Getting Attention and Igniting Mobile Moments: A New Approach to Mobile App Marketing

Mobile marketing today emerged as a crucial element to ensure success as much as the development. With millions of apps mobile became the biggest battleground for most businesses to gain attention and customer engagement. Most people spent a considerable portion of the day looking at their handheld devices. Naturally, from retail companies two small and medium enterprises all jumped into the scene just to grab a pie of this market. When we look at the mobile app marketing trends, Most of them are focused on one thing, and that is grabbing user attention quickly by delivering up to the real life user situation.

As per a recent survey by comScore mobile apps now take two third of digital media engagement time. The same survey reports that mobile apps together make 60% of digital time spent by consumers across the platforms. Remaining “In-app”  has now become the default mode for many of us. With such an all-encompassing and massive presence no consumer brand, no business cannot remain silent when it comes to mobile apps. So, the whole business competition including the local one will transport to the mobile app marketplace. With such a situation underway, grabbing attention from users will play the ultimate role to make any app successful. In fact, we can say that drawing attention will be the key objective for mobile app marketers.

Context and mobile moment

But, It is not about grabbing quick attention, being downloaded and getting dumped in a few minutes or in a few days. It is more about engaging your users, remaining part of their mobile screen real estate and over time making them loyal users. No bites. If only you’d arrived at the party a little sooner. This is why making your app serve the user context, and their real life situations are so much valuable to mobile marketers. 

A groundbreaking app alone is not enough

From few hundred mobile apps in 2008 to millions of apps in just less than five years,  represents a significant shift in the mindset of consumers, businesses, and developers. This massive growth has only become possible with the penetration of mobile apps in all spheres of life. Today we have mobile apps for almost everything in our life. Every day new apps are cropping up, and many of them are unique in one way or the other. But in spite of this tremendous innovation and creative spurt majority of mobile apps face the same fate of not earning enough to sustain as a business. For mobile apps, it has never been harder to make people press the install button and stay connected as a user.

For mobile apps, a groundbreaking idea is just the beginning followed by the equally daunting task of building the app and the more challenging task of marketing it. With the competition in mobile marketplace reaching its all-time high, almost every mobile app idea is represented by the gamut of apps. So,  even when you are considering your app to be a new one, the idea may not be as revolutionary as you think it. Moreover, your competitor apps might have already enjoyed user attention and popularity. With the same kind of app on offer, often it is the marketing output that becomes decisive.

Mobile moments:  the crucial microelement

Mobile marketing today has to take real-time customer engagement into account more than ever. What consumers want in a specific moment, what he expects from your app in a real life situation should guide your app marketing endeavors. To address the real-time presence of users with a Microelement is what widely referred as “mobile moment’. These are micro-moments referring to the small interactions when people connect to their device. The mobile movement has a lot of significance for mobile app marketing. It brings a whole new approach relevant to the real world situation and context of the use of the app. Thanks to this, marketers now need to push messages,  show advertisements and promotions as per the real world situation of the user. Users, on the other hand, cannot interact with certain promotional elements as per the need of the moment.

The real significance of mobile moment for mobile app marketing is broader than this. First of all, it would prevent annoying the users with wrongly timed promotional campaigns. Secondly, it would help minimizing the drainage of marketing resources by ensuring properly timed campaign with more engagement and positive response.  Marketing for the mobile moment of the users will have another significance. This will also initiate a more personalized approach to content marketing and advertising.

Consider making it free

If you look at the major app stores, you will see that for every premium app. There are several free alternative apps. Only an already successful app with quality user base can enjoy the same engagement and retention to earn enough from the price of downloading.  Otherwise, for a new app entering into a niche, it is incredibly challenging to make a good number of downloads with a premium price tag. This is why, at least for initial few months, it is advisable to offer your app for free. If the buyers find in your app what they were missing earlier, there may be ready to give a price in future. Moreover,  after launching a free version, you can launch a premium version letter on with additional features and benefits.

Follow five crucial metrics

Your marketing efforts need to be evaluated from time to time. Late us have a look once again at the five fundamental metrics to evaluate your achievement against the objectives.

• Number of downloads
• Average revenue per user
• Average  session length per user
• Number of screens by a user
• Demographic data about the user
• Time of the day with most user engagement
• The number of new users  after a promotional campaign
• Number of users using the  app one week or more
• The frequency of use by individual users

Market to enterprises over customers

Do you know more than 40% app developers who cater to businesses make few hundred times more than they are counterparts who develop for consumers? Businesses beside having a bigger budget also are in increasing need of Automation tools and all sorts of digital maneuvers to boost production. Moreover, a sophisticated app built to deliver business output will gain more patronage than the consumer apps.

To conclude, Delivering up to the user needs in particular moments will continue to play the crucial role in mobile app marketing.  As the competition, he is getting tougher, only by delivering up to the user expectation in specific user situations mobile apps can stand out.