If you’re a content creator who wants to get exponentially more engagement, response, and “brand power” from your content, 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 portion of my audience, not even close to the sales of my other courses. So after selling it, I told my small group of clients where they could consume my website content and then went about business as usual.
But right after that, something very strange started to happen.
My little “niche” product that hardly anyone bought got over 10x more engagement than all of 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 and completing the course, interacting with me about it, asking questions and giving feedback than ever before with my much more popular products. So I decided to ask my clients what it was about this particular course that was so worth it. That way, he could do more of what he was next time. Much to my ego’s disappointment, it had nothing to do with the quality of their course. I also hadn’t magically stumbled upon some kind of secret demand on my list. It was all the result of an extremely embarrassing “rookie” tech mistake that was especially humiliating for a world-renowned software developer and former Navy nuclear engineer who prides himself on my attention to detail. You see, what happened was that I set up my product on a WordPress site and foolishly forgot to set the security permissions to protect the content from being illegally downloaded and shared. This is the number one thing any responsible online seller or software developer does. Failure to do so was as reckless as an airline pilot failing to check that there is fuel in the tank before taking off. And it turned out that my clients, who are technology developers and more software savvy than the norm, not only started downloading my content (instead of consuming it via their desktops as I intended)… but they knew how to copy that content easily. on their phones. That’s why I was getting so much engagement, more questions, and lots of comments.
However, it was not because of any “genius” on my part, but because the content was available on their mobile devices.
In other words:
That content was simply easier and more convenient to consume.
Naturally, I took this marketing “information” and started making my other courses, group training, and trainings easily accessible on a phone. And while that certainly got better results, more engagement, new back-end sales, and more business overall… my content wasn’t getting the same kind of “feeding frenzy” engagement that my little niche product got. So after some more experimenting and testing, talking to my clients, and delving into the research around optimal learning and how the human brain wants to interact with content…I discovered another important piece of the puzzle. And what I discovered was that, in order to achieve 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 “capable.” mobile response. or “compatible with mobile devices”. No, to get those extreme levels of commitment…
That content had to be delivered specifically within a mobile app.
What had originally happened was this:
My customers copied the content to iTunes, YouTube, and other media player apps on their phones and consumed the content through those apps, not the web browsers on their mobile phones. And this ridiculously simple change in the way I delivered content drastically overhauled my entire business, the way my customers interacted with me, and my sales in general. After that, I became obsessed with learning and mobile selling and did a “deep dive” on the topic. I began by examining the research done by some of the brightest technology engineers at prestigious billion-dollar software, hardware, and technology companies. During this research, I discovered all sorts of interesting facts that I had never heard of before, even during all my years as a developer, and while creating multi-million dollar marketing, SEO, email and website automation campaigns using the most sophisticated software. systems on the planet.
For example, I learned:
The average person touches their phone almost 3,000 times a day.
Those same people’s phones are always within 3 feet of them, even when they sleep, eat, drive, travel, fly, hike, work, wait for appointments, exercise, walk the dog, watch TV, play with their kids, go shopping, lie awake at night plagued with insomnia, at parties, sitting at the bar, or even when in the bathroom
- Over 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 a web browser
- Less than 8% of people log into a website through a web browser on their phone to consume
- courses, entertainment, or other content (which is why, for example, Facebook’s course completion rates are an abysmal 4% on average), yet web-based browsers and desktop apps remain the the way the vast majority of companies deliver their content.
- More than 600,000 websites are created EVERY DAY, creating armies of competition in the market, while only about 60,000 mobile apps are published on the Apple and Google Play stores per MONTH (and about 1/3 of them are updates only, not new mobile apps). apps) where there is much less competition
- All of which means that hardly anyone in any niche or in any industry is offering their content on a legitimate mobile app…even though it’s where all of their customers go, where they want to consume and interact with content, and most importantly. … where they clearly prefer to buy your content.
What exactly does all this mean to you?
It means that if you are one of the few companies offering and selling your content on a legitimate mobile app (and not just on a “mobile friendly” site or a cheap desktop app pretending to be a mobile app). .where your clients and 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 that don’t have a mobile app. Like early website users they had a huge built-in advantage over companies that didn’t have a website.
And that’s just for starters.
I also quickly realized the importance of a business having their own app developed, rather than relying on and sending their clients and customers to iTunes, YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo or any other company mobile app platform to deliver their paid or free content. That way, you can stop sending your hard-earned customers to those companies and their “worlds,” with all the distractions, third-party ads, privacy violations, platform removals, and where your competitors are always fighting each other. yes for attention . And instead, you can send your customers, clients and prospects into YOUR world, where there is no competition and where you’re the only one they pay attention to while they’re inside your app.
I also learned many more lessons during this time.
But for content creators specifically, here’s a summary:
1. Put your content in a mobile app to make it easier to consume
2. Develop your own app
3. If money is an object (having an app developed can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $125,000) look for what’s called a “container app”
These are apps within a mobile app that another company has built specifically for businesses that can’t afford their own mobile app, but still want the power that a mobile app can bring to their content and business.
This is how they work:
A company that sells a container app lists it in the Google Play and Apple stores. And you can have your own mobile app presence “inside” that app, along with all the other customers of that company. It’s still your app (inside the container app), but it won’t have its 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 a small monthly price and letting the company selling access to your container app worry. to maintain compliance. , 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’s ideal.
But if money is an issue, look into one of the many container apps available. Then put your content in there and watch what happens to your engagement, sales, and response. If your experience is like mine and thousands of other content creators, I think you’ll be very happy with the results.