While there is an increasing number of businesses embracing a mobile app as a marketing tool, the number of doing it the right way does not grow proportionally, which is not surprising at all, considering the nearly endless array of available options and ways to go about it.
Setting Clear and Realistic Goals
As owner of a small business, you could use a mobile app for lots of different reasons and to achieve a variety of goals, and the choices you make in these areas will have a major impact on the effect that the mobile app will have on your business. For instance, you can choose to have an app developed with the goal of attracting new customers, which is something that obviously all business owners would want, but that is extremely difficult to achieve for a small business that is just starting out and doesn’t have a lot of financial resources that are needed to advertise the app and make it stand out among the ocean of applications offered on the market.
That is why it’s very important to do a thorough research of your industry and your target audience in order to find out whether or not your existing or potential customers are the kind of people who would want to use an app in their purchasing decision process, and avoid making a major investment into app development that won’t yield a satisfactory ROI.
Having said that, a mobile app is definitely a tool that offers lots of marketing opportunities for most small businesses, but only if it is a result of a well thought-through process with clear goals and objectives in mind.
With that in mind, we put together a list of reasons why you should consider using a mobile app for your business and tips on how to do it right.
Choosing the Right Features for Your Business
When you start thinking about having an app developed for your small business, the first step you need to take is to make sure that you know your audience very well, including their buying habits and preferences, as well as determine what it is you want to achieve by introducing a mobile app.
When it comes to target audience, you should try to figure out whether your potential and existing customers have a habit of making online payments or ordering food or other products online, which you can do by creating an ideal customer persona that will include demographic and location information, among other factors. This is one of the aspects that can help you determine launching a mobile app makes sense having in mind how your customers interact with your business.
As far as your goals are concerned, the most important thing is to be realistic and not have unreasonable expectations in terms of financial gains after you have launched your app. This means that you should be aware that a mobile app alone won’t bring you tons of new customers directly, because you will need to promote it once it’s developed to achieve that, and that may end up costing you too much than you can afford. However, a mobile app is ideal for retaining existing customers, building customer loyalty, increasing revenue from current customers and enhancing word-of-mouth advertising for your company.
These are all realistic and easily achievable goals that can undoubtedly help increase your revenues even without bringing inbound leads and customers directly.
Lastly, you should spend some time thinking about what features your app should have, which will ultimately determine the costs associated with development of the app and how it will be received and used by your audience. You need to have a clear idea of how a mobile app can improve your communication with customers and make your business more efficient, so that you can know which features to include in it and avoid adding the bells and whistles that are likely to be offered to you by most developers to boost the price of their product.
In summation, most small businesses can expect significant long-term benefits if they decide to adopt a mobile app and use it as a marketing tool, but this process has to be done right and must follow a proper due diligence in order to make the most of it.