Apple Store Update:

Important Points for App Marketers

Apple’s App store has changed, and for good. The changes may not be visibly noticeable, but technically this much needed modification comes in as a sigh for a lot of app developers and marketers out there.

Here is a brief synopsis of the important points that affect app developers and mobile marketers.

Better discoverability

While the ‘Featured’ tab has always been there in the App Store, it has become more intuitive and fair. There will be no paid placement on that page and the apps will not be chosen on the basis of ranking (only). Choosing apps on the basis of user ranking makes it extremely unfair to the newer apps who are still looking at getting to their critical mass. Instead, apps will be featured on the basis of local content, or current fashion, culture or seasonal trends.

This is a great user friendly update. This will also keep app creators and marketers on their toes to keep the app relevant for the users. It can actually be a great marketing feature too. You just have to take the current trends and authentically tie them to your app. For instance, Rio Olympics or end-of-summer fashion or upcoming Autumn trends.

Paid Search Ads

This is still in the beta version until Fall, but Apple’s new search algorithm will be a thing to watch out for. Marketers might want to note that every time a search algorithm changes, be it Apple or Google, it just gets more user relevance/convenience friendly. It would make sense to revamp your apps to suit users’ needs better. Search ads will make your apps visible to the user right when she asks for it. As a marketer, you might want to make comparisons as to spending money on mobile marketing/in-app advertising vs paid search ads, and weight your ROI on different ad spends.

Auto-renewable Subscriptions

Apple’s fight against dead-apps sort of end with the auto-renewable subscription feature. Brands can choose to collect subscription from their users. But an important thing to note here would be that such apps that charge a user, need to be geared up to give that kind of value to the user. There has to a high degree of personalization along with engagement. Moreover, the app has to provide some kind of value in user’s routine or daily life, or users won’t pay up for renewing. This feature aims at putting the life back in the app, although it does mean app developers and marketers need to be on their toes, always.

Buckle-up for The Holiday Season 2016

Buckle-up for The Holiday Season 2016

August is almost over. Come autumn and its going to be Holiday mood all over. People start shopping for home stuff, accessories, winter wear, Holiday apparel and so much more. The gifts may come in later, but a lot of shopping will start as autumn sets in. This is a great time to start marketing preparation for the holiday season. Here’s a quick list of things businesses need to do to be ready for the upcoming holiday season.

• Get an app now. If you are planning on creating an app for your business, the time is now. A lot of people tend to avoid traffic and holiday rush, and mobile shopping numbers and percentage soars every year over the previous.
• Go social. Get active on social networking sites. Plan social campaigns that attract customers to your site. Even paid ads on Facebook give real good value in terms of ROI. The objective here is to be seen, be heard.
• Start creating campaigns around Holiday trends. Check out the winter colors for the season, the latest home and fashion designs and create your campaigns around them.
• Offer more than just discounts. Support a community cause and get people’s attention to it. If your cause is something people relate to, you can look at a successful shopping season.
• Engage people. Create polls, surveys, competitions and other innovative and fun stuff to engage your audience. The aim is to get people’s attention, and then you can tell them about your wonderful Holiday collection and start marketing. But to get started on that, first engage with the human side of the brand.
• Start promoting your business in other apps. For instance, InstaTeam app has a section that promotes local businesses. Getting listed in such platforms provides grater exposure.
• Get personal and real. Personalized marketing is going to be huge. Align your channels, online, in-store, customer support and all. Create customer profiles. Send personalized letters or cards wishing your customers ‘Happy Holidays’ along with personalized discount coupons.

iMessage:

A New Paradigm in Mobile Marketing

Apple’s iMessage announcement has taken the world by storm. It takes mobile texting to a whole new level, and for mobile marketing, it’s a game changer. iMessage would dissolve all the boundaries of messaging, app marketing and social media, placing the power of mobile marketing directly in the hands of the brand. brands will be able to communicate with the consumer one on one, not through a platform.

Here’s a quick roundup on the updates from Apple:

iMessage platform open to third party apps

Apple has opened its iMessage platform to developers. This means that users will have access to unlimited set of apps, and brands will be able to connect to the end user on a one-on-one basis. Suppose a user is chatting with a friend and tells her about a lip-smacking burger she had, and forwards the link from where she bought it, the friend can actually visit the page, check out the details and order the burger, without even leaving the conversation. The possibilities are endless.

Rich media messaging

This is a whole different level of rich media messaging. Simple drag and drop for images, edit or dress-up images as you send them, predictive emojis that automatically (with manual control, of course) replace text with emojis and so much more.

