If you want to prepare for the future and start seeing the massive benefits right out the gate, you’ll need a mobile app.
Not so easily convinced? Then here are 4 ways (and then some) that your business will reap the benefits of creating a mobile app for your customers.
1. Provide More Value to Your Customers
Business is all about reciprocation. You offer a product, the market opens their wallets with their demand, right?
Maybe you’ve sat down with your employees and tried to nail down the best way to encourage more of this wallet-opening engagement from your customers. You want to increase their interaction with your business to promote sales, of course, but you also want to provide a level of value for your customers that they can’t get anywhere else.
One way to do this is create a loyalty program within your app. It would work like this:
The more customers interact with your business and product, the more points they collect, which can in turn be used for great deals on the products they already know they want.
If you already have a program like this in place – great. You can incorporate it into your mobile app, digitizing the entire process, making data on their purchases available to you instantly. If you don’t have one, get on it, fast.
And when your customers see their points adding up in real time (rather than having to send in points in the mail or wait until they can access your website to enter them manually), they’ll be impressed and more enticed to follow up on their purchases in the future.
2. Build a Stronger Brand
One of the most important things a mobile app offers to consumers is awareness of and communication with your brand. And through that regular interaction with your target market, you’re fostering trust.
The more your audience trusts you, the more likely they’ll be to listen to later sales pitches and even commit to your brand. With an app, you’ll demonstrate to your users why they should trust you by showing (rather than telling) what your brand stands for.
In the same way as distributing fridge magnets, calendars, and other random memorabilia with your company logo on it has served in the past both as advertisement and assistance, mobile apps strengthen your brand and educate your customers.
That’s why so many businesses across all the major sectors are developing strategies for mobile apps.
3. Connect Better with Customers
Customer service isn’t just about face to face communication between smiling sales associates and customers anymore.
Since 2.6 billion people now have high-powered mobile devices within arm’s reach at all times, the true game-changer in customer service is now mobile apps.
Why?
Firstly, your app won’t be merely a human being, subject to mood swings and poor performance.
And, through a solid mobile presence, you’ll always know you’re presenting to the customer the same face – an interface geared specifically to provide them with the best experience of studying and deciding whether they want to buy your product.
In fact, the vast majority of marketers see their apps as a means to primarily improve customer service.
Without sounding creepy, your business is always with your customer. (Okay, maybe there’s no way around that one.)
But think about it. If a person hears about your app in the middle of the night and wants to get information ASAP, all they have to do is turn on their device and download your app. Later, when a thought pops into their head that they should buy your product, they can do it immediately, without having to wait for regular business hours when normal human beings are awake.
So, if customer service is one of your top priorities (like it should be), mobile apps are the answer to raising customer satisfaction across the board.
4. Boost Profits
When customer satisfaction increases, sales typically do too. In fact, according to SalesForce, 70 percent of buying experiences are influenced by how customers feel they’re being treated.
The more interested and pleased people become with your product and your business, the greater consumer demand will grow. And let me assure you, if you have a product your customers can’t wait to get their hands on, that demand is going to provide you with some serious returns.
That’s where the mobile app comes in like none other.
Sure, you should have a website with a responsible design that can adapt to any of the various mobile devices there are now. This eliminates the necessity of having a frustrating, secondary “mobile” site to manage. But if you launch a mobile app in addition to your responsive website, you’ll boost sales while enhancing the customer experience.