Why does App strategy matter for publishers?
Written by: Rashmi
Name any problem and there is an app to solve it. From the morning alarm to playing music in the evenings, people use apps for every task. And the publishing world hasn’t remained untouched by this trend.
Just a few years ago, publishers assumed that social media is an unlimited source of traffic for their websites. But this myth got busted quickly, and publishers soon realised that they need to have their own digital space for continuous traffic. And thus, mobile apps came into the picture.
If you are also a publisher, you should think about your strategy for capturing new readers, ways to keep their attention, and monetizing the content with mobile apps. If you are yet not convinced about making an app strategy for your publishing business, here are some reasons that might make you reconsider:
The Future Is Apps
Publishing on apps is not a temporary trend that will fade away in a few months or years. In fact, it is going to be so big in the future years that by the year 2025, the revenue of the mobile apps ecosystem is supposed to touch the mark of $500 billion. News and magazine publishers will capture a large chunk of this revenue. If you own a publishing business, you can not afford to lose your share of the future.
Your Own Digital Estate
No matter how much traffic search engines or social media is sending to your website, they are temporary traffic sources that you can not rely on. If you want to survive and thrive in the digital economy, you must build your own digital estate where no big tech can displace you. A mobile application is precisely that piece of digital estate. But to get the actual value of this, you will need to have an app strategy.
Most Loyal User Base
Any reader that installs your mobile app and uses it for a few days is undoubtedly a loyal reader. If served well, this reader can also help you get other new readers by either giving you positive reviews on the app store or sharing news on social through the app links. But to get such high value from app users, you need to have an app strategy in place. Otherwise, there are many apps that get uninstalled just a few hours or days after installation.
New Opportunities For Revenue
Owning a piece of the digital estate also means that you will have full liberty to experiment and hence find new opportunities for revenue. Since publishers have direct contact with their readers through mobile apps, they can better adopt the freemium or premium model. Alternately, they can also show different types of ads like interstitial ads and native ads without affecting users’ activity on their mobile apps. If you have the right app strategy, every impression can increase your revenue.
Lower Competition
Though most publishers have already launched their mobile apps on app stores, they are yet to crack the code of proper user acquisition and monetization. This means that there is lower competition for your publishing business. But to get ahead of this competition, you will still need the right app strategy. If you want to grow a large, engaged base of users, you need to do App Store Optimization (ASO), paid acquisition by Universal AppCampaigns, and much more. All of this will be covered under the app strategy that you are going to build for your app launch.
The opportunities for publishers in the app ecosystem are immense. But to launch the app, stay afloat, and then thrive with this new tool, you need to have an app strategy. A comprehensive strategy that includes user acquisition, user engagement, payment gateway integration, user analytics, etc. will soon establish you as the premium publisher of the digital world.
At Quintype, we build react native apps for publishers. If you are planning to deploy your own app, we can partner to launch your app within a matter of days. From app development to uploading content, we will make every step of the app development process easy.
