Sankara Narayanan
Image Credits: socialmediaweek.org
Rohan Patil is an entrepreneur who has worked for Goldman Sachs (London), Rothschild (Paris) and A.T.Kearney (EMEA). He is an alumnus of the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) and is currently the Managing Director for AppLift in India – developing and expanding the company’s operations on the ground. Previously, Rohan co-founded Dataconomy Media, Europe’s leading media portal focused solely on data science, which was ranked among the Top 100 Global Big Data Brands and as being one of top 5 start ups in Berlin.
Techstory interacted with Rohan Patil, Managing Director, AppLift India to share his insights on efficient mobile app marketing and how app developers can connect with their audiences right.
Trends observed in apps that audience generally tend to download.
The trends depend on economy to economy. In the western economy, it was observed that people started using gaming apps and then moved to non-gaming; whereas in India people started with non-gaming apps and gaming apps are still in its nascent stage. Still a majority of the population in India use classifieds, e-commerce, travel and dating apps.
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In India 70-80% people browse via mobile, hence it is easy to direct users to apps. As an entrepreneur you need to decide on whether you want to go for an stand alone app or a website based model as well. Looking at the user behaviour, even major e-commerce sites have tried to focus more on their mobile app.
Points to focus on to improve the organic downloads of your apps.
App store optimization is crucial and it is done very differently for iOS and Android. For Android it is very similar to SEO process, write a good and interesting description about the app and use the right keywords. These will help you to get higher rankings for your apps in the Play Store. For iOS, it is majorly keyword related in the Apple Store, where you have to describe the app in keywords and these keywords need to be very accurate, as the rankings depend on the accuracy of the keywords. For example take the case of a medical app, if your app has been optimized well, then it comes organically to a user when he/she searches the keyword.
Once you have cracked the app store optimization, your organic installations increase and from there based on the quality of your app you need to focus more on the ‘virality’ factor. Referrals, discounts and other offers add to the virality of the app, and this will help you reduce cost per installs.
The team should be networking in events, become part of meetups and be a live aspect of the ecosystem.
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How to improve the engagement factor?
There are three stages for an app.
- Launch Phase: You launch your app and you learn about your user and their behaviour. It is usually low engagement stage.
- Growth Phase: All the learnings you have learnt in your launch stage should be applied there. You focus more on key performance indicators of your apps.
- Retain Phase: Apps should try to educate users on the new features that they have on their apps. This would help them to reconnect with their existing users and this reconnection should be personalised.
AppLift’s impact in the ecosystem
The ecosystem in India has become very conscious, companies have started to look into what happens after the install and are focusing more on that. We’re increasing the team size from 90+ to a 100+ and expanding our business operations. Our new launch is DataLift 360 focused on programmatic, as we believe that is going to be the future.
Applift’s clients are majorly companies whose product is proven in a way and companies who’re serious about marketing and are ready to invest a substantial amount of their marketing budget on app installations and improving the engagement. Basically we’re focused on LTV optimization. For Applift, it is always long term perspective and putting ourself in the client’s feet and increasing their revenues from there. It is the focus on our clients that makes us unique.
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