Modern technology has long changed our lives. On the one hand, they made many things simpler and more convenient, and on the other – with the advent of the Internet, the world began to develop rapidly: new, opportunities, as well as new tools for everyday tasks appeared. But at the same time there is still not enough time to complete these tasks.
In business, technology also plays an important role. This is especially true of business promotion and other business-related services. Now is the time to create new effective tools that literally burst into our world along with mobile devices – these are mobile applications.
The importance of mobile applications for business
Nowadays, people take advantage of their mobile devices very often, and this fact influenced the business as a whole.
Do you know that:
- About 44% of consumers most often buy goods or services by using a mobile device.
- About 55% prefer to search for information about goods and services of interest through a smartphone or tablet.
- More than 60% recommend useful mobile apps to friends.
If you have a smartphone or tablet, then you understand how various functional applications, games, and entertainment work. But why does business need a mobile app? In order to answer this question, let’s first consider the types of mobile applications available.
Business applications for corporate use
Now there’s an urgent need to automate everything that is possible, including automating the company’s internal processes: you no longer need to write a letter to inform the management of the news. Just open the messenger and send a message.
Employees can communicate by using an internal messenger, a mobile CRM system, use a sophisticated calculator to perform specific calculations, benefit from a task tracker, etc.
If suddenly an employee needs transportation for an official business trip, then special applications will help find suitable car rental deals worldwide in a few minutes. This is very convenient, since all you need is a smartphone with the Internet and Car Rental Near Me APP.
The advantages of applications are just incredible, but the main thing is, of course, mobility. Now it’s not necessary to have a computer with you – mobile device is your greatest assistant. The application saves time for workers, and therefore – money for business.
Customer-oriented business applications
Interacting with customers is a main reason for creation of modern mobile systems. Among them are tools telling some useful information concerning profitable offers, the location of the closest point to get a certain product or service, as well as applications forming customer community.
Of course, the selection of features of the mobile app is based according to customer needs. The service should include tasks to be solved on the go, or those problems that appear regularly.
How do apps help your business?
Mobile application is one of the modern components of a successful business. It allows you to meet the rapid development of technology, thereby attracting potential customers and making the business process itself much easier. Here’re the main reasons for using mobile applications for business:
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Increasing sales
The main goal of any business is making a profit. In essence, all marketing tools should help achieve this goal. Mobile application can increase the company’s sales, because it serves as a means of attracting and retaining customers.
By using built-in functions, for example, loyalty programs and push notifications, you can motivate users to buy products or services provided by a certain company, as well as offer various promotions and discounts.
When you go from home, you can forget anything except for the keys, wallet and phone. Just imagine: the business falls into all the phones of customers, potential buyers and, in fact, remains in their pockets. Companies interact with customers all the time when they use their mobile device. The scale is amazing! No other type of advertising in the whole history of mankind has offered such an opportunity – to be constantly in the pocket of a client and interact with it.
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Getting rid of competitors
What do most companies use today for business promotion? That’s right – flyers, radio advertising, SMS-marketing, websites and social networks. If we look in the AppStore and Google Play, we can find a dozen applications for business operating within a particular city and even the whole regions.
This means that there’s no competition in the use of mobile applications. For example, you try to order pizza for dinner from your mobile device, and Google finds a mobile application of ready-made-dishes delivery service, clicking on which you install the app on your smartphone and make an order.
Already today, Google offers this opportunity. If you look at the websites of companies delivering ready meals through a computer browser, then you need to work further to get to the first lines of the search results. So, the application allows you to get ahead of others.
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Providing loyalty
How to gain customer loyalty? The answer is simple: to be useful and necessary for clients. With the help of loyalty programs, you can provide interesting bonuses for customers. Businessmen and buyers like them so much, because they allow making sales and stimulate repeat sales.
People don’t like carrying many plastic bonus cards in their wallet, thus loyalty programs in mobile applications can easily replace them.
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Building customer confidence through push notifications
In fact, a mobile application with push notifications is a very powerful tool if used wisely. We have already said that customers like discounts and bonuses, which can be informed via push notifications – messages that come to the screen of the smartphone from the application. What benefits does push notifications offer?
- According to statistics, push-notifications are twice as likely to return customers to the application. In push notifications, you can embed links that lead to landing pages.
Just imagine: you’re going to work in the morning, pick up a phone and look through messages. Then you see a push notification from a clothing store about a seasonal sale, click on a message and go to the application tab with a picture of a beautiful dress or shoes you can buy with a huge discount.
As a result, the client is attracted – he studied the information and went to the company’s website or to the application tab, where the visual content worked.
- After getting used to receiving some useful content, customers begin to wait for it, which means their trust in the company increases.
- The geo-location function works very powerful. For example: a client passes by the restaurant during the lunch break, and he receives a message that the table in this restaurant is free just for him.
- Push notifications can be configured so that they will come only to those users who fall into the selected zone. When setting up sending a message, it’s necessary to highlight the area around the restaurant, and when people pass by, messages will appear in their smartphones with a suggestion to have dinner at a restaurant.
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Attracting the target audience
Today, literally everyone who works in marketing industry speaks about the target audience. The trick is that the mobile application accumulates around itself only the target audience.
Let’s imagine that a customer sees an advertisement of a travel agency’s mobile application. He is offered to install an application in order to be aware of last minute trips and special offers. Who will install this application? That’s right, those customers who are already traveling or planning to go on vacation, that is – the target audience. After all, if a client doesn’t travel and is not interested in this topic, he won’t download and install the travel agency application anyway. No matter how hard you try to motivate him.
On the contrary, if the customer installs a travel agency application, then he ireally wants to travel. Therefore, this is a suitable person to send him push notifications and offer leisure options.
Mobile apps for business – do we really need them?
Summing it up, the benefits of using mobile applications for business is enormous. On the one hand, you can maximally optimize and simplify a multitude of processes within the company, and on the other hand – attract new customers.
It’s important to note that just having a mobile application doesn’t solve all the tasks of a business. However, in capable hands it can become a powerful marketing tool.
Every business should consider mobile applications for various tasks, since this is a completely different, closer and more operational level of interaction between customers and employees.
