Your App: The Holiday Gift That Keeps on Giving Back
If you haven’t started thinking about the holidays yet – consider this your first warning. Your air conditioning unit might still be blowing out cold air on its maximum setting but that’s nothing compared to the chills you’ll get if you miss out on the biggest app marketing opportunity of the year. The holidays are coming.
The holidays aren’t just a great opportunity to close Q4 with a bang. Get your app marketing strategy right over the next few months and you’ll be reaping rewards long into 2020 and even beyond.
Millions of New Devices
According to the research firm Gartner, more than 408 million smartphones found their way into the hands of consumers in the fourth quarter of 2018 — and it’s worth remembering that many analysts considered 2018 to be a bad year for new device sales.
While many smartphone manufacturers (OEMs) perhaps didn’t sell as many high-end devices as they would have liked, the final quarter of year belonged to entry-level and mid-priced devices, suggesting a lot of smartphones found their way into the world as gifts.
While the big brands jostled for market dominance, with Samsung, Apple, and Huawei (owning a respective 18%, 17%, 15% of the Q4 2018 market share), it’s clear there was one big winner in the battle for hearts and minds in the smartphone ecosystem – the Android operating system.
With a 76% global share of the market, targeting Android users should be the number one priority for any app developer or marketer and the holidays present the perfect opportunity for them to make a sizeable land grab.
Further Reading: Apple Brand Loyalty Declines in Favor of Android Devices.
Unboxing Your Apps
Pre-loading your apps on specific devices or networks presents the perfect opportunity to position them on devices at the moment of maximum engagement – the unboxing.
By preloading your app it almost becomes an integral part of, what for many users will be their most gratefully received gift of the year. This creates the perception of trust — something that can be incredibly hard-won in other routes to market. In a market where engagement is often the only metric that really counts, trust is everything.
Note: The rigorous testing conducted by Digital Turbine and our partner OEMs and mobile networks, guarantees that only the most reliable and secure apps make their way onto devices.
It’s also worth remembering that more than half of all smartphone owners will never download a single app from an app marketplace like Google Play. With this in mind, pre-loading your app might be your one and only opportunity to reach many millions of smartphone owners over the lifetime of their device.
Further Reading: App Distribution: Alternative Routes to Market for Android Developers.
Competitive Gifting
In any competitive app market, success is always based on delivering the right app to the right person at the right time. If your app works for a particular user, why would they even bother searching for and downloading a competitive app?
This approach works well for many Digital Turbine clients who rely on pre-loading to position their apps in front of a receptive audience while they focus on providing the best quality experience for their users.
For service-based apps (think news, weather, music, food delivery, transport, eCommerce) where there might be very little to differentiate between services, pre-loading might be your single most compelling competitive advantage.
Further Reading: Digital Turbine’s Secret Sauce: Reaching New Users at Scale.
Marketing Your Entire App Portfolio with SingleTap™ Installs
By combining your pre-loading strategy with Digital Turbine’s SingleTap™ solution, a single pre-loaded app can create multiple opportunities to drive engagement across your entire portfolio of apps.
SingleTap™ allows app developers to promote alternative apps via app notifications and in-app banners, as well as links in emails, social media posts, blog posts, and other online content while enabling users to download the promoted app with a single tap. This creates a frictionless app install experience and promotes greater engagement opportunities.
Further Reading: Top Game Developer Enjoys 7x Lift in Conversion Rates with SingleTap™ Installs.
The Holidays Wait For Nobody
While the holidays might seem a long way off, pre-loaded app inventory is already being snapped-up across popular devices and geographies. We are already anticipating limited availability on popular Samsung devices including the recently released Galaxy Note 10.
However, successful app marketing is all about targeting, and therefore may or may not always be about the latest release devices. The app marketing team at Digital Turbine are experts at matching the perfect device with the perfect app to ensure maximum exposure. This includes access to highly specialized devices and platforms where again, inventory is likely to be limited.
Further Reading: Digital Turbine and Razer – Getting Serious About Gaming.
Don’t wait for the holiday season to kick-in before getting serious about your app marketing strategy. Speak to one of our app marketing experts today to ensure you hit this festive season running.
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