Smart Mobile Marketing or How To Level The Playing Field With a Free Mobile App

If interactive brand recognition and engaging brand exposure are the catch phrases of the season, then jump on the free mobile apps bandwagon. Yet, you might want to hold your horses and think twice before doing so.

Hello folks! I hope that life has been treating you well and you have a few minutes to spare to sharpen your marketing skills! As I already promised last time, I will keep sharing my experience and expertise regarding mobile apps marketing. By now, you already have some knowledge on how to come up with an interesting concept for a mobile app, how to promote your mobile wonder, and how to seal the deal on the App Store. Yet, I still have not explored the specifics of each and every mobile apps business model. Hence, whereas all the educated and brazen claims I have made so far are applicable to each and ever mobile apps business model, I want to shake things up and plunge into the ocean of details and specifics. Therefore, I will tell you how to level the playing field and use a free app as a secret superpower marketing weapon. Interested in such an option? If so, just read on.

As you already know, mobile apps could be a shortcut to greatness. Indeed, a mobile application can unleash a hailstorm of new business opportunities, it could boost your overall entrepreneurial efforts, and it could be a nice form of effective product diversification. Moreover, you can totally level the playing field by creating a free mobile application and using it as a handy (mobile) marketing extension. Just think about it: instead of spending a fortune on an expensive and risky marketing campaign or rather than pushing your marketing team to fight a battle for chartered territories, you can create a free mobile app that adds real or perceived value to the lives of your target audience. Hence, you can be trendy, effective, and you can take your brand beyond the digital realms of the web. Sounds good, right? Well, before you all agree with me and proceed to develop your mobile marketing tool, I do need to inform you about all the benefits and risks of developing a mobile app and then simply giving it away. So read on and carefully weigh the pros and the cons.

In general, each and every app has at least a two-fold rationale: to provide a product and/or a service to a specific or a broad group of people and to market a particular brand. Marketing-wise, each mobile app is a promotional tool, a business card, and a means to an end. In fact, each and every mobile app is the living proof of your creativity, your programming and/or designing skills, your marketing expertise, and your business acumen. Nothing speaks louder of what you are truly capable than a mobile product or a service that impresses with its quality and strikes a chord with its innovative and value-added concept. Therefore, if you want to increase your brand exposure, boost your brand recognition, and penetrate the somehow private domains of personal mobile devices, then you have to go mobile! The only difference, however, is that rather than cold-calling people and interrupting their daily routines, you could be sending them discreet push notifications! Whereas the former is considered annoying and unappealing, the latter is hip and very trendy! Moreover, people give their explicit consent to be reached and informed! This is, indeed, every marketer’s dream come true. Yet, there is a catch. First, and foremost, developing a mobile app and then simply giving it away is not a very cheap endeavor. On the contrary, it is one of those real-time investments that can work wonders if approached wisely. In fact, there are thousands of free apps on the mobile stores and places that nobody is interested in downloading. Why? Well, here comes the tricky part: either they are stillborn and they do not offer anything of use to people, or they are so poorly developed that using them is an ordeal. In fact, some of the free apps are so buggy and so ugly that people who have downloaded them choose to dispose of them as soon as possible and make extra room for another mobile application that is worth its space.

Following this line of thought, I still remember the time when the first generations of iPads hit the stores. The ones who could get their hands on an iPad device instantly downloaded all the free iPad applications available on the App Store just for kicks. This phenomenon, however, cannot occur any more. Indeed, the mobile market is so overcrowded that developing a free app and expecting a ton of downloads is nothing more than a pipe dream. In fact, only the most creative, the most useful, and the most marketed free apps make it to the devices of a significant number of people. The rest simply go unnoticed. Unfortunately there is a price to pay if you want to promote your products and/or your services. As the saying goes, nobody rides for free.

Yet, it is not all doom and gloom. You can still capture the imagination of a target group if you come up with a really good concept and develop a rock solid mobile app that offers a great user experience. This way, you can promote your brand, market your services and/or products, and make a statement about your creative genius. Bear in mind that you need the value-added element deeply embedded in the very nucleus of your mobile app. You cannot just develop and market an app that contains nothing more but your portfolio. Who would download and use such an atrocity? Instead, make a mobile app that makes the lives of people easier and helps them with their problems. If you, for example, run a restaurant, instead of plastering the city with posters or flyers, advertising your delicious meals or your divine desserts, you can go for a mobile app that allows people to make a reservation, read more about your menu, place special orders in advance, inform the chef whether they are allergic to something, count the calories they’ve consumed, etc. You can be as creative as you want. Just make sure the free app you are developing is a quality one. Then, it has a real chance of turning into a great promotional tool. Alternatively, you can develop a creative, value-added app in order to show off your skills in crafting apps and/or your marketing superpower. Yet, bear in mind that the free apps business model is rooted in the all or nothing scenario.

In conclusion, the choice is yours. You know what is at stake. All you have to do is to assess the risks and the benefits and make a decision whether you want to commence development. In addition, you have to vigorously market your free app to generate as much publicity as possible. Otherwise, it might be one of those invisible children on the mobile stores and places.

Well, this pretty much ends my marketing session on how to use free apps as effective marketing tools. Once again, such an approach to marketing could bring you lots of exposure, not so much exposure, or bury you six feet under. It all depends on the type of free app you want to create, the quality of development, the value added core of your mobile platform, and your overall promotional efforts. It does cost a lot but hey, you cannot make an omelette without breaking the eggs. It is a matter of investing in mobile expansion and doing so wisely. If you fail, you will learn a valuable lesson as to why it happened so. If you win, than your mobile marketing strategy has been executed flawlessly. So, I will leave you contemplating this possibility. In a week, I will tell you how to use mobile apps as hooks or the sweet story of in-app purchases. Till then, do not forget to subscribe to the feed that rocks, stay tuned to our wisdom generator Stuff We Say, follow us on Twitter or join us on Facebook. We always have interesting things we would love to share with you. Just follow us closely and have fun!