Ready to go mobile but not sure how to implement your company’s goals? There are several ways you can distribute content to your clients’ mobile devices and grow your profits at the same time. Here’s a cheat sheet with some helpful ideas:
- Coupons. If you work in retail, coupons can be a great way to attract loyal customers and monetize through repeat purchases. Printed coupons may be lost or forgotten whereas the redemption rates for digital coupons are over 30% depending on the industry.
- Promo materials. When launching a sale or a promo, you want to reach as many customers as possible. If you have a solid client base in your mobile app, a push notification will inform them about the sale – a week, a day or an hour before the actual start. This is more effective than a lost e-mail or an annoying text message from an unknown number.
- Event materials. Events usually have a schedule, so typically a bunch of text messages is sent out about all the lectures and workshops. Content-based mobile apps are perfect for event marketing because, seriously, smartphones are a very personal digital channel, and the opt-out rates for push notifications are lower than for e-mails and SMS messages. Besides, a program guide will be very helpful for your visitors, who won’t need to look at your website each time they want to check the details of a talk.
- Best blog posts. You might have a mobile version of your blog thanks to the flexibility of the blogging platforms, but mobile apps generally engage users more as the average time spent using a mobile app is higher than for browsing mobile web pages.
- White papers and e-books. Surely, you have added several extremely useful PDFs about online marketing (or any other sphere you work in) to your website, in exchange for some contact information? This works, but are you sure your clients are always comfortable reading your white paper on a desktop screen? Many people find a mobile device is better for reading, so why don’t you give it a try and distribute this type of content through a mobile app? If you need their contact information, just use a social plugin, or ask additional questions when the app is installed. Make sure you reward your loyal clients with super quality content.
- Self-published books. This idea is similar to the previous two, but if you want to concentrate on personal branding as well as the content itself, a mobile app will add weight to your influence.
- Photo galleries. Photographers might find it difficult to promote their eye-pleasing and high-definition visuals on small smartphone screens but in fact it is simple to optimize images for small screens with a gallery that is as easy to use as iOS Camera Roll (without the doubtful “Moments”, of course). This works well in a mobile app, and the users won’t feel irritated each time your heavyweight photos are not loaded completely on the mobile website.
- In-company communication. I bet you’ve been in a situation where you needed to transmit information to your regional or local managers, and there was a problem adding attachments or sharing other important business content such as brochures or presentations because Google Drive and Dropbox don’t work well on smartphones. Mobile apps with instant content delivery will help you out, and the file format issues will be solved by the platform itself, so your managers can receive all the necessary information on time.
- Marketing catalogs and brochures. The biggest problem for most businesses is increasing the customer retention rate since acquisition is not the only way for a business to grow. As a branded mobile app has been shown to be an efficient highly readable and highly trusted digital channel, you should use this method to remind your customers of your brand with high-quality and useful content that touches upon their values and generates new applications for your product. Apart from this, mobile apps can be used to inform your customers about new product features and other company news, like press releases – why not?
- Business presentations to your partners. If you want to add luster to the way you negotiate, use a mobile app to share business presentations. If the mobile solution has social media and e-mail sharing integration, it will impress your partners even more. It’s convenient, and it’s instant – is there anything else to want?
- Marketing materials for your employees. If your e-mail campaigns to your company employees have not been successful (low read rates, high opt-outs, etc.), you need to optimize your message and try to make the content more engaging. But apart from that, there might be a technical problem, too (spam filters, too much information for your employees to read, slow mail servers, etc.). The latter is solved by a mobile solution that will guarantee (with a 90% probability) that your message is delivered properly.
What content do you use for your mobile apps? Do you have any other great ideas? Please share them with us!