Design Mobile App Campaigns with Tech Geeks in Mind

Companies adding a mobile application component to their digital marketing efforts would do best to work on winning over the tech geeks who are most likely to download an app and tell others about it, recent research indicates.

A report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) divided the types of mobile app consumers into tech evangelists, impulse buyers, experimental adopters, pragmatic purchasers, green buyers and disengaged functionalists.

Michael DeHart, director of IDC's Global ConsumerScape 360 deg program, noted that tech evangelists drive "adoption of device ownership and usage by other market segments."

He added that targeting the tech evangelists would create the highest marketing ROI "in terms of segment-based app development and marketing," so ad agencies should make sure their plans center around getting this segment to use the feature and encourage friends and family to do the same. This group will likely spend about 10 percent more on technology and apps this year than they did in 2011, IDC predicts.

The company also measured the current state of the app market. Out of all the options available, 85 percent of apps are free, with the most popular being those for gaming, music, weather, news, navigation, entertainment and social networking. According to researchers, those in South Korea are the most active downloaders of free and paid apps, while Swedish and American consumers are also frequent users.

As Ramon Ray and the Smallbiztechnology.com team recently wrote in an article for Business Insider, it's important for businesses to develop mobile apps in order to engage customers - if they can afford it.

"If you dont have money to build ... an app, then don't build it for the sake that your competitors or peers are doing it," they write. "However, if you think mobile advertising will work for you, go ahead with that."
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Mobile Application Development