If you’re a content creator who wants to get exponentially more engagement, response, and “brand power” from your content, then this article will show you how.
Here is the story:
A few years ago, I had created a niche-based digital course designed for a small part of my audience, that didn’t even come close to my other courses’ sales. So after I sold it, I told my small band of customers where they could consume the content on my website, and then went about my business as usual.
But right after that, something very odd started to happen.
My little “niche” product hardly anyone bought got well over 10 times more engagement than all my most popular courses combined.
At first I thought I must have accidentally hit some kind of “nerve” with my list.
After all, I was getting several times more people consuming & completing the course, engaging with me about it, asking questions, and giving feedback than I ever got from my far more popular products. So I decided to ask my customers what it was about this particular course that was so engagement-worthy. That way, I could do more of whatever it was the next time. Much to my ego’s disappointment, it had nothing to do with the quality of his course. Nor had I magically stumbled onto some kind of secret demand in my list. It was all a result of an extremely embarrassing “rookie” tech mistake that was especially humiliating for a world renown software developer & former Navy nuclear engineer who prides myself on my attention to detail. You see, what happened was, I had set up my product in a WordPress site and foolishly forgot to set the security permissions to protect the content from being illegally downloaded & shared. This is the first thing any responsible online marketer or software developer does. Not doing so was as negligent as an airline pilot not checking to make sure there’s fuel in the tank before taking off. And it turned out my customers – being tech developers, and more software savvy than the norm – not only started downloading my content (instead of consuming it through their desktop computers as I intended)… but they knew how to easily copy that content onto their phones. That was why I was getting so much engagement, more questions asked, and lots of feedback.
However, it was not because of any “genius” on my part – but because the content was readily available on their mobile devices.
In other words:
That content was simply easier & more convenient to consume.
Naturally, I took this marketing “intel” and started making my other courses, group coaching, and trainings easier to access on a phone. And while that certainly got better results, more engagement, new back-end sales, and more overall business… it wasn’t getting my content that same “feeding frenzy” kind of engagement my little niche product got. So after a little more experimenting & testing, and talking to my customers, and digging into the research about optimal learning & how the human brain wants to engage with content… I discovered another important piece of the puzzle. And what I discovered was, in order to get that elusive hyper-engagement I was chasing, it wasn’t enough to simply make that content easily accessible on my customers’ phones by making my sites “mobile-optimized” or “mobile responsive” or “mobile friendly.” No, in order to get those extreme levels of engagement…
That content had to specifically be delivered inside a mobile app.
What had happened originally was this:
My customers were copying the content into iTunes, YouTube, and other media player apps on their phones, and consuming the content through those apps, not their mobile phone web browsers. And this one, laughably simple change in the way I was delivering content drastically overhauled my entire business, the way my customers & clients engaged with me, and my overall sales. After that, I got obsessed with mobile learning & selling and did a “deep dive” into the subject. I began by examining research done by some of the most brilliant tech engineers at prestigious billion dollar software, hardware, & tech companies. During this research I found out all kinds of interesting facts I’d never heard before – including during all my years as a developer, and while creating multi-million dollar marketing, SEO, and email & website automation campaigns using some the most sophisticated software systems on the planet.
For example, I learned:
The average person touches their phone nearly 3,000 times per day
Those same peoples’ phones are always within 3-feet of them – including when sleeping, eating, driving, traveling, flying, hiking, working, waiting for appointments, exercising, walking the dog, watching TV, playing with their kids, shopping, laying awake at night plagued with insomnia, at parties, sitting in the bar, or even when in the bathroom
- 70%+ of all digital content is now consumed on mobile phones
- A whopping 92% of the time spent on a phone is in an app, NOT in a web browser
- Less than 8% of people log into a website via a web browser on their phone to consume
- courses, entertainment, or other content (which is why, for example, Facebook course completion rates are an abysmal 4% on average) – yet web-based browsers and desktop apps are still how the vast majority of businesses deliver their content
- Well over 600,000 websites are created per DAY, creating armies of competition in the marketplace, while only around 60,000 mobile apps are published in the Apple & Google Play stores per MONTH (and roughly 1/3 of those are just updates, not brand new mobile apps) where there is dramatically less competition
- All of which means, hardly anyone in any niche or in any industry is offering their content on a legitimate mobile app… even though that is where all your clients & customers are going, where they want to consume & engage with content, and most importantly… where they clearly prefer to buy your content.
What exactly does all this mean for you?
It means if you are one of the few businesses who delivers and sells your content in a legitimate mobile app (and not just a “mobile optimized” site or a cheaply made desktop app pretending to be a mobile app)… where your clients & customers already are, and where they prefer to consume and pay for content… you automatically have a huge, “built-in” advantage over all the businesses who don’t have a mobile app. Much like early website adopters had a huge built-in advantage over businesses who did not have a website.
And that’s just for starters.
I also quickly realized the importance of a business having your own app developed, instead of relying on & sending your customers & clients to iTunes, YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, or any other company’s mobile app platform to deliver your paid or free content. That way, you can stop sending your hard won customers to those companies and their “worlds” – with all the distractions, 3rd party ads, privacy breaches, de-platforming, and where your competitors are always battling it out with each other for attention. And instead, you can send your customers, clients, & leads to YOUR world, where there’s no competition, and where you’re the only one they are paying any attention to while they are inside your app.
There were many more lessons I learned during this time as well.
But for content creators specifically, here they are summed up:
1. Put your content in a mobile app to make it easier to consume
2. Get your own app developed
3. If money is an object (having an app developed can cost between $50,000 and $125,000) find what’s called a “Container App”
These are apps within a mobile app another company has created specifically for businesses who can’t afford their own mobile app, but still want the power a mobile app can give your content and your business.
Here is how they work:
A company selling a container app has it listed in the Google Play & Apple stores. And you are able to have a mobile app presence of your own “within” that app, along with all that company’s other customers. It’s still your app (inside the container app), but you just won’t have your own app in the app stores. That means, what you sacrifice in the ego-boost and visibility and rankings of having your own app in the app stores, you make up for in having one small monthly price and letting the company selling access to their container app worry about keeping it compliant, updated, and maintained behind the scenes for you.
Whatever the case, take a serious look at mobile app technology.
If you can afford to build your own, that is ideal.
But if money is an issue, search out one of the many container apps available. Then put your content inside there, and watch what happens to your engagement, sales, and response. If your experience is anything like mine and thousands of other content creators, I think you will be quite happy with the results.
