When you look at what mobile phones can do today, it’s incredible to think that they’ve been around since the seventies. Pretty much everything in our lives has been affected by the feverish development of mobile tech, and the world of business is no exception. In this post, we’ll look at some of the major ways that apps have changed the way we do business.
The first big area that mobile apps have changed is customer interaction. The internet was the first tech revolution that made customer interaction extremely efficient. Now that apps are part of our day to day lives, customers are able to interact with businesses almost instantaneously. Their professionally developed interfaces, combined with the modern reliability of Wi-Fi connections, means that there’s very little waiting involved whenever we need to contact a business or customer.
In fact, mobile apps have made all kinds of long processes faster and more convenient. Money transfers used to be an endless source of frustration and lag for people who wanted to deal with such financial processes. Now, thanks to various app developers, they can be over and done with in a few taps of a button.
The fact that you can interact with a person or business so conveniently is a pretty strong marketing ploy in itself. However, the marketing side of apps doesn’t stop there. Now that we have apps on almost everyone’s phones, a new, rapid marketing method has come up through the development of mobile apps.
These days, it’s more important than ever for companies to be able to give their customers a more personalised experience. With apps that can be updated across devices within seconds, this has become easier than ever. Businesses are now able to send coupons and promotions to their customer’s phones the instant they walk past one of their outlets. Loyalty rewards and similar schemes can also be distributed to countless devices with a few taps of a screen.
Finally, mobile apps have made it easier for companies to narrow down their targeting methods to people who are interested. More dated marketing methods like banner or print advertising worked with a scattergun approach. They targeted absolutely everyone, meaning that you would pay money for the service and have no idea how much business you’d get back from it.
With apps, on the other hand, customers have to go out of their way to buy or download the app. This means that all the marketing efforts run through the app will be received only by those who are actually interested in the business. Even better, the use of sign-up forms allows business owners valuable insights into the kinds of people who are looking at their business. This can be used in turn for more effective marketing tactics. This has been a breath of fresh air for business owners who were tired of pouring money down the drain!
These three things are just a handful of ways that mobile apps have changed the world of business. Who knows what other big effects we’ll see in the future!