Why Small Businesses Should Invest In Customer Engagement Apps

Digitization has taken over many essential aspects of our personal and professional lives. Many small business owners and startups think that owning a website and running a social media page is enough. This is not true anymore. Businesses that limit themselves to websites and social media expose themselves to one-time purchases.

Most customers will often find you online, make a purchase, and then disappear. You never know if they’ll ever show up again. However, due to the increased use of smartphones with improved features, many online activities have moved to mobiles.

Businesses that engage their customers on mobiles have a better chance of retaining them and generating more sales. Read on to see why it’s vital for small businesses to create a customer engagement app.

#1. Real-Time Customer Interaction

As a small business, the worst thing that can happen is to lose contact with your customers. Small businesses often get overpowered by bigger competitors in the same field. This is a huge challenge and customer engagement apps can help you avoid this situation.

A mobile app allows you to be in constant engagement with your customers. You can keep your existing clients coming back and also widen your reach for new prospective clients. The app works 24/7. This means you can send notifications and reminders to your clients at any time of the day, reminding them of your products and services.

With a customer engagement app, your brand is right there in the pocket of your clients. The more often you use the mobile app to interact with the customers, the more they’ll buy your products.

#2. Personalized Marketing

Did you know that 70% of customers expect brands to offer them a personalized experience?

A mobile customer engagement app helps you personalize communication with your customers. You can develop healthy relationships with your customers if you grab the opportunity to engage with them in real-time.

Also, you can use mobile apps to collect customer information and know their locations. Your business can then leverage this data to send personalized notifications and relevant updates. For example, you can use this data to provide birthday offers for your customers.

This form of personalization creates better experiences for your customers and fosters deeper relationships with your brand.

#3. Stay Ahead of your Competition

Not many small businesses have embraced the use of customer engagement apps. This means that when you invest in one, it’ll tell your customers that your brand is genuine and you intend to stay in the market for a long time.

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You can take this big leap and grab the attention of your customers by using your mobile app. This will also demonstrate that your brand is tech-savvy. If, for example, you’re offering a product or service that is new to the market, people may hesitate because they are not sure about your reliability.

Other reasons why they may hesitate is because of the perception that you are new so you might not deliver well. But with an app, people will feel that you have a strong commitment to your brand. This keeps you ahead of your competition.

#4. Boosts Customer Loyalty

Enhancing customer engagement and access to your products and services improves customer loyalty significantly. It builds genuine bonds with your customers and increases loyalty to your brand.

As a small business, you should strive to provide your loyal clients with extraordinary service, at any time and from anywhere. With a well designed and user-friendly customer engagement app, you can sell, answer inquiries, process returns, and give reference materials. The best part is that you can do these activities round the clock.

You can also come up with a loyalty program where you reward customers who keep coming back. This is a tried and tested promotional strategy. Your business can offer cashback and coupons for the customers who use your app for a long time.

#5. Builds Brand Awareness

One of your essential goals as a small business owner should be to build enhanced brand recognition. Mobile customer engagement apps help you to do this. With a customer engagement app, more people will know about your brand because it remains on their screens.

This means that they will remember you when purchasing and choose you over your competitors. Customer engagement apps act like advertisements to your customers.

#6. Nowadays Everyone Uses Mobiles

Many people’s lives rotate around their smartphones. We want to have everything on one click. The number of smartphone users is expected to grow to up to 2.87 billion users.

62% of these users access the internet on their phones. Also, the average smartphone user spends an average of 3 hours per day on their device. Therefore, it’s no longer enough to own a business website. Mobile apps are essential tools for businesses to tap the potential of this medium.

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Also important to note is that 79% of all smartphone users have at least made one purchase using mobile apps in the past six months. This goes to show that mobile apps are important for improving sales.

#7. Increased Revenue

Some of the factors that significantly lead to increased business revenue include enhanced customer satisfaction and customer engagement. More than 70% of customer purchasing decisions are based on how they are treated by the business they are buying from.

When you make the customers’ buying process more straightforward, convenient, and intuitive, the customer experience improves. This leads to more sales and increases business revenue. Your customers won’t go away and will also refer new customers to your business.

Final Thoughts

Moving into the mobile world is a vital step for small businesses. There are many ways that a business can benefit from making this move. Customer engagement apps will boost your sales and increase your business revenue.  Also, you’ll experience greater customer loyalty because of personalized marketing.

Your business will stay ahead of your competition because not many businesses have moved to mobile apps yet. Further, more people will become aware of your brand, and it’ll grow because they can access the app at any time. You can use the real-time interaction provided by the app to improve customer engagement.


You may consider signing up for free CRM for small business to know more. The knowledge will help you stay ahead and grow your business. 

 

 

Kelechi Okeke