There are thousands of apps that smartphone users download every day and abandon them immediately after their work is complete or discovering that the app they just downloaded is not useful enough. Nevertheless, mobile apps are now a part of every micro moment to smartphone users, which starts right from early in the morning when they get up from the bed and ends right before they go back to sleep for a good night’s rest. According to Nielson report, the average time spent looking into an app by a person is approximately 30 hours per month. Be it from a smartphone or from a tablet, apps are now playing a big role influencing the daily ‘know’, ‘how’, ‘do’ moments of a user.
Mobile apps help to build the everyday communication path between a brand and its customers, which is otherwise impossible to do for a single website. A sound mobile app marketing can help complement the offline experience of a brand with strategies that can help drive an e-commerce or keep loyal customers stay connected all time.
Here is a list of the advantages that only a mobile app can provide to boost up a business marketing –
#1 – Geo Target Push Notifications
If one can remember this, in 2010 the then CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt described the future of mobile usage to be serendipitous and autonomous. One thing that is unique with mobile devices is that a user can easily access information automatically anytime and anywhere around the world. At that time, Schmidt spoke about how mobile usage will evolve and that how a user can walk down the road and use an app to get information about that particular place. Technology has evolved and his words have soon turned into a reality as today businesses can build an app with a geo target push notification to make their target offers specific and seasonal. For example – a store can easily send loyal customers notifications via an app to announce seasonal sales or discounts once they enter into the shopping premise.
#2 – Increased Sales Opportunities
Mobile apps have become geo-agnostic. They can instantly leverage your business opportunities by engaging your customers who are either waiting in a long queue to the ticket counter, traveling or are waiting in the doctor’s chamber for their turn. Mobile apps can send users alerts within a palm’s reach and can direct them back to their shopping experience. Besides, an introduction of a more seamless user experience like billing information and stored login has made the entire transaction process even faster than before.
#3 – Geo Target Advertisement
How about I tell you about a classic ad story where mobile app technology gets introduced. A person is stuck in a traffic jam while returning home. Bored, he starts fidgeting with his smartphone and suddenly comes across an advertisement notification sent from one of his recently downloaded mobile apps. It read – “You would have been home by now if you lived here”. With mobile apps, you can now notify your customers with smartphone powered target advertisements.
Using geo-target advertisements, businesses can send on-the-fly tweak campaigns to customers belonging to a particular location. You can even send users target specific coupons or let them know about on-going offers given out by your store when using the direction map.
#4 – Chances of Dynamic Offers
Mobile apps can help stream user behavior data, collected using methodologies like geotargeting and ad campaigns. These are valuable and businesses can utilize them to make appropriate offers at the right time. The key to successful marketing is knowing how to play your strategies well. The collected data can be very useful especially for time sensitive cases like a purchase of movie tickets or a music concert. Here the customer action needs to be very prompt, for missing out on one can turn out to be a waste that cannot be recovered again. With technologies, you can immediately send notifications on the deals of the day (if you are offering any) for any movie ticket purchase to users who are nearby.
#5 – Pushing Customer Purchase Down the Funnel
When users browse an app and are about to make a purchase, but for some reason they abandon the action; it can be termed as ‘Bounce’. This happens for many reasons and is most frequent especially in case of mobile purchase. Abandoning of shopping carts can happen due to the inability of users to insert information because he/she is probably not carrying his/her credit card along or because filling out the address box was too tedious a task. This indirectly causes business loss because you might be losing a potential lead here. But transactional mobile apps can make utilize a phone’s GPS that can automatically track down the user location and fill out the necessary information. Apps can even save the account information of the user when he/she is making a purchase and stream the information out the next time he/she makes another purchase. This way, users would not have to waste time filling out everything and can complete the transaction process successfully.
#6 – Quick Comparison Anywhere
This is another advantage that customers can now enjoy even with mobile apps. Integration of price comparison tool in mobile apps is now helping retailers drive increased sales and traffic. Users can now search for items of different brands and make a quick comparison on the price and the features before they proceed to purchase it. Mobile apps are making business transactions increasingly efficient. Retail shopping brands like Amazon offer customers with discounts when they use their price comparison tool to make a purchase decision.
Mobile apps have helped businesses integrate features like GPS, camera, and other user behavior data tracking tools that make business processes become more efficient. Besides, integration of advanced technologies like UX and UI designs, engineered support, unrivaled quality expertise and other agile app development methodologies has helped make user experience and shopping smoother and convenient than before.
Sudeep Banerjee
Sudeep Banerjee is the Founder and President of Mobixed, the leading mobile apps development company of California. A visionary entrepreneur, Sudeep's expertise lies in various fields including web development, digital marketing and app development. He believes that apps would act as powerful vehicles to drive sales for businesses in the near future.