Would Your Business Benefit from Having Its Own Mobile App?

It’s no big secret that mobile has captured the imagination and a lot of market share when it comes to online shopping.

In its early years mobile faced many challenges, such as people not trusting their provider to provide a safe, secure transaction, to the prevailing practice of using mobile only for location.

Mobile has now overcome much of this and is poised to offer so much more to companies willing to go all in.

One thing is abundantly clear: the numbers are staggering. We can’t resist tossing in some revealing statistics:

According to Frank N. Magid Associates, over three-quarters of Americans age 43 and under now use a smartphone; in other words, the people doing most of the buying.
Nearly all Generation Y consumers owned a mobile phone of some kind and 72 percent owned smartphones. Source: Forrester, 2013
Time spent with mobile apps is starting to challenge television: consumers are spending 127 minutes per day using mobile apps—up 35 percent from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year—and spend 168 minutes watching television per day. Source: Flurry, 2012

However, you still may have questions as to whether or not taking the time and expense to develop a mobile app is right for your business. Let’s look at some pros and cons.

Some of the Pros of Mobile Apps

Repeat business and instant feedback – We crave convenience, and by having your app available makes it easy to get repeat business. You also will get instant feedback, which even if negative can be good to know!
Far better presence – Instead of having the user search for your business on their phone browser, your app is front and center, ready for duty!
Helps you to brand and develop loyalty – By having your app on screens everywhere, your brand is always on their mind, making them far more likely to return to you.
Can also be a useful tool for sales team and vendors – An app for such as the one Bell Nursery uses to keep track of the 1700 people it uses to supply plants to 150 Home Depots is an indispensable aid to their business.

Now Some of the Cons…

Can be wildly expensive – While you can use a do-it-yourself builder or a software solution, the results may not be useful. An app with all the bells and whistles optimized for each mobile platform can run many thousands of dollars. If you can’t afford a multi-platform app just yet, settle for your mobile website until you can.
Need to be fresh – Unfortunately, apps are seldom set and forget. Your users will soon get bored without fresh, updated content.
Requires different apps for each phone platform – Unlike a mobile website, mobile apps have to be built specifically for each platform: Apple, Android, etc.
Difficult to measure return on investment – Can be very difficult to gauge.

Walking Before Running
The fact is, most small business don’t have mobile-friendly website—so that’s where most of you should start before you even consider going the app route. (As it happens, 3 in 10 small businesses still don’t have a website at all!) Nonetheless, it’s certainly worth considering a business app in the future, once you’ve mastered the basics of mobile marketing.

5 Common Social Media Blunders and How to Avoid Them

Social media marketing for your business is tough enough without shooting yourself in the foot. Self-induced social faux pas are easy to commit, and difficult to overcome. Social media is not only necessary to include, but crucial to get right! Even though 74 percent of brand marketers saw an increase in website traffic after investing just 6 hours per week on social media, in contrast to another 83 percent have abandoned a purchase after a bad or non-existent customer service incident. (Creotivo.com)

So to help you ward off the mistakes that could be looming in your social media marketing, here are five social media mistakes you need to avoid!

1. Not engaging with your audience – Make sure you are actively engaging your social media audience. Seek advice, conduct polls, share funny stories (hopefully somewhat relevant) and ask their thoughts: they’ll gladly provide them, and you’ll be far wiser and nearer to your goals in a number of ways.
2. Lacking excitement or passion – If you’re not excited about your brand, it’s likely to be very difficult to get other people excited about it, either. Communicate this in your postings, and in your campaigns. Everybody wants to create a buzz about our businesses, but it starts with you!
3. Always promoting – Nobody wants to be constantly sold to, and social media is littered with companies that have tried. Endeavor to develop relationship and trust first, and after that it will be much easier to send an occasional selling message.
4. Not responding to your customers – There is no faster way to ruin whatever goodwill and respect you’ve developed in your brand than to ignore your customers. It’s way too easy to totally miss customers and prospects posting their concerns, questions or complaints on these very platforms! Don’t be that guy!
5. No plan for social media – Not having a strategy for your social media marketing is sort of asking for it to fail. You need to understand why you’re doing, and which platforms are ideal for you. (Not all are!)

We would be remiss if we didn’t share a link to a glaring example of what NOT to do! After the recent Boston marathon bombing, the food site Epicurious sent out a couple of unfortunate tweets.

SMS Marketing – Reach People Where They Live – Their Phones!

Who would have thought that text messaging, which was generally the land of the pre-teens, would morph into anything as valuable and powerful as SMS marketing? In just a very short time, SMS (simple message service) has shown to be a proven alternative option to email marketing. Achieving more and more popularity, it’s challenging to find anybody who is not using text messages in one way or another.

Why SMS marketing deserves a serious look

Without a doubt, the main reason marketers are giving SMS a try is because of how folks are responding to texts. Reported by CallFire SMS text messages boast a 98 percent open rate as well as an eye-popping 83 percent are opened in the first three minutes of getting them! What’s more, marketing promotions utilizing text messages are being redeemed at 20 percent or higher, in contrast to traditional media such as coupons, newspaper ads, radio, or direct mail, that average redemption rates of a paltry two percent. CallFire also says that your ROI (return on investment) could be far greater than in traditional media. As an example, a campaign with a monthly cost of less than $30 to send 1000 text messages, and redemption rates of 20 percent or more, works out to be less than .30 cents per customer acquisition. Not bad.

4 Recommendations for successful SMS marketing campaigns

1. Be certain to deliver value – Be sure that you’re not wasting their time! Give great value, whether you’re delivering a palpable offer or just directing them to somewhere where they can consume more great content. Deliver Value!
2. Keep it short, sweet and personal – Personalizing your texts and keeping them friendly and brief is a good recipe for success with SMS. Something such as, “Hi Mandy, thanks again for shopping with us! We look forward to seeing you again soon. Show this msg to receive 20% off your next purchase at [STORE NAME & PHONE NUMBER].”
3. Include a call to action – Make sure you ask for the action you want them to do. Saying something like “Text SaveNow to 123456 to get a 10% off coupon today” will set their mind to action mode.
4. Track your results – SMS is awesome when it comes to measuring metrics. There are a variety of things you can monitor on your campaigns, from click tracking to who opened what. So make sure you track and measure your results, to properly plan the next campaign!