Even videos and website links would be accessible instantly without having to leave the conversation. For brands, this is huge. If a user likes a product and shares the link, other users, (with whom the link is shared) can directly purchase the product right within the application, without leaving the conversation.

Siri goes beyond iOS

Siri would be enabled to interact with third party applications like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kik, WeChat and more. Users will be able to give voice commands on these applications as well.

All of this indicates that chatbots on IM is perhaps going to be one of the most powerful marketing channel in the years to come. Brands need to get ready with presence on other social platforms such iMessage advancement would just come as organic growth. Brands also need to start working on finding innovative and interesting ways to get in touch with user to give enriching, rich experiences through personalized marketing.

Need help with mobile marketing? Talk to us at support@xymob.com.

Back-To-School Shopping:

How to En-cash on the Huge Market

Time of the year again when compulsive shopping presents a huge opportunity to retailers across America. While you were planning your back-to-school promotions, chances are your competitors were planning it bigger. So if you are re-working the promotion plan, here are a few tips to help you boost your sales this season and get some prep done before the holiday season.

Go mobile

If you have a website, and are promoting and selling through your online channel, it’s not enough. You need to be where your customers are, and every one is on mobile these days including your customers and competitors. If you have an app, great. If not, have a mobile friendly website. Local businesses can also advertise on mobile apps which can get good publicity.

Go social

Social media marketing can take some time. Although there are some examples out there, but overnight-million-likes stories are still a numbered few. Take the shortcut while its available, use a paid promotion campaign to promote your account. When you have a considerable number of followers, don’t get down to brazen sales tactics. Instead gain popularity amongst your followers by providing useful content like shopping lists or savings schemes.

Facebook presence is essential and any promotion on Facebook will give you the best ROI, but find creative ways to start promoting on Snapchat and Instagram too.

Retargeting advertising can be very fruitful too. Since you know the customer is looking for the product, presenting a great offer can often result into sales.

Promoting on social media has ancillary benefits like creating a community that is all eyes and ears to your brand. Every time you launch a promotion, you will just need to augment on your present promotion. This will have a great lasting effect for years to come.

Go viral

The best marketing is the one where you do not need to market your product at all, your customers do it for you. Create interesting contests, give free giveaways, and brand ambassador benefits that are hard to refuse. People like free stuff. Make it look classy, and you’ll have a whole lot of your customers doing your marketing for you.

Need help with mobile promotions? Contact us at support@xymob.com and we will help you with more ideas and creative campaigns to promote your brand via mobile marketing. .

Pokemon Go: What Businesses Need to Learn

Pokemon Go: What Businesses Need to Learn

Pokemon Go has become a rage in very less time. The augmented reality game has engaged kids and adults likewise with gamers addicted to capturing the in-game digital monsters virtually placed in real-world settings. Non-gamers are affected too. Police have issued warnings about playing the game while driving and there are major safety concerns for users who are glued to their phones or tablets while moving around.

Augmented reality is not new. It has been around for quiet a few years now. Applications like Wikitude World Browser, Yelp Monocle, Google Ingress, SpecTrek, Snapshot Showroom, Theodolite, Augmented Car Finder, Google Sky Map and many others have been using augmented reality. These applications make use of the native features of the user’s smartphone or tablet, like camera, GPS, Contacts, Bluetooth, etc., cleverly integrate them with digital effects and user’s natural surrounding and create a real-life digital experience. From map overlays to virtual showrooms to hi-tech games to virtual tours, augmented reality has so been around.

When augmented reality has been around for so long, why the rage for Pokémon Go? Well, because it’s simple, uncomplicated and really engages the user.

This is a great learning point for marketers. Augmented reality or not, online marketers need to present more real-world interactions and opportunities of engagement to users. The key is not how digital or how mobile friendly a brand is, the key is how well does the brand connect technology to bring convenience, spectacle and engaging experiences to users. Technology needs to be the medium and not the end. The end product always has to be the experience, value or convenience that the user gets.

Most business answers will be radially available if the end product becomes the starting point of all business planning, strategy and design. Do I need an app? Well, does the app add to value to the final product? If yes, then you do need an app. Similarly, the UID, the functionality, technology involvement, online and offline support, the scope of each of this, and lot many other business aspects can be determined by keeping the final product as the goal.

So, to conclude, the point is not how advanced technology is used, but the point is how well does your offering engage and interact with the user.

Need help with your online and offline strategy? Contact us now at support@xymob.com .

Mobile Advertising: Understanding the Challange

Mobile Advertising: Understanding the Challange

Mobile advertising has become quiet popular in recent years. This comes with the obvious increased mobile usage; more the audience, more the advertising, simple math.

