How Digital Marketing Affects How Mobile Apps are Created
With a value expected to surpass $783 billion in 2032, the mobile app market is too vast, influential, and significant for brands to ignore. All mobile apps offer great opportunities for extending the reach of your brand and fostering closer connections with audiences, prospects, and customers.
You can develop new apps with various purposes to achieve multiple business goals; for example, an accounting firm can develop a calculator with easy workflows for estimating sales taxes and net revenue, but it can also include a company logo, a contact button to launch a voice call, and a website link. A more functional example would be a pizzeria launching an app to make reservations and take orders for home delivery, but it can also deliver coupons and display new blog posts. Notice the marketing angles of both examples; they should be considered at every step of the app development process, which follows the steps below:
Discussing the Idea
When you retain a digital agency for mobile app development, you will be asked to participate in the ideation process, which will feature questions about target audiences, unique selling points, and potential marketing angles. Before moving to the next step, you must clearly articulate the benefits and features that will set your app apart from competitors; plus, it should provide value to both users and your brand.
Defining the Scope of the Project
This step is more straightforward because it looks at similar projects and existing apps to determine the path to development. Some of the points to discuss include the platforms (Android, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, Nintendo eShop), whether you should go native or build a progressive web app (PWA), and digital marketing potential.
Designing the User Experience
Once the project scope has been defined, the next step involves sitting down with the development team and discussing the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). You want the app to deliver a smooth and intuitive experience; to this effect, the developers will show you wireframes and prototypes to visualize the layout and user interaction. If you have a brand style guide, it should be incorporated during this step.
Developing the App
Depending on the scope of the project, a back-end platform may need to be developed so that the app can connect to your online properties. You may already have a back-end system in place; for example, an e-commerce shopping cart can be connected to a PWA to streamline the project.
Launching the App
Once the app has gone through development, testing, and quality assurance, it must be submitted to the marketplaces for approval and listing. This step is generally easier and faster with Google Play than the App Store, but it needs to include a solid marketing plan to promote the app launch. The plan should feature graphics, promotional content, optimization, and specific campaigns such as social media announcements, press releases, submissions to app review websites, blog posts, and digital public relations.
When creating a mobile app, you should be knowledgeable on digital marketing so you can use it to create the best app for your needs.