How to Build More Customer-Centric App Marketing Plans

As mobile vehicles have moved from a supporting to a starring role in brand experience, expectations about the quality and richness of these mobile experiences have grown dramatically. App marketing plans MUST reflect this new reality. While once mobile played primarily a DR role for most marketing efforts, these days brands expect digital media and experiences to carry a great deal of the water when it comes to protecting and enhancing the brand itself. Thus, apps have become an important component of a multi-channel business plan to differentiate a brand and drive customer loyalty.

Apps now represent fully half of connected customer time in the US, and even more in other parts of the world. Further, app users tend to be the most committed audience for a brand — its true believers. The meteoric growth in user mobile time spent has caught a large number of marketers off guard. As app developers and app publishers come to grips with the starring role that their creations now play in brand experience, we need to make a big shift in the way that we approach app marketing and app marketing strategy.

No More Siloed Mobile App Marketing Plans

Specifically, an app business needs to stop thinking about what happens in apps as a discrete experience, and recognize that in-app user experiences are now powerful parts of  integrated, customer-centered brand journeys. App companies must both recognize and reflect this truism to drive maximum ROI.

Users don’t think about a brand’s messages in one medium as somehow separate from brand experiences that take place in another. Whether users are visiting your page on the app store, reviewing messages in social media, viewing pieces of mobile app marketing, or having analog or real-world brand experiences, people think about a brand as a single entity.

We should actually thank our lucky stars for that, because the huge number of digital marketing options has led to a Balkanization of media, as channel experts creating what are often distinct consumer touch points, with insufficient regard paid to the whole brand experience. OK, on some level that sentence makes it sound worse than it is, because marketers instinctively work toward building a brand with an integrated marketing mix even if all of the components of a marketing program are not overtly coordinated. But it is not at all unusual for mobile app marketing teams to operate separately from marketers focused on other channels.

Holistic Brand Experience

As we create new app concepts for mobile devices, and explore new ways to meet consumer needs with apps, we need to take the long view – one that thinks about brand experience holistically, and apps as integral tools that help guide customers through their marketing journey.

Now, lots of mobile apps are the alpha and omega of their brands and companies – games, for example, often live only in the app realm. But lots of other apps have been developed by brands that connect with customers in a myriad of different ways. We need to develop marketing plans and mobile marketing strategies that carefully consider all of the ways that an app could fit into the larger customer experience. Not just view them as alternative estores but rather as tools that serve a broad range of purposes for users.

In terms of app marketing plans, strategy and measurement, Singular is leading in helping marketers integrate the insights that they get from all channels and action them across all elements of their marketing campaigns. We have 1,600+ pre-built integrations,so that:

• Marketers can add marketing platforms and partners to their mixes without integrating new SDKs, if they wish

• App user data can be integrated into broader BI systems

• A mobile-first company’s cross-channel marketing automation tools can deliver tailored messages based on the actions people take in apps and other media

As goes app marketing plans, app information is most useful when it can be combined with other data sets, and when it can be made immediately actionable in the platforms you already use and love. This helps ensure both an integrated brand experience and a marketing budget that is aligned to the same goals and metrics.

Note: This blog post was published first on the Apsalar blog, prior to Apsalar’s merger with Singular. Company informaiton has been updated. Learn more about our united company at Singular.net.

Singular enables data-oriented marketers to connect, measure, and optimize siloed marketing data, giving them the most vital insights they need to drive ROI. The unified analytics platform tracks over $7 billion in digital marketing spend to revenue and lifetime value across industries including commerce, travel, gaming, entertainment and on-demand services.For more information, click here.

If you’d like to learn more or see a demo of the Singular unified analytics platform, get in touch.