Millions of app downloads are distributed from app stores daily, so it is no surprise that more and more marketers are looking to capitalise on the mobile app market to help increase brand awareness amongst a wider target audience.
One of the biggest problems facing brands that choose this route, however, is that they create an app for the sake of creating an app. Many do not generate much, if any, revenue at all.
In the early days of the app economy, the focus for app stores was on how many titles were available through their stores and how many downloads per day these stores generated. Over time, the focus has changed to monetisation, which essentially means that now that stores are full of products they want to figure out how to best make money from them. This provides a viable opportunity for brands to work with app monetisation providers – not only to help promote apps but also increase conversion rates.
To date, premium charging is the traditional way of monetising mobile apps. But it is the non-premium models based on advertising that have helped generate the big volumes. Brands have opted to integrate various advertising solutions into their apps, ranging from traditional banners to incentivised downloads.
Today, what marketers should consider when setting out to create a profitable app is the use of a dynamic monetisation solution which can help them combine premium and advertising offers. This can help increase monetisation rates for apps and therefore give brands a better return on investment.
One such solution is wrapper technology that creates a small amount of code that is ‘wrapped’ around the original content application enabling a range of monetisation features, such as in-app billing, advertising and DRM (Digital Rights Management).
Wrappers eliminate the need for developers to rebuild or add code. This way, a brand can fully focus on developing only one version of an app that meets the marketing objectives, saving time and money, while the wrapper enables the monetisation features that can be used depending on campaign and channel.
Wrappers can be applied to any content and can include in-app billing, offer walls or traditional banners which can be switched on and off when desired. In turn, this means that both premium and non-premium models can live alongside each other and organisations do not need to decide during the design stage whether to go fully premium or fully advertising with the app.
Here are some top tips for marketers to consider when monetising their apps:
- Penetration – move monetisation from the store into the app. The storefront should just be a distribution channel and monetisation should be done within the app. All content should be free to download to get the best campaign penetration.
- Conversion – let users decide whether the app is good or not and how they want to pay for it. Brands get best conversion by offering the user the opportunity to sample a full product or service for free. This is particularly important for less well-known brands. Once the free period is over, let the user decide how they want to use the app. Operator billing has by far the best conversion rate globally because of its reach but also because it offers “one-click” purchasing. Marketers must remember that all customers are not the same and different licensing models may improve conversion and revenues. Non-premium models, such as incentivised downloads and pure advertising, should also be considered as monetisation options and ideally offered as a complement to the premium model.
- Promotion – content distribution is vital. The competition for shelf-space is very tough and once a brand has persuaded customers to buy its app, the easier it is for them to buy more without having to go back to the store again. Marketers should choose a solution that lets them promote their products or services via a dynamic display within the apps. Relevant advertising before the start or after exit of an app has very high conversion rates. Brands that are considering developing a range of apps could also deploy a virtual currency to boost app downloads. Users are awarded credits in return for using an app, which they can then use to purchase additional usage.
- Viral distribution – new customers are much more likely to buy if they get introduced to a brand by a friend. Try to implement viral features such as Facebook in the app. Once a customer has logged into the app via Facebook a new world of information will open up to marketers.
