Many of us think that Mobile Apps are for the Walmarts, Amazons, and Ebays of the corporate world. Nonetheless, today’s business reality is that mobile apps are becoming a part of every conceivable business, irrespective of a company’s size or services they offer. Smaller businesses are accepting that there is a new opportunity with how all businesses may engage with and market to their customers. As such, more and more small to medium-sized businesses are shifting towards developing a mobile app after gaining the awareness that for an effective marketing strategy, businesses require an appropriate mobile app strategy and not restricting their reach and engagement to prospective and current customers by only adopting a mobile-friendly website.
You will notice that considerable portion of the businesses you interact on a daily basis such as your local coffee house, restaurants, and barbers are moving towards adopting a mobile app marketing strategy. Businesses adopting a mobile app to their marketing strategy capitalize from the following benefits:
- Geo-location Targeting: With the continuous rise in targeting prospective customers or engaging with current customers within a specific proximity or region, businesses can easily such customers to offer them discounts, coupons and special offers via push notifications. Businesses can send time sensitive message and adverts to such customers at the right place and right time to trigger that impulse within them to capitalize on the fortuitous opportunity. These offers and coupons will make existing customers feel important and new prospective customers as welcomed, both which will create greater traffic and in turn, greater revenue, for the business.
- Strengthened Customer Loyalty: Customers who download a mobile app can receive news and updates about your business to keep your most important customers cognizant of a business’s happenings, which only further strengthens business-customer relationship bonds. Moreover, coupons and special offers can be accessed exclusively on mobile app which rewards your most loyal clients and may also help spike a little more business traffic during downtime. Businesses can make use of a loyalty program where they can offer points to their customers when they show the app every time they visit a business or by engaging with the business through the mobile app or social media. Many businesses are already making use of customer loyalty point programs via physical cards. However, using a mobile app will provide a business with greater agility with how they engage and reward a customer and also provide customers with the convenience of not having to a carry card every time they frequent a business.
- Direct Marketing/Improve Customer Engagement: Email and social media marketing are common ways a business can market themselves. However, marketing using a mobile app can provide a significant advantage since many studies reveal that emails are often ignored and adverts on social media are not only often limited to targeting a general population who may or may not be interested in a business’ products and services but that most social media users disregard adverts on social media websites because they are engaged in a social purpose in engaging with friends and family and get updated on the most recent items trending on social media. While reports vary, it appears that in terms of email marketing, only about 20 percent of customers check their email and only about 5 percent of those customers click on advertisement links embedded in the emails. In contrast, about 30 to 60 percent of users open push notifications on their phones and 40 percent of such users interact with the mobile app immediately after receiving notifications. This shows how mobile app marketing is far superior than email marketing.
- Stand out: Often, businesses experience one of two mutually exclusive states: growth or decay. Businesses that fail to either stay ahead of the market curve or keep pace and adapt to market changes will more likely than note experience decay and in time, death. A company’s present mobile strategy will set the foundation for its present and perpetual success.
- Superior Customer Service: Customer service is critical to the success of almost any business. A mobile app will provide businesses the opportunity to assist their customers and prospective customers with issues they may experience with a company’s products, services, or even technological issues such as difficulties ordering products or service. The convenience offered to customers to get access to customer service with the touch of an icon will help to bolster the quality of service as well as a customer’s feelings of turning to a company’s competitors.
