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Friday
August 5, 2011 Tip of the Day - Launch A Mobile AppFiled under: Tip of the Day
With 600,000 apps in the online marketplace and 61 million smartphone users accessing them, targeted mobile marketing continues to ascend in reputation and relevance. According to a recent study, the mobile app market will be worth $17.5 billion by next year, with downloads reaching 50 billion. “We’ve found our customers are on the run and our mobile app is great for them,” says Kim Laffer, director of strategic development at New York-based distributor Motivators Inc. (asi/277780). “We developed our app last year and we keep making edits.” The Motivators app – available for the iPhone and Android devices – offers customers the chance to view products, check pricing and even send images of items to others. The app also links to the Motivators website, allowing customers to purchase products online without being in front of a computer. “We really listen to our customers and it’s taken time to get a feel for what they need,” Laffer says. “We did a bunch of tests and we’ve gotten a great response from customers.” Even if a company doesn’t immediately earn sales directly from an app, some consultants argue there are still valuable gains to be made by marketing your brand through a mobile device. “These are really social apps,” says Tyler Musson, CEO of Musson Media Consulting. “You don’t want a hard sell with them. They’re important in nurturing relationships.” Musson says creating a custom or native mobile app can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $100,000, depending on what services a company wants to present. It’s common for app developers to charge $100 per hour and take weeks to finish a project, which is why the cost can escalate quickly. “It can take six to 12 weeks just to write the code,” says Tobias Dengel, CEO of WillowTree Apps. “A good average is to say it takes three to six months to develop an app.” And yet, despite the hefty price tag and development time required, experts believe mobile apps will eventually overtake computers as the best online avenue to reach customers. In fact, in a recent interview, Ilja Laurs, the CEO of mobile app provider GetJar, had this to say: “It is easy to see how mobile apps will eclipse the traditional desktop Internet. It makes perfect sense that mobile devices will kill the desktop.” For more tips like these, go to the article High-Tech Tactics. |
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