Mobile Marketing: To app or not to app
Now it exists around the world of mobile marketing applications and the same fever that could spread ten years ago with websites or for three or four over social networks. Countless companies obcecaban with the idea of having their own website or your own profile to serve as a cover letter. However, as then, now many rush to invest money and effort into your new online face created, without giving the same amount of imagination. Websites, social networking profiles and apps are very different realities, with capabilities that allow them to be much more than mere window. Who does not reflect at length about why you want to be mobile or how it will take advantage of their presence in smartphones and tablets is doomed to having to build from scratch the day browsing mobile matures.
Why do you want to make an application?
Very obvious question but for a good response is necessary. The first that comes to mind is probably simple and clear: to increase sales, decrease expenses, increase the visibility of my company, to create a brand image … But there cannot end the process: the first response has which, from that starting point, thin to fit through the eye of a needle. The applications are small portions of what would be a program to use. Despite some exceptions, such programs existed before the apps and now have moved to mobile, the current application user expects to find them a solution to one of their problems; . not a complete tool that covers a broad spectrum of needs Ponle names to your initial goal: I segméntalo depending on the audience you want to direct, focus on a single product or service or a single goal, such as contributing to the viralización your brand or reward the heavy user.
What you do with your app does a website?
If you will not take advantage of what they offer mobile just you do not need an app. Development companies know you advise, but should know well the difference between a website designed for mobile, web app, and an application itself. Especially in the case of applications iPhone or iPad, the latest fad of any marketing department.
In favor of the development of an app are all possibilities offered by smartphones to run your application: access to the GPS data or list of user contacts, the ability to send push messages, data access as the contacts list or the possibility of charges through iTunes (with corresponding bite of Apple, which keeps a part) or Google Checkout, among others. against are, on the one hand, the rules of the house cider: Apple decides the language development, distribution system and the entry of apps to the App Store, a tribute that often compensates pay; and in the case of apps for other platforms like Android or Blackberry, the problem is the little piece of the pie still carried. It is true that the statistics say that the increase of Android terminals threatens the hegemony of Apple, but other numbers also indicate that consumption applications (download and use), there is no one like iPhone. The other way is to design web thinking on the small screens of smartphones. The arrival of HTML5 opens up the possibility of offering a rich user experience that bypass the disadvantages submit to the demands of Apple, but also avoids the benefits. The Financial Times is doing its experiment and we are all pending result of their emancipation.
Are you willing to continue what you started?
The tale of 2.0 with this new medium is repeated. Applications are as Tamagotchi in need of parental care to survive. How do you intend to get downloads? The marketing applications is still a discipline in the making, for which there are only half a dozen SEO tips within the app stores (care the description, keywords and category of your description in the App Store or Android market, etc.) and how they should promote marketing 2.0. Unless you have obtained a powerful budget to advertise it , the most direct customers to access applications are social networking channels. In addition, at this point in the film we all know that social media marketing is a long-distance race. It is possible that mobile navigation is the latest Internet revolution, but errors that are exposed departments of communication and marketing are very similar to what we have just seen happen with social networks.
