When it comes to selling mobile apps to small business there are 5 sales tips to bear in mind. These can be used to explain how and indeed why the business should look to invest in Apps.
Obviously, one consideration is the overall cost of apps, which is difficult to discuss here. Depending on your model of producing the app, the types of services or products it must display and sell. All of these considerations will have an impact on the overall cost.
What we are discussing here then are the general positives for investing in apps. This hopefully will draw the interest of the small business you are pitching too.
Table of Contents
Points to Consider while Selling Mobile Apps to Small Business
You can then move onto discussing costing tailored to the requirements of the business you are talking too.
#1 How Customers Access the Internet is Changing
For many businesses in the 21st Century, their interactions with the Internet can define the success – or indeed the failure – of the business. The Internet, after all, has fueled a revolution in how we consume the products and services supplied by businesses.
This revolution has seen a number of traditional businesses go to the wall – even go out of business – for failing to adapt. At the same time, it has seen the rise of giants like Google and Amazon who have appeared to dominate this new marketplace. On an average, Google acquires 2 companies every month.
Of course in between those who have failed to adapt and those that have become international business juggernauts are the normal businesses, the 99%. They have worked hard to adapt existing business models or to build brand new web-based business enterprises from scratch. And many of them have done a simply fantastic job of doing so.
However, and here comes the bad news I’m afraid – whilst that war has been won, a brand new battlefield has emerged – Mobile Internet. If we just take a look at the figures supplied in SimilarWeb’s State of Mobile Web 2015 report, we can see that even then around 56% of consumer traffic to the top US websites came via mobile devices – mainly Smartphone’s and Tablets.
That is a phenomenal growth in usage coming from mobile devices. And that was back in 2015! The numbers right now are even higher and will carry on climbing.
#2 Why an App?
This could well be a question they, and the best answer to this question is to counter with a question of your own – Why Not?
Ok, lets put that another way.
Back in the distant past when the internet was just beginning to really roll out and many people in the business and commercial worlds used to ask why they needed a website. And in fact, they would wonder if they even needed to bother setting one up at all!
Yes, depending on your age you may well be reading that in something of a state of disbelief but I can assure you this was the case.
Today, it is inconceivable that any business or commercial enterprise would operate without a website. It’s just a given that they will have one, and the absence of one is strange indeed.
Mobile apps, many experts feel, will simply replace websites in the paragraph above. Pretty soon, the question will not be should we have an app, the question will be why do we not have one?
#3 The Rise of App Phones
Now, we need to look back at the data supplied by SimilarWeb as mentioned above. We are seeing a surge in usage of mobile devices to access the web, And that can be backed up by both observational evidence and by cold, hard data.
After all, just think for a moment of all the people you know aged between 16 and 25.
- How many of them use their Smartphone’s each and every day?
- How many of them use them every hour of the day?
Well, these are your customers of today and also of tomorrow. Just as we discussed above when businesses in the past had to adapt to the internet and start building and maintaining websites, so too do businesses of today need to adapt to this new way of accessing the internet and the services and products they supply.
The technology writer David Pogue, writing in 2009, said that the newer types of mobile phones should really be called “App Phones”.
He was referring to the early generations of iPhones and the Smartphones that followed in their wake, suggesting that they would take over from the more traditional type of mobile phone that until then had largely dominated the marketplace.
It’s safe to say that he called that right!
So those mobile devices that we know are driving access to the internet are not the same kind of devices that were being used back in the formative years of the internet. Therefore, even if you do have a website (and I’m assuming you do), the way that people today are accessing the web is changing.
It is a case of adapt or die, and more access these days is coming from mobile devices that, we discussed above, are really more like “App Phones,” than traditional platforms for web browsing software.
Apps, therefore, are popular and they are housed in a popular medium. Without considering mobile apps you are potentially locking your business out of this emerging – and rapidly growing – marketplace.
#4 A Modern Advertising Medium
Advertising has long been the lifeblood of successful businesses. After all, if people don’t know about your business, they can’t use it – that just stands to reason. On the other hand, today’s marketplace – especially online – is getting more and more congested.
Real word advertising is getting more and more expensive whilst simultaneously less effective. The earlier forms of online marketing are also failing, as today’s consumer is simply that much more savvy than the typical web surfer of even five years ago.
Promotional e-mails, for example, have a read rate of only about 4 to 5%. That is phenomenally low, and yet how many businesses persist with this advertising method – often because they simply do not know of any viable alternatives.
Here then we come to another reason why Mobile Apps are important for businesses. It’s because they can provide this very alternative that business and the marketing world are crying out for.
Push notifications – the small screens that are generated by tablet and phone apps have a reading rate of over 95%.
Take a second to look at that figure and compare it to the one we mentioned above for traditional promotional emails – that is a remarkably different figure! That is why mobile apps are going to be so important for any self-respecting business going forward. They get eyes on your message and your products, and in today’s crowded marketplace that is an ability that should not be underestimated.
#5 Build a Loyal Customer Base
Just as we discussed with advertising above, so too businesses of all types have known for a very, very long time that customer loyalty is one of the keys to long-term success.
Loyalty – as we discussed above, the modern consumer is tired of promo e-mails – that is why so many are deleted before they are read, or even diverted into the spam folder. Apps, as we saw have a higher reading rate of Push notifications – essentially the App world’s version of promo emails.
It’s understandable that companies send promo e-mails. They have the information they want to get their customers – about seasonal sales, discount codes, new products lines. And they want to get that information to the customer. But by selecting such a reviled medium for that information as the dreaded spam e-mail they risk alienating their customer base.
Mobile apps do not carry that same risk. Yes, too many pushes or pushes with poor information will annoy the customer. But, broadly speaking, they are reading those pushes. They are seeing the information that they contain – and so long as that information is leading them to products or services that they want, they are going to be happy to see them. And happy to click on them.
So that is going to drive eyes and, more importantly, customers directly to your business. At the same time, you are achieving that without risking alienating your customers by bombarding them with spam e-mails – which, as we saw above, are barely even read anyway!
It is a fine line to walk – but if your app can give out information the users want, that drives them to what they consider great deals and products and services then you are going to have happy customers on two levels.
First – They are happy with the product or service your business sells or supplies. I assume this is already the case before you are bothering to investigate mobile apps.
Second – You are building good relationships between your mobile app and the customer who has decided to download it. That decision, in the mind of the customer, is now linked to the positive experiences of the app itself and the products and services it has directed the customer too.
Related Read:
- 10 Business Telephone Etiquette Tips For Best Business Sales
- 5 Aspects where Business can Improve (Technology to Grow your Business)
- How to Solve Problems Faced by Small Businesses with Proper Mindset?
The result is a very happy customer – happy on two fronts – and that kind of happiness builds – get ready for this – brand loyalty.
I hope you got best points for selling mobile apps to small business. What do you think of it?