There’s no doubt that the world that we live in and how we conduct business has radically transformed.

Why? If you stop to look around you, technology is everywhere and almost everyone has a cutting-edge smartphone at their fingertips. Not ironically, these devices are have become much more than just a music player or a gaming system. Smartphones have insanely sophisticated capabilities that can help you achieve your business goals—and work from the palm of your hand.

App development has become something that most companies consider, at the very least. Enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, retailers, organizations, advertising and marketing agencies all need a separate marketing strategy when showcasing their mobile app. Having a marketing plan for your business is essential to retain potential users and convert more leads through the use of smartphones and mobile apps.

Is it enough to just develop an app and then release into the app store? No, the work is only halfway done. In fact, this is another process that businesses can really capitalize on their return on investment (ROI) because of the potential that exists with apps since millions of people use them on a daily basis. 

In a recent blog post, an app development company explained that there are four areas to really bolster marketing for an app:

1. App store optimization (ASO),
2. Media outreach,
3. Website strategy, and
4. Social media

What Exactly Is App Store Optimization?

ASO is kind of like search engine optimization in that you have formulate tactics to make your app easily found and worth downloading. Every bit of information provided about the app has to be carefully described, titled and rated genuinely.

Whether it is for iOS or Android, you must optimize your app within each individual platform. A Kissmetrics blog analysis says that the main factors to focus on are title, keywords, reviews and downloads.

To grow your app’s organic visibility, you should do some media outreach and contact bloggers who can offer independent reviews. This helps build reputation outside of your own network.

Having an optimized and tailored website to your company’s industry should already be in execution. Otherwise, you will have trouble converting users who land on your page.

Finally, having an established reputation and a solid base of followers on you social media channels will be pivotal to market your app. This area is especially central to the marketing plan since the bulk of app users are also on social media.

Related Article: 6 Reasons Mobile Apps Are Here to Stay

Mobile App Statistics and Metrics

As you would suspect when reading this, there are three major app platforms and app stores that dominate the globe at the present time. They are Apple’s App Store, Google Play and Windows Phone Store.

An infographic published on the community platform for data visualization and infographics Visual.ly, included a comprehensive and total count of global apps downloaded as follows:

1. Google Play 1,500,000
2. Apple App Store 1,400,000
3. Windows Phone Store 340,000

Image via Visual.ly

Google and Apple have been the dominant players for apps downloaded, and the competition rages on between the two technology companies to see who will reign supreme. 

Some other impressive findings for number of apps downloaded worldwide were 102,062 million. It is projected that by 2017 the number of applications downloaded will reach 268,692 million.

When it comes down to monthly usage of apps, men invested 29 hours and 32 minutes in 2013. Women spend 30 hours and 58 minutes for that same calendar year.

Related Article: Six Reasons Your SMB Needs Its Own App

Insights and Numbers Into Mobile App Usage

The exponential growth of apps, the smartphone adoption and rapidly changing technology have been nothing short of innovative and disruptive. Apps as we know them will not go away any time soon. Another infographic which highlights app usage the findings confirmed the mobile app space now accounts for more than (52 percent) of all time spent on digital media.

Image via Businses2Community

A smartphone comes equipped with a multitude of functions, features and capabilities. Considering all of the options that come with them apps still outperform other categories. For instance, smartphone users will spend 89 percent of their mobile media time using mobile apps.

Apps are a money maker with 42 percent of all mobile sales originated from the leading 500 merchants’ mobile apps they created.

The estimated worldwide mobile app revenue:

• 2015  ~$45 billion 
• 2016 ~$58 billion
• 2017 ~$77 billion

What app types perform the best? Games, social networking and entertainment generate the most traction for percentage of time spent. They are broken down to:

• Games                       43 percent
• Social networking   26 percent
• Entertainment          10 percent
• Utilities                      10 percent
• News                           2 percent
• Productivity                2 percent

As you can see, the mobile app space is a viable avenue to explore for practically a financially stable and growing business.

Key Takeaways

If up until now you were considering ignoring the prospects of mobile apps think again. It is a huge source of business and you have the ability to reach new customers and explore new business endeavors. If you had focused solely as a business just the development of the app you fall short since you need to really market and advertise the apps.

Apps should be developed, designed and conceived with simplicity. After all, smartphones really have enhanced the user experience and allowed from complicated tasks to be done instantly without breaking a sweat. 

This is an area of business growth companies will have to put great investment and emphasis to get some financial results. Coming up with a mobile app is probably not as important as to why are you developing, what will it do to change or revolutionize the service for the needs of your targeted customers.