Achieving an Advantage in the Competitive Mobile App Space by Segmenting Your Market

Mobile app development has become an increasingly profitable and efficient business model. The intense demand for new apps from enterprise and consumer prospects is driving the need for applications that deliver value by specifically targeting the needs of a well-defined segment of the market. The high degree of competition in the app sphere necessitates deployment and marketing strategies that can deliver and promote new app solutions to capitalize on the early stages of the product adoption lifecycle.

Digital media channels and low code development solutions are enabling mobile app startups to overcome traditional market entry barriers to achieve more efficient distribution and profitability. Read on to learn more about effectively segmenting your market to bring greater focus to your offering and implementing a tailored PR strategy, while building a growth-supporting competitive advantage.

Targeting your Offering

How can you reach the ideal market for your app concept, and who will appreciate (and be willing the exchange funds for) your product? A broad marketing strategy that doesn’t appeal to a specific type of prospect will inevitably result in low returns and limited adoption. If the product provides a useful service, but doesn’t provide a concrete rationalization tailored to precise needs, potential prospects won’t see the value in how it can uniquely benefit them.

As a consumer (we all are), are you more likely to choose a product or service that generalizes, or one that specializes? There are many examples in our daily consumer experience as users of professional services where we tend to prefer specialist. Consider how you might select an attorney or real estate agent: would you prefer a professional that understands the unique needs of your industry and property class?

The concept of specialization applies equally to the development and marketing of mobile app technology, and plays a crucial role in fulfilling a value-oriented service promise. Focusing your app product to specialize on a specific need requires analyzing your market by factors including (also applies to enterprise prospects):

1. Geographic: Segmentation based on physical location. Businesses and consumers in the same region tend to experience similar demand factors based on local culture, legislation, and economic trends.
2. Demographic: Aspects of prospects including income or revenue, gender, education, age (also applies to firms), and industry.
3. Psychographic: Factors such as personality type, values, beliefs, lifestyle, and political perspectives. For firms: organizational structure, leadership styles, and operational needs.
4. Behavioral: Buying habits, brand loyalty, consumption rates, spending habits, usage trends, frequency, and benefits expected.

For both firms and individual consumers, each of these factors plays an identifiable role in the prospect’s buying decision. Geographic and demographic segments are typically the easiest to define, and have the most obvious impact on app development. Prospects can be easily grouped by region and innate qualities such as age, income, and gender; these groupings also tend to be very broad, resulting in a market that may be too large and heterogeneous to create a targeted offering.

Psychographic and behavioral segmentation provides more refined data regarding the needs and desires of consumers. Primary research, conducted first-hand by your firm or consultants, will yield the most complete and relevant data on buyer behavior and expectations with which to create an appealing and valuable mobile application offering that will be quickly adopted.

Reaching the Market Before Competitors

Diligent segmentation and market analysis provides the data needed to develop a well-informed consumer profile. This profile allows fast development by focusing on the features that provide the most value, and eliminating the expense and time in offering solutions that have little or no utility to the ideal prospect. Market segmentation will also provide greater efficiency in crafting and developing a public relations strategy that connects with prospects.

Marketing that fails to consider the psychographic and behavioral characteristics of the audience will be less effective in delivering an accepted and persuasive message. In the dynamic market for app technology, weeks and months can make a dramatic difference in being the first to implement new technologies and establish a position of market leadership. A strong public relations strategy increases public awareness and enables technology firms to stimulate demand and exercise more control over brand positioning.

Leveraging New Technologies to Speed Deployment

Emerging enterprise technologies are offering firms with limited startup capital the opportunity to produce applications without hiring expansive and expensive in-house software development teams. Low code technologies offer solutions that enable firms to develop apps in less time by eliminating the need to build software frameworks from scratch. The essential code behind each application can be shared by offering coding templates created for similar purposes and functionality.

Low code development firms can deliver a complete application at early stages of the product adoption curve, yielding a concrete advantage against competitors that engage in entirely new coding. This model reduces development costs and allows more significant allocations to marketing budgets; however, to take advantage of this, your firm must have an excellent knowledge of the target market and an understanding of its buying behaviors.

Embracing Opportunities

More development tools and public relations opportunities are available in the mobile app technology industry than at any point since its inception in the previous decade. Using sophisticated market segmentation strategies, you can create digital products that cater precisely to prospect’s needs, and build loyalty early in the product adoption period.

Convenient and cost-effective low code development tools have freed firms to focus on product development rather than creating an entirely new platform for every release, expanding opportunities to serve multiple segments and allowing firms to reach new economies of scale. These factors coupled with digital media marketing channels and advanced public relations methods promise excellent growth and margin potential for innovative mobile app technology ventures.