The ongoing pandemic has got its devastating roots in every industry whether it is finance, education, or healthcare. Every sector of the economy is suffering and in some worst cases, the companies declared bankruptcy and eventually collapsed.
The current myths blooming throughout the pandemic of maintaining social distancing and sanitization often forces an individual to remain home as much as possible and avoid social gatherings.
The most flourishing industry even in this pandemic is the Telemedicine and healthcare app industry.
Telemedicine provides a platform for doctors and healthcare professionals to review, evaluate, and diagnose the reports of the patients by telecommunication technology.
On the other hand, Telehealth is a much broader term than telemedicine as it includes all the remote services of healthcare services as well as the non-healthcare services.
Overall it can be said that telemedicine is a sub-branch of telehealth.
The rule of thumb is that for generating revenue from apps one needs to persuade individuals to utilize the apps. The individuals will use the app when they like it and when they find any purpose to use that app.
Medical, healthcare, or wellness apps provide an individual a substantial learning from games. The key factor to include this game is to provide a feeling of cheerfulness as after playing a level of the game, the individual expects a discount voucher or something will be provided to him for free.
Though other than this, Real benefits of using the app and better healthcare facilities can make an app achieve desired results.
6 strategies to monetize your Telemedicine apps:
1. Gamification
Gamification is the first technique that has been used widely by the app developers and is included in every type of app whether the app is on finance, E-learning, or healthcare.
The high flexibility of the games to the environment of the apps makes it more user friendly as the games are specially designed based on the basic idea of the app and user participates and achieve some levels based on the story formed by the developers.
Some adults are often provided with reminders of their medicines, daily exercises, and their visits to the doctors and even their fitness status after weeks of regular exercise and medicines.
More innovative techniques such as free advice by the doctors, free prizes, and discounts are something that app developers can further try to include in the same app.
Providing patients a platform where they can set their own goals and keep a track of their progress makes them more engaged with the app.
2. Free Gifts
The most influential word in the era of marketing:- FREE. This bold word catches the eye of every individual. Expensive or complex things are mostly ignored.
Free weight and calorie calculators can be provided to daily users of the app which motivates an individual to use the app more frequently.
Free advice and consultation and tips to lower down their risks of getting infected by major diseases.
The daily users of the app and strict follower of his routine qualify for a free medicine box with personalized medicines for a week.
Providing free services motivates an individual to use apps more efficiently and frequently.
3. Cross-Selling and Promotions
To generate revenue from free apps, app developers should make changes with the up-gradation of the products and services of the app without interrupting the users.
Such a mechanism must be carried out without targeting customers towards purchasing a product or service which in-turn diminishes customer satisfaction in using the app.
The motive is to create a good platform to enhance the sales of the product or service and such things must appear as a favorable mention rather than products to sell.
Such Cross-selling platforms can utilize the existing data of customers and according to their needs to personalize the offers.
It can be counted as a technological way to satisfy customers and take their needs into consideration.
4. Data Gathering
The world is dominated by Big data and artificial intelligence. Such big data of patients acts as an asset as it includes everything that is associated with the patient and its health.
The major pharmaceutical companies and other companies of such sectors ask for such data and this is the best-proven way to monetize an app.
Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, Fitness and wellness trainers, and centers are the interested parties when such data is available by the app owners.
5. Contact points and channels
The diversified perspectives and the extension of apps to websites, synchronizing email, and other platforms which transmit a direct message back to the same app.
Geo-tracking and Geo-locations must be used by an app to inform users with their surroundings which ultimately benefits the app. Such apps work as long as there are ways to connect the patient and generate revenue out of it.
6. Revenue Models
The app owners and developers need to decide what kind of models they will be using to generate revenue out of the apps before even developing an app.
a) Free with Advertisements
Free apps are the kind of apps where users can approach and work on any part of the app freely and sometimes the conscious users would not mind if an advertisement pops up in between while using the app.
b) Freemium
In freemium, the basic features of the app are accessible free of cost and when a user wants to use some features which are not basic, then a certain amount of money is charged from them.
The word itself is a combination of free and premium and according to the user interest, the app provides an option for both free and premium services.
If it provides real value and desirable outcomes to the customers then the customers are likely to access the premium services by paying a certain amount of money.
c) Paid
The users cannot use the app, They can just download it free of cost from the store but for using it they need to purchase a plan for the app from the options they are provided with.
For the users who paid already for the app, services might lose interest in the app and the app owners might end up losing their true customers.
d) In-app purchases
Such a feature provides a user to pre-pay the bills, the medical visits to the medical center, pre-pay for the doctor visits, and also enables the users to make a purchase of their medical supplements.
e) Subscriptions
Other than freemium and paid models. There is another model to provide an app owner with more options to generate his capital.
The subscription model is mostly used by the health and fitness centers where users are reminded of their membership getting over and the ways to renew the subscription.
f) Sponsorship
One of the latest models which are used by every app owner based on the motive to use an app. The user converts points and rewards of the app into a real reward.
In the medical and healthcare industry it acts as a bonanza as it attracts more users and the company gathers more data of the users which get converted into profits by selling such data to the interested parties.
Summing up
A similar pattern in the user behavior has been analyzed by the app developers as some users stick to free services and some move to premium packages.
Most patients are using this app as reminders for their medicines, scheduling appointments with doctors, and to get their prescriptions.
Creating an app where users can use the premium services which are chargeable and affordable is a tedious task for the developers as well as the owners.
Even the design of an app plays a pivotal role in attracting the new users and maintaining the same level of interest and excitement for the existing users.
App owners and developers must design and develop an app that is convenient, affordable, and appealing to the users to capture a big share of the market.
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