Choosing the Right Go-to-Market Strategy For Your App

Large enterprises and startups alike struggle to get traction in the overloaded mobile app market. The truth is, most apps collapse under the competition. Here are the facts:

• Less than 0.01% of consumer mobile apps will be considered a financial success by their developers through 2018 (Source: Gartner)
• 19% of mobile apps don’t generate any revenue whatsoever
• 60% of mobile apps are below the “app poverty line,” generating less than $500 per month (Source: VisionMobile)
• Even apps that aren’t meant to be the main source of revenue generation often fall short of their goals, particularly from a user adoption standpoint

Why do a majority of apps miss the mark?

• Lack of product definition and direction
• Weak marketing and user acquisition plans
• Poor business and monetization strategies
• Improper product release strategy

Drafting and executing a comprehensive go-to-market strategy will help guide a successful product launch. This post will outline the key components of a go-to-market strategy for a profitable mobile app release.

Key Takeaways

To avoid the common pitfalls that cause many apps to fail and build an exceptional go-to-market strategy, it’s important to give thoughtful consideration to the following areas:

• Product definition
  • • Define your product
    • Define your users
    • Know your market viability
• Monetization and business strategy
  • • Align the product type with business goals and objectives
• Marketing and user acquisition
  • • Have a plan to promote and publicize
• Launch strategy
  • • Know how your product will fit into your target market

What is a Go-to-Market Strategy?

First of all, what is a go-to-market strategy? A thorough strategy will answer these questions:

1. Who is your target audience, and how do you relate to them?
2. How do you provide everyday value to your audience?
3. How do you transition from the initial point of contact with a customer to fulfilling brand commitment?

All the major elements that guide your business strategy (sales, pricing, marketing, branding, competitive research, consumer profiling, and distribution) form the foundation for a go-to-market action plan. This plan will define the most effective way to reach a target audience and establish a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Benefits of a Go-to-Market Strategy

Crafting a go-to-market strategy has a number of advantages.

1. Cut down the time to market
2. Limit unnecessary expenses from unsuccessful product launches
3. Manage and constructively respond to market changes
4. Ensure ideal product functionality
5. Benchmark for market growth
6. Establish an intelligible and attainable project path

Product Discovery & Definition

Product discovery doesn’t guarantee app success, but it does lay the foundation for an impactful market presence. It tackles essential questions including the why, the what, the how, and the when. Piecing together the parts of a go-to-market strategy is an iterative process incorporating several interrelated and dynamic areas of focus.  

Market Opportunity

Is there an opportunity in the market? Are you addressing a pain point for a set of potential users? If there is no need or desire, there is no market opportunity.

What are you Trying to Accomplish?

Why are you building the product? What is the purpose/goal of your app? What problems are you trying to fix? What is the value you are adding? What are your short and long term goals?

Who is the Product for?

Who are you building the product for? Products are built for users; therefore, product direction should be driven by understanding their needs and motivations.

Are you Adding Value?

Who are your competitors? What have they done right? What are their weaknesses? How will your solution add value beyond what is available in the market?

Defining a Business & Monetization Plan

The approach to monetization/business strategy varies on the type of app and whether it is meant to be the main source of revenue generation or meant to support or facilitate another service or product. You also need to design business goals according to the cost of developing the app.

The most common models include:

Advertising Based

Works best when:

• You don’t plan to monetize directly from users
• In-app purchases would interrupt user experience or don't fit organically within the app
• The nature of your app results in frequent visits, long sessions
• You collect demographic and behavioral data

Paid Download

Works best when:

• You have a strong marketing & PR presence
• The app offers added value over free, similar options
• Value is commensurate with the price
• You want to tie revenue directly to downloads

In-App Purchases

Works best when:

• You have a retail, gaming, or services app
• Can profit despite app store fees
• In-app purchases add real value to users
• User experience is good enough to encourage repeat use even without purchases

Freemium

Works best when:

• You want mixed revenue from ads and users
• Premium features add notable value to users
• A free version is enticing enough to attract users and encourage the purchase of extra features
• Large user base/long app sessions

Subscription

Works best when:

• Your app is content-driven (news, music, video, etc.)
• The nature of the app encourages frequent, repeat use

If the product is meant to support another product or facilitate a service rather than generate revenue, your approach will be vastly different. You are going to focus on aligning your app with business objectives rather than monetization of the app itself. Namely, how does the application fit within your larger business plan or organizational objectives? The purpose is not to directly generate revenue, but rather to support key revenue generation activities.

Marketing & User Acquisition

Much like your monetization/business plan, your user acquisition strategy is going to differ based on the nature of your application, your target market, and many other factors. When creating a marketing and user acquisition strategy include:

• Early outreach (press and outreach lists, partnerships, etc.)
• Teasers and early access offers (closed beta lists, early sign-up pages)
• Press kits and collateral
• Product sites (Product Hunt, Beta List, CrunchBase, etc.)
• App store optimization and discovery

Launch Strategy

Once you have all the pieces in place, you will need to focus on going to market in a way that will best set up your product for success. This means making decisions about launching with an MVP or more mature product and choosing a hard or soft launch strategy.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Launching an MVP with a core set of features allows you to test and validate key concepts early so you can improve your product with each iteration, while also reducing time to launch and development costs.

The product discovery phase should include your prioritized product roadmap, which will allow you to determine what is needed for your MVP. What an MVP entails will differ from company to company based on business needs, industry, the nature of the solution, and what the competition is doing.

Soft Launch

A soft launch is when you release your product to a restricted audience or market prior to launching it fully. Soft launches are often limited to a particular area or a small segment of ideal users and customers. Advantages include:

• Identify bugs & feature improvements early in a smaller market
• User feedback gained to apply to future iterations
• Marketing acceptance
• Better preparation for a hard launch

Hard Launch

A hard launch is when you release your product fully to the market, with the corresponding marketing push to match. Hard launches are more expensive and typically used by larger companies with the necessary budgets or more mature products. Advantages include:

• Competitive advantage (harder to replicate ideas)
• More feature-rich, developed product
• Hard marketing push for more rapid user adoption

Preparing a go-to-market app strategy may not guarantee that your app will be successful, but it does significantly increase the chances. At the very least, it helps you to avoid common pitfalls that result in apps failing. Finally, thinking about the right launch strategy and how to execute it will ensure that you are using the best method based on the nature of your product, how mature your product is, and your current position in the marketplace.