13 Jul 2020

What Are The Best Distribution Channels For App Marketing

To reach its customers and offer them its product or service, a company relies on app marketing distribution channels. These different channels correspond to the interfaces between the company and the consumers that make the product available for purchase. The distribution channels designate the routes to take the products to reach the end-user of products or services offered.

From the creation of its business plan, any company is faced with the delicate, yet strategic choice of the multiple existing channels on which to disseminate its offer. What options are available to you and which ones to choose according to the needs of your business? 

When you think about downloading an application, the logical thing is that you directly go to the leading stores and app repositories: Google Play for Android or App Store for iOS. But this world goes much further. Did you know that there are more alternative channels for downloading apps? Do you know them?

●     Huawei App Gallery

App Gallery is an alternative to Google Play, where you can download Android games and applications quickly and safely. Many of the games you can find in the App Gallery are optimized to work best on Huawei and Honor smartphones.

A clear example of this is Fornite, the most popular mobile game in the world that you can find optimized for GPU Turbo to offer the Ultimate 60fps gaming experience exclusively for phones from the Chinese company.

●     Amazon App Store

The Amazon app store is another excellent alternative to the Play Store for downloading applications, firstly because it is a product of one of the most valuable companies in the technology industry. Secondly, because its use is very similar to that of Play Store, that is, we have categories, recommended applications, etc.

But one of the great additions to the Amazon Appstore, formerly known as Amazon Underground, is that a completely free paid application is offered every day.

Likewise, all the applications that are purchased with our account can be downloaded to other devices if we log in again with our Amazon account, even if we delete the payment application from our phone we can reinstall it without any problem.

●     Samsung Galaxy Store

Galaxy Apps could make users think that there were only applications from the manufacturer, but with the new name Galaxy Store, there should no longer be any doubt that it is an application store.

It is unknown if the new name Galaxy Store will be accompanied by any change in Samsung’s strategy, if it will remove the Play Store from some of its devices in Europe now that they are not obliged to carry the Google store, or if the Galaxy Store and Play Store will continue. They were coexisting as before in their new devices.

●     Cross-channel strategy

All your channels are complementary and work in synergy. Unlike the Multichannel strategy, this one has more focus on increasing your turnover.

You then put each channel at the service of the other. Your notification on the application must take you to buy in-store, the SMS you received allows you to make an online purchase with a promotional code, by playing on the mobile app you win a voucher of 10 euros to spend in-store, etc.

As you can see, you work on all fronts, and you do not have to have all the distribution channels for that, just a few are enough for you to be successful.

The best example is also the “Click and Collect” which made it possible on the one hand to reassure and improve the daily lives of consumers, but also to increase the turnover of the brands.

E-mail

E-Mail marketing is a strategy that turns e-Mail into a powerful marketing tool to achieve immediate results, which, if well managed, allows for highly advanced segmentation.

Mobile Ad Networks

Here we can group all the mobile app advertising that we see in mobile media, although for example, Google Ads includes in its display network most of the media that are managed by Google Ads itself. This type of advertising consists of all kinds of formats commonly called banners (static or dynamic images, CPI, video ads, interactive ads, etc.)

Affiliates and Sponsorships

Affiliate programs are the dream of any commercial director since they allow them to have an extensive network of commercials (app marketing directories with all their possibilities) that are paid when they meet the established objectives (for example, for sales or generation of contacts).

In the case of sponsorships, they are an excellent tool to generate a brand image, especially if after a web analytics study we see which are the best sites to sponsor the services of a certain website.

App Marketing Directories

Specialized directories, although generally and with honorable exceptions tend to have a low traffic volume, are excellent for targeting a niche audience in the sector that interests us.

There are all kinds of directories, and according to our product or service we must select the mix that interests us most (thematic directories, local searches, price comparators, etc.)

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

In great boom since the birth of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, but not exclusive to these platforms since dozens of tools must be managed for a successful SMM (blogs, communities, content aggregators (RSS feeds), etc.).

Additionally, there are advertising possibilities and promotional tools to highlight our presence and products on these social networks. You can also check this eBook to get detailed knowledge about Mobile Advertising Channels for User Acquisition.