31% of Mobile App Budgets is Spent On Marketing in 2018

Oleksiy Kuryliak
Product Coalition
Published in
3 min readNov 30, 2018

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If you want to have the best shot at outperforming your competition, you should reconsider, if you haven’t already, your app marketing budget. According to The Manifest, most of the forward-thinking app developers and marketing specialists reportedly spend more than 31% of their app budget on marketing. 88% of brands believe strongly that their return on investment (ROI) depends on the mobile app success.

Today’s app development market is growing increasingly. Apple’s App Store alone receives 1000 app submissions per day, according to the statistics provided by the International Business Times. Quite a bit, right?

To stay in the game, businesses started implementing various app marketing strategies. The Manifest surveyed 301 companies and provided interesting information, showing that a carefully devised marketing plan is able to boost app downloads and attract new users.

Fact #1. App Marketing is worth a significant investment in time and money

According to the research, 35 percent of companies spend no less than 31–50 percent of the app development cost on marketing. While 21 percent of them aren’t shy to dedicate even more budget (51–70%).

Image credit: The Manifest

Fact #2. App success requires a documented app marketing strategy

Most of the surveyed companies (98%) have created a documented app marketing strategy and share that it helps them make consumers resonate with the brand.

At this rate of competition, creating an outstanding app is becoming a lot more challenging. No matter how good your app is, if nobody knows about it — it will fail. These businesses have accepted this obvious sentiment and started to work on their app marketing strategies.

Nearly 7 out of 10 companies have created a long-term app strategy. Meanwhile, 30 percent of them have, at least, short-term plans. There is only 2 percent of brands not documenting their app marketing ideas.

Many app developers advise using a comprehensive marketing strategy to promote your app through as many channels as possible. Swag Soft, a mobile apps development company, gives its two cents on the matter:

“Reaching out to bloggers interested in publishing articles about an app may play a high role for your app success. Write about an app on your social media networks and promote it on your website. If your budget allows, invest in paid advertising for the app as well.”

We advise paying particular attention to promoting your app on social media.

Your potential users are likely already on their devices, thus, it’s easier for someone who sees your social media post to install your app. There is a great number of social media strategies to get user attention, but one major move is using the eye-catching visuals able to put a speed bump in the “social media superhighway” and make the user slow down.

Fact #3. App marketing increases ROI

The survey’s finding that an overwhelming number of companies (90%) admit that thanks to app marketing their apps have made back the development cost and even become profitable.

How to estimate your app success?

Today, CPI isn’t a central measure to access the success of the app marketing strategy. The fact the app has been installed on someone’s device doesn’t mean it produces a high ROI for your business.

To market your app properly, you should define what key performance indicators (KPIs) you need to uncover the real success of your app. There are a number of different KPIs that can be considered, including impressions, clicks, and more.

Image credit: The Manifest

Launching an app doesn’t necessarily guarantee its success. You should constantly offer an incentive to download and regularly use your app — this can both attract and retain customers, increasing your app’s ROI.

By implementing correct budgeting, paying keen attention to updates, and understanding metrics, you can maximize the success of your mobile app.

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Marketing Strategist. Founder of Rioks (https://rioks.com), B2B marketing consultancy, and a digital agency. Startups Advisor.