Write an Impeccable Business Plan for Mobile App Idea
Need to present your app idea to potential investors?
Easier said than done, right? There are apps for almost everything, so impressing someone with another app idea could be extremely difficult.
This is where writing can really make a difference. By making your business plan more compelling, credible, and engaging with writing, you can draw the attention just enough to make your point and get them interested.
This is exactly the point of this post.
Below, you’ll find straightforward explanations or professional writing practices to make your next app business plan investor-ready.
1. Be Insightful in the Market Research Section
Conducting market research before app development is a task you must do, no questions asked. Investors know that, but all they really look for is the unique proposition of your app. This shows to them that you have a good understanding of the app market and how your future product might fit there.
In other words, you’ve got to do some serious convincing here.
Presenting data and solid information is the best way to do that. Here are important techniques to consider:
- Present the findings of keyword research. Describe that you found a lot of interest in specific keywords and what does that mean for your project
- Make a brief SWOT analysis table. Its purpose is to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the project based on your market research. Be very concise and limit each point to one sentence, e.g., “International payment tool that’s simple to use, but has many features” as a strength
- Include recent stats. How many times similar apps have been downloaded over the last year? Is the market for your app increasing? There shouldn’t be any guesses here, only hard stats.
By focusing on stats, specifics, and analysis, you’ll make your business plan more insightful. Investors like to work with people who think critically and do their homework, so reading such a plan could be more interesting to them.
Related: How to Do Market Research For Google Play
2. Solve a Specific Problem with the Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Describing a USP in one sentence isn’t an easy task. Like a killer eCommerce copy, it needs to convert, period. The best way to start is to ask yourself why anyone would buy this app and present the main reasons.
Here’s a simple but important tip for you. If you want to see how other developers described the USP, go to an app store of your choice and see their preview visuals.
Quite often, you’ll see some text on them, and it essentially describes the main points of the USP. Take AccuWeather’s Google Play page visuals as an example.
The texts answer the “Why” question by providing specific details about the app.
Why do you need to install this app? Because…
- It has “superior accuracy you can trust” – this implies that it’s reliable and raises credibility with “you can trust”
- It’s “faster and easier to use” – means that it’s better than competitors
- It has “detailed conditions… and 2-hour details” – implies that the app has the latest features that make it better.
For a beginner app developer, that seems like something that would be hard to fit in one USP statement sentence, right?
You can always use online writing tools like GrabmyEssay, Grammarly, or TopEssayWriting to check your USP for clarity.
Or you can do it yourself. There are a few types of USP you can go for:
- A one-line headline with a supporting sentence
- A one-line headline with a few sentences
- A few headlines with short bullet lists describing the app benefits.
The most important thing here is to list specifics. A USP is incomplete, boring, and unappealing without them.
3. Describe a User Persona
A user persona is a description of the ideal user of your app. It needs to be a separate section in your business plan that includes details about the persona’s goals, needs, demographics, location, and attitudes.
To show potential investors that you did your homework, focus on the persona’s characteristics that influence the app’s design direction. No need to describe every aspect of their life.
Here’s an example of an app persona you can use:
“Diana Thompson, 28, a graphic designer from Boston.
Diana freelances most of the time. In her free time, she enjoys listening to audiobooks and podcasts about UX, graphic design, and tech news. She uses multiple podcast and audiobook providers, which is inconvenient. So, looking for one app to subscribe to most popular news to listen for free on the go.”
User personas are written sections that require excellent clarity to explain the target user to potential investors.
For writing tips on keeping your personas clear, check out TrustMyPaper, Hemingway Editor, or Subjecto. They will help you to write an engaging customer story to share with investors.
And the last thing: how many personas do you need?
Go for four. This number covers diverse users while keeping the personas not too similar.
4. List the Most Effective Marketing Strategies
“Okay, so we can use the app store…”
That’s not going to work. Even though over 50 percent of smartphone users find apps in app stores, you should list at least a couple of other effective methods.
So, consider these.
Google Search Ads
According to Google, 25 percent of app users discover new apps through search engine searches. This means you need to invest in ads to get more downloads.
Propose to run some campaigns on Google to raise awareness of your new app. Make it clear that you don’t have to pay for them for months, even a few weeks could be enough.
Social Media Ads
Google also says that 49 percent of app downloads are driven by social media ads. This means that a carefully crafted targeted Facebook ad campaign can score you thousands of installs.
Source: Google
Feel free to use these stats from Google to make your case.
Video Trailers
If the app you’re trying to make is a game, then you should definitely consider making a short video trailer. However, it applies to pretty much every app.
Listen to this: the most viewed game trailer on YouTube is for Subway Surfers, a smartphone game. It has over 360 million views on YouTube, which proves that trailers work for app promotion.
People love videos, so you can expect to generate a lot of engagement with a trailer. According to Brian Rowe, a video scriptwriter from BestEssaysEducation, it doesn’t have to be very long – the industry standard is between 40 seconds and one minute.
Highlight this fact in your plan to let the investors know that it won’t require hundreds of dollars of investments. Upload it to YouTube and other video sharing platforms and spread the news on social media.
If possible, try running campaigns. If your app will use impressive technologies like artificial intelligence, mention it. This strategy will surely score you a lot of installs.
Read and Revise
If you follow these tips, your business plan will have a good chance of striking the right balance between being pushy and persuasive.
Do not expect that the first version of your business plan will be good enough to share with a bunch of investors, however. Write it, give it to someone to read, make improvements, and try again.
The success of your project depends on that text, so don’t rush to submit it. That’s it, over to you know. Fingers crossed for your next awesome app project!
AUTHOR BIO
Kristin Savage is a freelance writing expert who is currently working at Classy Essay. She says she’s “willing to pay someone to write my thesis or research paper ideas,” but writing blog articles is something she always leaves for herself. Kristin is always keen to be part of writing projects on digital marketing, customer service, and blogging.