Imagine reaching your customers whenever you want wherever they are. Imagine promoting your business’ offerings to your customers and leading them to the doors of your business. Imagine being able to dynamically change your menu of services and product catalog with a few clicks of a button from a central interface. Imagine being able to tap the vast social network of your customers to market your business’ brand all over the world. Stop imagining. All of the above already exist.
Welcome to the age of business mobile apps. Just by encouraging your existing customers and their friends and family download and install free copies of your app from Apple and Google, you are not only increasing the chances your customer base will expand but you are also building up your brand in the age of mobile tablets and smartphones. Serious business. Here are just some ways you can use a mobile app to promote your business.
Send periodic updates
You spend a lot of time and resources getting people to enter your business’ doors. Sadly, most of the people that set foot on your business’ premises won’t ever visit again. Tough luck? That’s just the way it is? No. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you get even half the people who walk through your doors to download your mobile app before they leave, you are boosting the chances they will turn into repeat customers.
Once they install your app, you can send them special messages telling them about new product lines, new service lines, and new promotions. In other words, reasons for them to come back to your business. What’s truly exciting is you can send updates and alerts even if your app users don’t have your app open. Using the special notice feature of Android and iOS, you can reach your customers wherever in the world they are whenever you want.
Help your customers find information
The goal of app marketing is to give the user a good reason to keep the app open. The more they keep the app open, the more you can promote to them. By giving them a good reason to use your app, you can continue to brand them and get them to promote your business among their social network. One effective way to do this is to help your customer find information using your app.
If you have a restaurant offering a certain type of cuisine, for example, you can bundle a recipe database with your app. The more they look for recipes, the more your ads show up encouraging them to pay your restaurant a visit. Latch on to your customers’ insatiable need for information.
Give them reasons to promote you
By giving your visitors incentives to download your app, you can easily turn them into your social network promoters. This means their friends can see your brand and promotions. If those friends push your app to their friends, then friends of friends of friends can download and install your app. If you play this game right, you can turn your periodic updates and message blasts to your app users into a self-sustaining free marketing system.
