Mobile apps for small business owners are becoming more common as smaller businesses have discovered that apps are one of the main pillars for marketing and branding their business.
In the past, apps were only available to “big” companies due to the high costs involved in developing a custom app. App developers spent many hours designing and coding apps to the company’s exact specifications, which led to an extremely high price tag. But, as has happened in the past with other automations, technology has caught up with the trend and we have now created applications that are more affordable for small and medium-sized business owners.
Look at your smartphone right now. Each of those apps you see on your screen was developed for a specific reason. To check your email, local weather reports, social networks, work calendar… etc. Then mobile apps for business marketing came along and the whole marketing world exploded. Now businesses can buy, sell, trade… or any transaction you can think of that you could do in person and can now do on your smartphone. Business marketers had developers create mobile apps for their business to take advantage of this new layer of marketing.
What do you see when you watch people walking through a mall or shopping area? Most will be looking at their phones interacting with someone or some business. Now it can be argued that this practice can be somewhat risky, especially if you’re not looking where you’re going. But that’s another discussion at another time.
However, this is the refreshing thing about a mobile business app. It may be referred to as an “electronic business card.” He is always in front of a company’s customers. As the smartphone user scrolls through the apps and has your app for your business, they will see it multiple times a day. A business can only grow with that kind of exposure.
Here’s a great example of a working mobile trading app. A customer, we’ll call him John, who had downloaded the app from a local pizzeria, orders pizza from the app for a small gathering of friends at John’s house. John knows they make great pizza, and sure enough, one of his friends wants to know the name of the place he bought the pizza from because it’s NOT a major chain. John says “here is the name of the pizzeria and you can download their app in the app store”.
Word of mouth is the best advertising money can’t buy. That pizza business picks up another customer that you wouldn’t normally get. And when John’s friend downloads the app, the pizzeria is on his phone and he’ll see it multiple times throughout the day or night.
That’s just one of the ways mobile business apps work for businesses.
