You have a mature product. And, let’s be honest, it’s going a little stale.
Competition is coming into the market with newer looks, designs, and features. You have to do something, but you’re not sure what. Maybe you have a new model in the works and maybe not – either way, that’s in the future and you need to do something now.
Why not build a custom mobile app for your product?
With the right strategic focus, a custom app can provide a powerful makeover for a mature product. Without changing your product at all, a new mobile app could allow you to launch new marketing campaigns, find new uses for your product, and reach new market segments.
Here are five ways a custom mobile app can extend the life of your product and help it compete with newer market entries:
1. Modernize with Mobile
A custom-built mobile app can make even the most mature product seem new and edgy. When newcomers to the market include mobile apps, older products without them will seem dated – and possibly even obsolete. By tying in with today’s technology, you position your product as relevant to today’s market.
In some industries, mobile connectivity becomes an expectation. Products without it are phased out, no matter where they stood in their lifecycle. If you can add that connectivity without physically changing the product itself, you have the perfect opportunity to modernize it with an app.
2. Add New Features
In How A Custom App Can Make A Product Better, I described some ways to improve an existing product using mobile apps. The key point here is that new features and capabilities can be introduced with nothing more than a custom-built application. And with an experienced mobile development team, like Ascendle, you could have your first features ready to ship in as little as three months. Compare that with the time it would take to redesign and manufacture a physical product – you can understand why a mobile app could be the simplest and best way to update your product.
Think of the future possibilities, too. Once a custom app is in place, you can continue producing new features and sharing them automatically with your customers. This has the potential to not only increase your product’s shelf-life, but also improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, too.
3. Create New Buzz
As products age, most of them grow stale. It gets harder and harder to maintain market shares over time, much less generate any real enthusiasm for a mature brand. Markets and technologies are constantly changing, and “new” products are better at capturing imaginations. You could even say we have a tendency to take mature products for granted.
You certainly don’t see many news articles or social media posts trumpeting mature products. But add a mobile app to that mature product … and now you have something completely different. Now you’ll see news articles about how you paired your product with technology. You’ll see social media attention on your innovative ideas and creativity. You can even add a press release or two into the mix. The end result is that you’ll create significant new buzz for your product, regardless of how old it really is.
4. Re-branding
Another powerful advantage to building apps for mature products is that it you can re-brand them as entirely new – even if the product itself hasn’t changed at all! This is an easy way to extend the shelf-life of your products. Slap a “2.0” or some designation onto the name to signify the new mobile component, update your packaging if you can, and most markets will treat it like a brand new product.
You can even address current customer and industry concerns with your new app’s features, giving your product a timeliness and relevance that your competition may lack.
5. Reach New Market Segments
Just like a mobile app can introduce new features and functionality to your product, it can open up new market segments, too. Some new features enable customers who wanted to use your product before but couldn’t (like remote operation and monitoring). Other new features make your product more appealing to a wider audience within your current target market. And some new features, like many of those I shared in 12 Mobile Apps that Breathed New Life into Unlikely Products, open your product up to entirely new audiences – audiences which had no use for your product before.
You can renew your product’s shelf-life by inserting it into these new markets. For them, your product will be seen as current and might not seem mature at all.
Planning Your Custom Mobile App
Of course, it’s possible to employ all five of these ways to improve your product’s shelf-life. You can even do it with a single custom-built app. All it takes is some strategy and mobile development know-how.
Ascendle can provide that know-how when you need it. Whether you’re looking to extend your product’s life indefinitely, or just enough to let you launch your next model – without the mistakes a mad rush to market would cause – a custom mobile app could be the perfect choice.
Let Ascendle build it for you, and you could be seeing results from your custom mobile app in as little as three months. Not sure how a mobile app could extend your product’s shelf-life? Give us a call and we’ll help you see what’s possible.
