Appy Holidays

Smartphones will play a larger role than ever in consumer holiday shopping behaviour this year.  Most importantly for app publishers, downtime during the holidays, whether during family gatherings or while waiting for friends and family to shop during Black Friday, leads to an increase in app consumption.

According to data recently released by Flurry, a mobile app analytics provider, app downloads in the US increased by 25 per cent during the Thanksgiving holiday last year, while nearly 44 per cent of total searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms were made from mobile devices. Interestingly, app downloads surged 54 per cent on Thanksgiving Day alone, and downloads increased nearly 39 per cent on Black Friday.

This season, mobile marketers face a huge challenge: ensuring that their apps are both noticed and purchased in a noisy app market. Brands creating holiday campaigns should follow these best practices for maximum results:

Strategically time marketing campaigns
Take advantage of users’ increased mobile engagement during the holidays by running promotions in the days leading up to a holiday weekend, with the goal of raising your app’s ranking in its respective app store. This increased visibility during the high-traffic holiday weekend organically drives more downloads, thereby increasing the efficiency of your marketing spend. If driving a high ranking seems out of reach for your app, you could instead take advantage of the increased holiday traffic, by running in-app advertising in apps that are relevant to your demographic.

Strategically time price drops
Similar to the campaign timing strategy above, consider timing price drops right before a holiday weekend. The lower price will drive increased downloads, and hopefully provide you with enough lift in the rankings to increase your app’s visibility. Then raise your price again and ride out the benefit of more visibility and more revenue!

Optimize app keywords
Selecting the right keywords for your app store’s listing is an essential step in increasing your app’s discoverability. Be sure to include relevant keywords, so users can easily find your app when they search the app store.

Be sure to have a clear and strong call-to-action
The low price-point of most mobile apps inspires impulse purchases. The consumer’s ‘instant gratification’ mindset often means marketers have a very short window to capture and keep a buyer’s attention.  Be very clear about why a consumer needs your app, and how they can get it. And connect users using a method that’s relevant to each marketing channel, using SMS, QR codes, web links, etc.

Integrate online and offline channels
Marketers often mistakenly believe that the only avenue to engage mobile audiences is through on-device advertising. In fact, all media spends (offline and online) should be coordinated and optimized to drive mobile engagement. An integrated campaign reinforces the message, and raises overall awareness, increasing the likelihood that consumers will engage with your app.
Marketers that take advantage of these tried and tested tips should see a much healthier download rate for their apps this holiday season. There are many great examples of cool apps with smart marketing strategies. Angry Birds and Shopkick are a few of the apps that successfully captured mobile users’ attention before the holiday season last year. With diligence and careful planning, hopefully you can find similar success for your apps this year.

Chris Tanner is CTO at Get IT. He was also one of the brains behnd the development of Google Earth