When selecting an app developer to work on their next iPhone, iPad, or Android mobile app project, individuals, businesses, and brands should consider what added value each developer offers to maximize both app appeal and reach. Without both, your shiny new app may never be found, downloaded, or used.
These concepts are not new and date back to 1960 when the late Theodore Levitt first published his article in the Harvard Business Review called Marketing Myopia. By the way, when the Harvard Business Review republished this article in 2004, it was heralded as the most significant marketing game changer for marketing in the last half century, so take note!
Many app developers limit themselves and their customers’ potential by incorrectly defining their purpose. That is, by calling themselves app developers, they imply that they create a specific limited product: apps.
As customers go through the app developer selection process, committing to a company that defines itself so narrowly, and doesn’t fully understand what business it’s really in, can have the effect of also limit the app’s appeal to the target market due to an implicit misunderstanding of its purpose. in the value creation chain.
After all, if all you do is develop apps, how can you understand the intricacies and nuances of the app for the ideal user and create an app that solves that pressing need or problem for these users?
What do app developers and railways have in common?
When customers use an app, they don’t want to use an app, they want to be entertained, productive, make their lives easier, communicate, or maybe all of these at the same time, quickly and easily.
To see this another way, look at Levitt’s HBR article and analysis of the plight of American railroads at the turn of the 20th century, where a once-growing industry stagnated and became imperiled.
The need for railways did not decrease because the need for passenger transportation decreased, and not because the need was met by others such as automobiles, buses, and airplanes. Rather, the railroad allowed others to take their customers because they assumed they were in the railroad business rather than the transportation business.
Taking this in a 21st century perspective, web developers should not see app developers as a threat, but rather marketers should see app developers using apps as the spearhead of comprehensive marketing plans. digital marketing as the most serious threat since web and mobile marketing evolved as business.
And this is what you should look for as a customer when choosing an app developer. A company that can provide you with a well-developed, attractive, and easy-to-use app that meets the needs of the ideal user within your budget, and the ability to understand how to position this app at the cusp of a digital marketing attack with provision and execution. of a comprehensive digital marketing plan.
How does knowledge of digital marketing help with building apps?
The purpose of marketing is to identify and communicate the value of your company’s or brand’s products and services to your customers, fans, and followers and to generate sales. In short, marketing should help customers discover, create, awaken, and satisfy their customer’s needs.
Clearly, a mobile developer who provides coding and creation of mobile app assets like graphics and sound shows neither of the marketing needs and both limit the growth potential of their business as well as the positioning of their apps.
App developers see the marketing effort as a necessary consequence of the product, not the other way around, as it should be. In fact, when you hire an app developer to build an app for your business or brand, your mindset and that of the app developer you choose should be focused on how to position that app at the top of your digital marketing attack rather than how to market the app. .
The developer you select should communicate to you how they see themselves serving the marketing needs of customers, not writing code and creating graphics to combine into one piece of software. The real problem that the app developer solves for the customer is the satisfaction of the customer’s deepest need: to create the value the customer needs in exchange for the app product at a fair price.
Good app developers aren’t in the business of building apps, they’re in the business of digital marketing, or at least they should be if you’re going to involve them in meeting the needs of your customers.
