:-

• Content Marketing – Share blogs and notes with your users to provide them with tips, advice, and other information.
• Social Media Marketing – Post images, videos, podcasts, and other visual content onto different platforms to leverage the benefits of social media for your brand resonance.

And one of the brands proving the outcomes of following this principle religiously is Mint. The financial tracking tool, Mint, was quite unpopular in the crowded market of the personal finance sector when it embarked on its journey. But, today with the help of its investment in delivering high-content pieces around the advice and mistakes that people should know about while investing their funds, the application gained viral attention in the market.

3. The scarcity theory

This theory is based on the fact that humans do not appreciate what is easily accessible. They always get lured by something that is rare or hard to achieve. So, to induce the same feelings from your application, plan for:-

• Sales:- Announce a sale where your users can get access to all of your services and products at the same time – something which is more often seen in the case of mobile fairs.
• Discounts and Offers:- Deliver some discounts and offers to your customers to regain them back on your application.
• Exclusive Access:- Show them that you appreciate their presence by delivering some offers.

4. Social proof theory

This theory relates to the human nature of going with references, which means the target user base pays more attention to an app project when there are various other users appreciating it and referring to others.

Taking the same into consideration, work on your social brand image and look into the following marketing strategies:-

• Invite an Expert:- When a top personality or a social media influencer talks about your brand, it brings a major influence on people who follow them.
• Give Users a Voice:- The next strategy that comes under the category of how to create a brand resonance using marketing psychology is to give users a voice. That implies investing your efforts into activities like asking for user feedback, inviting them for a poll, quiz, events, and other such activities.
• Certification:- This involves providing them with an official accreditation to give them peace of mind.

5. Loss aversion marketing

This principle of building brand resonance using marketing psychology reveals that users are afraid of losses. They are ready to get involved with an application (or brand) if it does not make any harm to them – even when they gain no profit from it.

Some of the loss aversion marketing strategies to consider while building brand resonance are:-

• Trial Offers:- Give them an opportunity to explore different features of your applications without building an account or placing an order. This feature will be highly helpful for brands looking into how can their apps lower cart abandonment rate.
• Limited Resources:- Make some of your services/products unavailable for some time and notify users when they are again in stock. This will encourage users to grab the opportunity, before they miss it out.
• Gift on Purchase:- Offers some exclusive offers or gifts in return for taking your services. For example, Google Pay app avails a coupon on making a payment above 150 Indian rupees.

6. Paradox of choice

The paradox of choice is a psychological phenomenon that portrays the mind-boggling, confusing feeling of people that they get when they are given a large number of alternatives. Decisions are certainly incredible, however an excessive number of choices will cause decision paralysis within the targeted purchasers.

Marketers can use the oddity of decision by restricting consumers’ options. This norm can be applied to practically any digital resource such as messages, emails, landing pages, live talks, and so on. You just have to make a clear consumer way with less friction points and less options to accomplish the result or behaviour you want. For instance, eliminate navigation on a landing page to keep consumers focused on conversion, and on site pages, offer just one source of CTA for each page.

Parting Thoughts

So, these were some of the resonance marketing psychology strategies that will help you to build an effective brand resonance and gain better outcomes. But, the impact might vary from app to app depending on their targeted location, business category, customer behavior, etc.

So, look forward to performing a deep research of your audience and including these strategies into your plan of how to create a brand resonance using marketing psychology effectively. If you need any help from a mobile app development company like us, then feel free to contact us.

We at appinventiv understands what customers’ mean to a business, that is why we serve our clients across the globe with our app development company in USA, Europe, and Asia to help our customers and clients achieve their aims and goals.

The post How to Create Your App’s Brand Resonance Using Marketing Psychology? appeared first on Appinventiv.

The festival of Christmas is fast approaching and so the New Year is. Year 2015 has been great for mobile application development and app based startups have earned a considerable amount of money. The number of mobile applications has grown significantly this year but, not all the app makers are able to churn out money. In fact, only a handful of app makers are able to make money. This festive season, we thought to gift you tips on user acquisition on your new app:

Build a viable product

Always try to make an app that has a utility factor. Like Uber did in the case of taxi, Zomato did in case of restaurant discovery, Patym did in case of e-wallet. Try to catch the nerve of user and then work on your idea.

Choose Freemium model

In the starting phase, make your app available for free with freemium model. When users are not acquainted with your app, it is obvious for them to hesitate to pay for your app in the beginning. Once a user is attracted towards your app, you can pitch them the upgraded version of your app for a small fee. If your app has something valuable to offer, then users would accept the paid version too with the open arms.

