Connect with Customers on Mobile

This article is for companies wondering why and if they should build a mobile application for their business.  Mobile applications for smartphones such as Apple iPhone and Android phones can give companies a competitive advantage.  In the digital economy, mobility can be a significant differentiator.  For American business, reaching customers on mobile platforms can help them remain relevant within their current market space, or help them create new, uncontested market space.

Here, we describe some of the benefits that mobile applications offer an organization seeking to differentiate themselves or deliver great value to their customers. 

Branding

Mobile applications offer companies a way to strengthen the relationship between the brand and its customers.  A mobile application can give a brand unique positioning in customers’ lives.  Customers keep smartphones with them nearly everywhere they go and nearly every moment of the day.  Consumers spend an average of three hours on their phone each day.  Mobile apps help companies gain positioning that is nearly impossible to accomplish any other way.

Staying connected

Maintaining customer relationships and brand loyalty is a growing challenge.  Mobile applications allow companies to deliver customized, controlled, and timed messages to their customers.  Mobile applications help a company stay in the customer’s consciousness. 

Companies can use customer data and insights to push data-driven actions in mobile applications to create powerful, crafted targeting specific to a consumer.  Mobile applications also allow for direct marketing that can increase sales.

Ads and Promotions

Mobile applications can be used to deliver advertisements and promotions to the consumer wherever they are and whenever they are most likely to purchase.  The use of device notifications, in-app notifications, and alerts has become a preferred way to receive news about special programs, products or discounts for many consumers.

Buying

Mobile applications make the buying process easier for consumers.  Once the buying decision is made, or impulse takes over, it is a matter of a few taps to complete a purchase.  Smartphones are increasingly integrated with the electronic wallets offered by Apple and Google.  More payment methods appear regularly.

Mobile applications allow the customer to make purchases whenever the urge hits them: seeing a review, receiving a recommendation, or seeing an advertisement. 

It is common for customers to share purchases with friends and family.  With mobile apps rewards and referral programs can be tightly integrated with the purchase process.  Tracking these programs and resulting purchases is one of the key advantages of mobile applications.

There are also adjacent technologies, such as QR codes, that have connected other media with mobile applications.  QR codes in ads, or shared among peers, have made it even easier for consumers to instantly open a mobile app and find a deal or product they are interested in.

Reminders / Relevance

There are numerous ways mobile applications can help a brand remain relevant in customers’ lives.  With mobile applications, companies can provide reminders to renew services or reorder supplies.   Reminders can let consumers know of upcoming or overdue service, and more.  

Referencing a model provided in the Harvard Business Review article, The Age of Continuous Connection, mobile applications can help companies evolve into Coached Behaviors and Automatic Execution.  Mobile applications help collect customer-specific data that can be coach behavior, automate execution, and create new business models.

Community and Relationship

Using data available through mobile platforms and devices, companies can help build a special, unique relationship between their brand and their customers – and craft unique customer experiences.  Brand relationships are increasingly personalized.  Allowing consumers to customize their relationship with a brand can increase loyalty that is becoming increasingly important and difficult to achieve.

Communication

Mobile applications are a great platform for a company to communicate with customers about new products and services.  It is a fast and easy way to let them know about product updates, new products and services, and to encourage them along the path to increased purchases or upgrades to premium products (or services).

Mobile applications can also be used to communicate news about the company.  It is a great way to reinforce a company’s character and brand identity, or to tell the company’s story.

Reviews

Peer reviews, ratings and recommendations have become a major factor in consumer buying decisions.  Consumers like to share their discoveries with friends, family, and followers.  Mobile applications give consumers an easy and convenient way to review and rate products.  Customers can share and promote information about product and service experiences.

Feedback channels

A part of the brand relationship is the ability for the consumer to provide feedback.  Allow the consumer a voice in their experience, in the brand, in the products.  This will increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Customer service

Finally, mobile devices allow for unmatched customer service.  Mobile applications present a fascinating way to provide no-hassle support to the consumer at the very moment they experience less-than-excellent product service.  

Conclusion

Mobile applications are a new dimension for brand relationships.  They make possible a customer experience unmatched by even the best of traditional media.  Companies that establish clear vision for their brand on mobile devices gain greater control of the buying process, loyalty, and open communication with customers.  Mobile applications present a differentiated customer experience and a market competitive advantage.

Learn more about competitive advantage through mobile applications.  Contact us today for free consultation.