Your App is a Brand: Start Brand Management

Updated on July 2nd, 2018 by Quertime Writer in Mobile

With the number of smartphone users increasing immensely day by day, it’s estimated that the figure will surpass 2 billion in 2016. Considering the whopping number of people using their smartphones for everyday tasks, marketers have taken a giant leap towards smartphone business.

The app stores — be it the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store — are getting a lot of new apps each day and it has become quite a competition to reach out people in a flood of apps that is present in the app stores. This, by any means, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t step in this lucrative business. With the right strategy, you will be able to get a great deal of attention and revenue.

Most of the developers these days don’t realize the importance of branding their apps. It is a common mistake and you will really want to avoid it if you are taking a step towards app marketing. Branding is the sole reason why some apps stand out from the billions of apps present in the app stores.

With the right branding techniques and marketing strategy applied to your app, you will be watching your profits go sky high in no time. The question here is: how do you create a strong branding for your app? Fortunately, there’s no silver bullet here. You just have to stick to the marketing basics.

In order to help you out with the process, we have listed below the essential things that you should keep in mind while branding your app.

1. Target Audience

First of all, you will have to research about what your audience is going to be. This is a really important factor that every business, whether online or offline, has to take into account. When you know what kind of people are likely to install your app and use it, you can take several important decisions. You can determine what kind of ads that you will display in the app, what updates you can make to your app or what promotional techniques to employ for your app. So, it is best to sketch out the perfect user for your app while you are branding it.

2. Brand Essence

Defining your app is another important thing that you have to consider while branding your app. When you are creating an app, you will definitely want to make it unique. Otherwise, it is just going to disappear in the flock of similar apps that have been created. Think out of the box and create a unique description for your app. Enlist all the special features and benefits that the app offers, why it is applicable to the people seeing it and most importantly, why it is different from others.

3. Brand Identity

This is a no-brainer. You will definitely want to have a unique and relevant name and icon for your app. Relevancy is the key here; you should name your app in such a way that it gives the readers an idea about what the app is going to offer. The icon of the app also needs to be creative, unique and relevant. For example, if you are making an app about fitness, then a dumbbell can be your main icon. You will have to be creative to determine the best icon for your app.

4. Interface

The interface and the overall usability of your app is really important. You should create an interface that is easy to use, so that the user feels comfortable using it. The appearance, sounds and themes of the app should be created to match the general tone of your app. This will keep the users engaged while they are using the app and make them develop a strong liking for your app.

5. Promote Your Brand

This is a huge and wide topic, probably, for several other articles. That is the essential part of brand management, however. So, let’s denote some key issues:

The Need. For the most apps this part is already exists as we tend to create something that helps to solve a problem or make our lives better. However, sometimes the need has to be announced as only few people actually understand how wonderfully your app is fulfilling its goal and makes a difference. This can be done with social media, PR inserts and guest posts on well-known blogs, and word of mouth as well.

The Awareness. When the need exists, you have to let people know about the solution as well! Which is your app. So, you can do that with the previous step, recommending your app or use other digital channels to promote the app like social media marketing, SEM, display advertising, sponsored posts and reviews (or natural, of course), etc. This is the area where you may be as creative as you can to let potential users know you exist and how great you are. ‘You’ stands for your app in this case.

Create the Community. You and your team are the best and the most passionate brand advocates and ambassadors. Can you think of other people who love your app and can recommend it? Can you imagine that those people would have something to discuss or have similar interests? Well, naturally, it is so. You should be really grateful to your customers and engage them with interesting relevant content, listen to their feedback and create the place where that all could happen. It can be a live social media page or some forum, or you may even sometimes organize some offline events (when you are really famous and successful). Listen to your customers and communicate!

Don’t forget to analyze the advertising performance, the brand’s performance overall and optimize everything that can be optimized. Look at your competitors, understand their tactics and decisions, correct your pricing accordingly, try to do something better. Your success is on the horizon!

Author: Nicole Stansley

Nicole Stansley is a digital strategist and writer for educational projects (i.e. College Paper). She admires IT people and things they do, loves design and enjoys running.