Organize events

In the era of digital marketing, there are very few players who organize physical meetings. But the truth is physical meetings are impactful even today. The reason behind this is, when people take out 1-2 hours of time exclusively for an event, they give due importance to the product in question. As a businessman, you have a golden chance to get hold of your early customers and in addition to this, when you get a chance of meeting your prospects face to face, you have an even greater chance of getting more downloads.

Use the power of media

Media has always been the most impactful medium to express yourself or to pitch your idea indirectly. You can reach to the publications like Business Insider, Entrepreneur, and Forbes. You can approach PR agencies to get your article published on leading portals. Design your write-up in such a way that it attracts your target audience and provides valuable insights about your product.

Stay active on New and important Social platforms like Quora

Believe it or not, Quora is one of the most powerful platforms to promote a product and that too free of cost. Answer questions on Quora related to your app. You never know your answer could be selected by biggies like Forbes Inc. or Entreprenuer.com as they keep an eagle’s eye on Quora answers. In case your answer is selected by biggies, then sky is the limit.

Run a referral campaign

This method really works. In early phase, you can incentivize your users like you can offer them a particular amount or service for referring your app to their friends and acquaintances. Include an option in the app to do the same. Like if you are promoting your money saver app, a user who refers your app to his or her friend could be given a discount coupon in any of the food joint.

Create strategic partnerships

In addition to choosing Appinventiv as a company to go with this holiday season, in order to increase the reach of your app, you can collaborate with various other businesses. For example if you have made a money saver app, you can track the expenditure pattern of the users and based on the statistics, you can contact with various other businesses like cab services, Food chains and many more. Further you can provide your users exclusive offers with the help of collaborations made.

Pondering how to get an app developed for your business?

No worries, we have the solution. Just scroll around our website and discover more about the world of mobile applications. We specialize in iPhone application development, android app development and apple watch app development and we have the best in-house iPhone and Android app developers. Appfutura has marked us as one of the top mobile app development companies worldwide. Opportunities are all around us and you just have to have the entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to achieve success.

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Poor marketing strategies is the singular reason which is attributed for the failure of mobile apps. For making an app successful, you need to be capitalize on formulating strategies for effective mobile app marketing and distribution of your new app:

Early is the Release Better It is

For growing your customer base and catching the investors’ attention, you need to release essential features first and then leverage communities such as Product Hunt and Meetup to grab hold of early adopters. A user base is that factor which makes your app successful.

It is advisable that you find the niche of your app business. To differentiate your app in an intensely crowded app market, you need to consider two key points. Come up with unique features that only your app can boast and address the needs of specific targeted audiences. These strategies aren’t mutually exclusive.

One example that can be cited is that of EmotiChat, a chat based app in the crowded mobile messaging world. It focuses on the unique features and captivating UI/UX, differentiating it from the other messaging juggernauts like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and MediaLab acquired Kik.

Be Trendy and Exclusive

Nowadays, everyone is using apps for their daily activities. But, a unique app idea has the capability to obtain higher conversion ratio and traction. More is your app trendy and unique, better you can encash on your app idea. For instance, Spotify’s word-of-mouth marketing helped itself stand out in an arena that companies like Rhapsody, Radio had been occupying for some years now.

Optimization Strategies for App Stores

To properly optimize the app, you need to adopt right mobile app marketing strategies that can help your app achieve higher ranking in the App Store, through App-Store Optimization (ASO). Implement monetization strategies with right use of appropriate keywords in app’s title and description, so as to make your app more discoverable.  In fact, using keywords in the app’s title will increases the app ranking by almost 10 %. If your app is not found with the relevant keywords in the search bar, then it might be lost in the app ocean. For spreading the word, social word of mouth is one of the best option to grow your customer base. Social sharing can promote the products, boasting about the latest achievements.

Social Media Marketing

It is the social advertising that targets the clients by interests and demographics. Social Media Marketing is gaining importance in all types of industries and can also be utilized as a great approach for marketing your mobile apps. Make sure that the only ones to click on your ad are the ones who are the most likely users. You are bound to get higher downloads of your app through a smaller audience, with specific interests and with lower advertising cost too. Facebook ads can be effective means to achieve specific objectives.

Among other strategies, we need to mention guest blogging and swapping banner ads with others. Guest blogging by experts on your product, is for getting target audience to see the endorsements. Free promotions on third-party websites can be obtained by swapping your banner ads with others.

It’s very easy to imagine that your app can be the next Whats Apps, as there are no limitations. To build a ground breaking and attention grabbing product, we need to create successful mobile app marketing strategies. Make it sure you absolutely focus on the right marketing strategies, while creating an app that not only helps in improving the quality of the user’s life making it better and easier, but also earns a profit for your startup, at the same time.

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