How to Research If There Is An Audience For Your App

An interesting post-mortem of startup failures by CB Insights states that 42% of them fail due to lack of market need. Believing that you have a great app idea does not equal having a profiteering app business in all cases. It is only when your app has a substantial target market that it will fetch revenues. Additionally, most developers get engrossed in building apps on the basis of their own technical experience and opinion, which may be a whole lot different than what a prospective user thinks. There can be different perspectives to look at a problem and on ways of finding solutions to it. Only adequate research paves the way to product innovation in the correct direction.

 

We at Promatics believe that research driven by curiosity is the healthiest pick. Our team of mobile development experts help numerous clients build mobile apps that stand-out in the ever-evolving mobile app landscape. The following article highlights some key insights about audience research, that we believe are of crucial knowledge before a business decides to build an app:

 

How to Identify and Analyze Target Market for Your App?

 

Work on Intel

Some initial research about the app you intend to build can lay out a clear definition of your target audience. The target audience for a competitor’s app is by default your target audience too. You need to research aspects like:

 

• Is the potential market for the app is big enough to allow it to sustain commercially?
• Is there any scope for alteration in the app idea and features to better suit the prospective audience’s need?
• Is there any way you can maximize the potential of your app?

 

 

Look out for top challenges your target customer is facing and those for which he is willing to pay to address. It can also help you overcome obstacles as you kickstart your app business.

 

Create Customer Profiles and Segregate Market Segments

After you reach out to a potential audience and grill them about their thoughts and expectations about your app idea, their answers need to be scrutinised. You will find that this potential customer base for your app will feature individuals who share similar characteristics. Create profiles for all these individuals and segregate them into market segments. This can be done on basis of demographic data like age, location, gender, income, education, marital or family status, occupation and ethnicity or psychographic data about how they behave, their interests, hobbies, values and attitudes etc. All this segmentation can help you tweak your app idea to make it into something that matches their expectations in better ways. Such fine tuning helps one ensure that there is an audience for the final product offered on the market. Key to selling to a customer is knowing him first.

 

Be Specific

It is crucial to narrow down the defining characteristics of your target audience from the very start. Detailed customer profiles facilitate educated decisions about app features, advertising and marketing campaigns. Identifying a specific target audience and their needs help you view your product in a new light and pain point discovery, from a user’s perspective and ensures long term success.

 

Tap Existing Resources

A swift search online lets you unearth numerous existing resources that present you with relevant, insightful information about the industry concerned. This makes it easy to narrow down on the market segment, competition and the ideal potential customer. More often than not, all this is available online for free and doesn’t cost you your time or money. However, there can be times when the research available is not as focused or useful as you intend it to be. In such cases, you can always conduct complementary research to suit your own purpose. These resources can be storehouses of information that help you learn more about your target audience so you can develop a strong brand identity. There are numerous technical tools on the web that aid this research about the target audience. Some have been enlisted below:

 

a.) Quantcast: It provides free, accurate and dependable audience insights for over 100 million web and mobile destinations

b.) Google Keyword Planner: This tool finds fine-grained volume data for search phrases. You can find out what people search for and how many of them search for it.

c.) Alexa: This one transforms raw data into meaningful insights that will help you find your competitive advantage

d.) Google Trends: It helps you find where your target customers are predominantly located

e.) Ahrefs: This helps you identify all the backlinks to any competitors, showing you which industries and third-party websites may be the most interested in what you have to offer. This is one of the best tools for finding SEO and online marketing opportunities.

 

 

Gather from Your Competitors

Take help of the web to configure other businesses that offer app products that solve the same pain points as your app intends to do. They are your main competitors. Look at what their market position is, how wide is their customer base, what price point they cater to and which ones they don’t, customer reviews etc. Analyse what weaknesses you think their app model has and how can you serve it better with your app product. All this research will help you uncover overlooked areas in the segment and master user’s pain points.

 

Conduct your Own Primary Research

The most reliable option for learning about your target audience is through primary research. This ensures that the data obtained is coming directly from prospective consumers. A tad bit pricier than other options listed on this list, primary research provides you with answers specific to your queries. Numerous approaches are suitable for conducting research depending upon the nature of the app. Businesses often face difficulty in deciding from where to start, whom to talk to also how to ask the right questions and how to collect the answers. Online and offline surveys,  interviews, focus groups and group discussions are the best ways to do primary research about an app idea.

 

Qualitative Data

Supplying wealth of knowledge about user behaviour, qualitative data is more than just numbers and statistics. The data gives you the privilege of an intimate look at your prospective users and how they react to a particular product. App analytics does not present you with data in the raw form for you to process. It helps you answer questions about complicated user behaviour. It is almost like mind read about why they do what they do. Qualitative Analytics can also be used all through the developmental stage to improve the product. If you gain an understanding of your user’s behaviour and what they respond to best, you can be an overnight success. Processes like session recordings and touch heatmaps allow qualitative analytics to bring your users into the centre of your development and marketing efforts.

 

Conclusion

More than 35% of users delete an app because they are not using it.

After you find out if there is a need for your app in the market, analyse the numbers. Are there enough potential customers within your target audience to start a brand new business? If you think that the demand for your app idea is wide enough or recurring it’s a great dive in point.

 

Will your target market benefit from the app you will offer? Do you understand what drives your target market to make buying decisions? If you think there are some user needs and expectations that are not being met in your product, be sure to inculcate these points in the final app design. This research also allows targeted marketing efforts that put the right message in front of key segments. However, don’t exercise like primary research and customer profiles need updating every 6-12 months. In an ever-evolving marketplace, there are chances that your target clientele and competitors may change. Regular updating ensures that the app product strategy and brand voice are refined at all points.

 

We at Promatics, believe if you are going to spend your time and resources making an app, it is best to ensure it’s the right app product for the right market.