How can Apps Helps MY Business? 7 Ways to Increase Revenues and Increase Profits

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Often times businesses small or large are reluctant in deciding whether they should jump on the app band wagon or not.  Today we’re going to outline 7 ways how HAVING an app can grow your bottom line/ increase your businesses revenue, and maybe even marginal profits.

 

1) Geo-Targeted push notifications

 

This simply means alerting your users/customers when they’re in a specific area, (perhaps around your retail location)?  With a 97% read-rate this is something you DEFINITELY want to take advantage of.

Sure email is still in, however you can’t compete with a read rate like 97%; especially when you consider the average for the MOST EXCELLENT of email marketers is below 30%.

 

So what are some ways you could use this type of feature?

 

Imagine.

 

• A band on tour could notify fans in a particular city that their tickets are nearly sold out or remind the concert-goers to show up early so they don’t miss the opening act.
• A Health and Fitness Club could send class schedules to their members when they arrive on location and give them the option to register, pay, or RSVP for the next class; right-then.
• A national franchise or chain could easily send region or city specific notifications about special offers based on what users in that area are interested in.
• A restaurant could increase loyalty by sending a special offer to customers who had been in the past year but not in the last few months.
• A retail store could announce a sale on umbrellas, or water-restistant jackets along with a weather alert to nearby users when the next rain shower is predicted.

2) More Sales Opportunities

As mentioned briefly above, smartphones have opened a whole new world of shopping and engagement opportunities.

Think.

While waiting in line..

In the doctor’s office..

On the way to work..

In the elevator..

 

These are all newly available pockets of free time to engage with your users/costumers and a mobile app allows you to maximize doing so.

A push notification for instance, can create a more seemless experience with store login and billing information when reminding users of a nearly abandoned shopping cart to bring them back into the shopping experience.

 

 

3) Geo-Targeted Advertising

The power of modern mobile powered targeted advertising allows you to target users by their specific location, displaying ads that are geographically and contextually optimized.  As a business, you can also make on-the-fly adjustments to the campaign on a particular region based on what’s working.

 

Another idea..

A Heath and Fitness Club with a high user base on their app could offer ad space to professions that complimented their club.  Masseuses, Accupuncturists, Chiropracturs, Physical Therapists, and the like.

Whether deciding to charge up-front (for displaying the ad), or take a % of the transaction price when the booking occurs, this is just another way on how businesses can increaes revenues, and in this case monetization directly from their apps.

 

 

4) Dynamic Offers

The power of mobile apps really allows business to do all types of cool things.  Not to mention, when tieing in technologies like push notifications and geo-targeting businesses can collect and use data through geo-tracking and create ad campaigns to deliver “just in time” offers.  Take a look at Groupon Now for more on this.

 

A quick example could be, a night club with a slow night could offer an impromptu extended free entry to past patrons who are nearby.

 

5) Catching the Bouncers

Surely the term “bounce” means something to you.

 

“Bounce rate”

“it’s time to bounce”

It basically means leaving a location.  Online or Offline – the conotation is the same.

So what’s the best way to catch these “bouncers” as they’re on their way out?

 

Convenience.

 

Maybe a users was  checking out your app, and was interested in making a purchase but then realized the had to fill out their billing, contact, and address information which was something they were not so interested in.   Using a phone’s GPS, transactional apps can detect a user’s location and automatically fill in address data.

Seamless, for instance, is the leading online food delivery service, who’ve been aggressively marketing their mobile apps that automatically detects a user’s location to fill in a delivery address and display restaurants able to deliver there.

 

6) Data Mining

 

Tracking signals from mobile devices is opening a whole new world of analytics and data-mining opportunities for retailers stuck in the physical world. This is one of the really powerful tools available to online businesses: they can easily track every move customers make from the moment a user lands on the site.

 

What engaged users and what turned them off?

 

Where, exactly, in the online store did a user go and what did they do when they got there? 

 

These are really easy questions for webmasters who have the analytics to answer, but good luck figuring that out in brick-and-mortar location. Unless..you’re already implementing what was mentioned in the first sentence of this point.

 

 

7) Compete Globally

Showrooming

(when shoppers visit a physical store to inspect the goods in person all the while intending to ultimately make their purchase online) these days is only going to continue to get worse and worse UNLESS retailers do something about it.

Something that let’s their customers KNOW that maybe they can find it cheaper online, but if they do – they’ll price-match it if they purchase in-store instead.  Price comparison tools are doing wonderrs for e-tailers like Amazon in terms of driving traffic and sales.

Amazon even went so far as to offer a $5 discount to shoppers who canner items using their price comparison app.

 

To conclude..

Mobile apps are helping businesses increase revenue largely by increasing efficiency. Businesses can lure customers back in who haven’t been in in a while but are nearby. Customers can shop during short periods of time that would have have previously gone to waste. And now, businesses can even discount inventory in the final moments before it would have otherwise gone to waste.

 

If you do plan on getting an App Made, be sure and check this out.

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