How a mobile strategy can drive profit

Mobile apps are the buzzword in how you can move your business forward into the mobile-first era in front of us, but do you actually know how an app will give you a return on your investment? This blog looks at the various ways in which your app can offer you a whole new world of opportunities from leveraging awesome features such as GPS to capturing your user's attention with push notifications.

A Geo-Targeted World

Imagine this. The weather forecast in Dubai is rain (not a regular event by any means but still) and you are an umbrella stockist in the downtown area. You send a push notification out to nearby users, notifying them of an offer on umbrellas for the incoming storm. Your sales go up by 90%. This dream is becoming a reality. Other ways you could target people are:

• Musicians can notify fans in a city they are visiting on tour of discount rates and giveaways direct to their smart phone.
• Restaurants can poach users from the bar around the corner with offers on that night, similar to what Foursquare tries to do.
• Clothes shops could send a push notification as users walk by enticing them to come in and try on an outfit they looked at online

Geo-targeted advertising is also a way that the GPS tool can be of great help to your business. Your business can make subtle changes to advertising based on location. You could insert slang from a certain region to target those users and use a difference wording elsewhere. Smart ads are geographically and contextually optimized for your audience.

Offers

By combining the two technologies, push notifications and geotargeting, your business can produce some amazing results. Groupon Now is a good example of how businesses can deliver last minute offers to users in a certain location but this is just the beginning.

Say you own a bar and it is a slow night. You decide to extend Happy Hour to keep things going but traditionally, the word would spread fast enough to make much of a difference. Now you could send out a push notification to all your users in the area and see how many show up. Chances are, quite a few.

Less bounce, more revenue

When a user bounces online, it is because the user either can't be bothered following through on a purchase, gets distracted, or doesn't have a credit card to hand. One way GPS can help with this is by automatically filling in the address for the user, saving them time typing it in. This would be particularly useful for pizza delivery services and take away businesses.

Data, data, data

Your business can track everything that your users do online and on their app. You can see what they looked at, how many times and where they went to next. If a young lady returned to a dress online that she liked 3 times, but never quite took the jump to buy the dress, your business could send her a push notification offering her 10% in the next 24 hours on that specific item. It is likely that this offer would be the push she needs.

Ultimately, apps are helping businesses to become a lot more efficient. They allow business owners to target users a lot more specifically. They can profile Erik from Abu Dhabi with his interest in paragliding, collecting antiques and a love of BBQ pizza. They can target what he wants, not the broader spectrum of the entire city. All of this results in more revenue and an enhancement of user experience.

Looking to develop a mobile marketing strategy for your business? Get in touch with us today.