So you have been told you need a mobile app, huh? That sounds like a great idea, but what would you do with an app? How would it help your business? You could use Mobile Apps as a promotional tool to promote your business, brand, and products/services.
Discover effective strategies for leveraging your branded app as a promotional tool to enhance marketing and engagement.
Push Notifications
You could use your app as a promotional tool via push notifications. It will help you reach out to customers more effectively as push notifications and alerts are just as effective as SMSs in terms of their open rate. Push notifications aren’t as intrusive as text messages, so users unsubscribe at a much lower rate!
Ways to use push notifications:
- Promote a new product or service – Alert your customers and loyal fans about a new product or service at your company. Use something creative to drive additional purchases.
- Synchronize your social channels with push notifications, so the same notifications also go to your social community.
- Send notifications based on proximity to your business. This reaches customers “in a position” to visit your business! Make it an unbelievably good deal, valid only for the next X minutes! Track the results!
The push notification system, which is a very valuable tool for your company, will enhance the interaction with your customers and will also help you grow your revenue.
Loyalty Coupons
By offering GPS coupons and QR code coupons through your mobile app, you build or increase customer loyalty and you promote your products and services at the same time. With GPS coupons, your customers have the ability to “check-in” when they visit your business; each visit accompanied with a “check-in” will bring bonuses to your loyal customers, which encourages more frequent visits to you and not your competitors. Don’t do low-value promotions for the check-ins, otherwise no one will care. $5 off a typical $100 service on their 5th visit is no incentive! Free trial product on your third visit is more like it!
The QR code coupons you can offer your clientele will give them the opportunity to receive discounts when making a purchase. QR codes can be placed within your business, and a visitor can scan it to get an immediate coupon, discount, or other promotion. This is a copy of the in-store coupons we have seen in grocery stores. Encourage a new purchase or new brand that may not have otherwsie been purchased.
Loyalty coupons are a great way to create a personalized connection/relationship with your customers/clients and they will help you reach out to them at a personal level. 28% of customers reported that they are “Extremely likely” to increase their visits to a business if they have a loyalty reward card for them.1
Live Updating
Through your mobile app you can promote your events or the different partnerships your business has. This is one of the best ways to keep your clientele up-to-date with what your business is doing, supporting, or engaging. The main purpose of being able to control over your app content is to update it with special events, special offers of the day/week, loyalty coupons or a photo gallery. Your customers will then be more enticed to come visit your business and make a purchase.
Mailing List
Another way of using your mobile app as a promotional tool is to add a mailing list feature within your application. Creating a tab that allows your users to sign up or sign in to your app will permit you to gather their email address and grow your list of contacts. Because you’re gathering new contacts through your mobile app, you will create a targeted mailing list of people who are interested in what you provide. Later on, when sending emails with specials to your contacts, you will be able to target their needs since they use your app and you are able to observe what they do through it.
Tell a Friend
The Tell a Friend feature is a way to allow your customers to do free marketing for you! Your audience is self-promoting your business or the products/services you provide by telling their friends about it. This way, apart from giving them the tool to share your business, you are not doing anything and your mobile app users do the job for you!
In order to use your mobile app as a promotional tool and to make it efficient, you have to combine all these different features together for maximized results! A mobile app is one of the best ways to build brand loyalty and keep your clientele aware of what your business is doing.
1 Source: Total Research Corp & Custom Marketing Corp’s Loyalty Monitor Study