The irony is that despite evident data showing surge in the number of mobile users, the impact of mobile advertising is not certain. For instance, a car manufacturer creates a great ad for mobile. The ad is humorous and cleverly entertaining. It goes viral and people across social media platforms share it. But the question remains, how many potential car buyers could actually get access to the ad, and how many people were really influenced by the ad to buy the car? Media KPI would show how many people saw the ad, but for all you know the those were teenagers or college going kids who would hardly qualify as even the influencers for the buying decision of a luxury car. So who actually did see the ad? And as if this wasn’t enough for confusion, apps do not support cookies, so there is ambiguity on the customer’s buying profile. Over and above this, there are users who view the ad on their smart phone and then view it on their laptop, so for one user there’s data of ‘two views’, phantom viewers.

The Big Puzzle

Measuring results for mobile ads effectiveness is a big puzzle that marketers across the world are trying to solve. When a sale takes place, can it be credited to the mobile ad? Or the mobile ad is more like a link in the circle of brand awareness? These are important questions marketers need to answer before they plan their mobile ads.

To take a use case, say a person reads about a smart watch, talks to his friend who recommends the watch. Then he looks it up on his smart phone and comes across the advertisement video. He reads the reviews, sees the video, and decides to buy the watch. In this case, was the mobile ad of any influence, or it just filled as a link in the circle of product information or the new age buying cycle, that is. Was the video just a brand reassurance to the prospect, which in itself, is an ancillary but important nonetheless.

In another example, a person engaged in some app, encounters an in-app advertisement of a retailer offering a lucrative discount on handbags and at an impulse clicks it. A sale is made. Is the credit of the sale solely on the ad?

On the surface of it, yes, but there’s a lot more that goes in to converting interest into sale, especially online. Taking the example of the retailer again, it’s important what happens when the user clicks on the in-app ad. There are important considerations here. Should the user be taken directly to the discounted handbag section as this would save the user from unnecessary navigation or should the user be taken to the home page or the landing page where she can see that there’s discount on other products as well? Should the user be lead within the app or should be guided to the website?

Putting The Pieces Together

Apparently, there’s no absolute that can be pin pointed about an effective mobile ad strategy. It will be different from industry to industry, company to company, campaign to campaign and even customer to customer. What works for one, may be a total put-off for the other.

How do you know what works? Well, by knowing what works for whom! Information is the key to digital-age marketing. And companies who want to stay ahead in the game would have to focus on building upon customer information, enriching it at every customer touch point or contact window. Companies would need to focus on individual customer profiles more than on target groups. And the marketing strategy that would actually work, is mass personalization, mass advertising concentrating on individual needs. How to personalize mobile advertising? Read the next article – Mobile Marketing: Personalization & Engagement.


Need help with effective mobile advertising? Contact us at support@xymob.com .

5 Practical Ways to Include Personalization in Your App Marketing

5 Practical Ways to Include Personalization in Your App Marketing

Personalization and customer engagement are the key to successful marketing these days. But often marketers find it difficult to include the right amount of personalization in their marketing that positively engages customers with the brand. Generally, the problem faced by marketers is that either the message is so personal that it crosses the border from personalization to stalking, or the message is too impersonal and not engaging enough.

Here are a few practical, ready to implement ideas for push notifications to induce customer engagement.

When the order has just been delivered.

“Hi There. Your order of (order name) has just been delivered. How do you like it let us know, we do take your feedback seriously. Happy to serve you!”

• It confirms that the package has been delivered.
• It tells the customer that you look beyond just the sale.
• It reassures that you, as a company are there to help.

On arrival of new stock

“Hi There. We’ve just added fresh stock, some awesome designs in office wear collection, at unbelievable prices valid until _________. Use code XYZ. Check it out now.”

• Information about fresh stock.
• Personalization based on in-app activity.
• Induces in-app action.
• Creates urgency.

On retargeting

“Hi There. You were looking for casual footwear. We found some awesome designs from our summer specials you may have missed out on. Check them out now.”

• Personalization based on in-app activity.
• Induces action.
• Specific retargeting, very high chances of conversion.

Geofencing

“Hi There. Visit the Peter Pan store just two blocks away, show this message and get a special discount of 20% on summer apparel only for today.”

• Personalization on basis of location.
• Lucrative offer.
• Induces action.
• Time bound.

On inactivity

“Hi There. We understand you’re busy. Just wanted to tell you we’ve added new stock. And because we’ve missed you so, here’s a special 5% discount just for you. Check out our awesome new designs.”

• Personalization based on in-app activity (inactivity in this case)
• Induces action.
• Extra incentive to attract customer.

Need help with customer engagement for local business? We can help. Contact us on support@xymob.com .