In this day and age, it is truly hard to assess the extent to which smartphones and smartphone apps have changed our lives. However, the recent surveys indicating that as much as 80% of users check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up and that mobile apps score 100-300% higher conversion rates than traditional mobile-optimized websites give us a pretty good idea about their importance in the context of digital marketing.
Yes, with the pool of 6.4 billion users in the world, smartphone apps are rapidly changing the face of digital marketing and taking the lead as one of the most efficient and profitable channels available.
Let us take a look at a couple of ways this change is taking place and see if you can leverage these facts to the benefit of your company in 2022.
Flexibility and continuous engagement
First and foremost, mobile apps are one of the rare digital marketing channels that allow marketers to stay connected to the audience 24/7. They are not so reliant on third-party services, usually offer the clients secure payment options, and create an easy to navigate and immersive environment graced with all the benefits of the smartphone world like push notifications, day-to-day updates, etc. All these things drastically improve the customer experience and invite users to come back for more making a perfect canvas for continuous engagement that can’t be matched by any other digital marketing channel
Close ties to social media
Social media is a very important marketing channel that allows companies to effectively promote the brand and establish an informal and face-to-face relationship with their clients. The mobile apps play an incredibly important part in this story. Leveraging the rich pools of information provided by social media and making the natural next step for the interaction between the brand and the client, apps are slowly pushing out the websites and becoming the most important conversion platform in the industry. Apps are also far more capable of using social media to provide relevant customized content.
Personalized content
Unlike all other digital marketing channels, mobile apps are already inherently customized and build to provide a very specific type of content to a very specific audience. For instance, a motherhood app like Mumli has a built-in audience that has an expressed interest in a certain type of item. This fact can be used to focus the personalized content to the extent that is hard to emulate in all other fields of marketing. Taking into consideration the average Millennial has about 67 apps installed on the phone, you can see why this digital space is becoming increasingly important for present-day marketers.
Enhanced brand value
Some brands like Instagram are defined by the mobile apps they have rolled out. Others use these apps to enhance brand value. Take for instance the Adidas Runtastic a very popular running app that has no connections to the Adidas online stores but obviously speaks to the audience interested in some form of fitness and exposes the Adidas brand to that new audience. The examples like these transform how we understand certain brands and lend them with an incredible amount of untapped value without costing a fortune to produce or asking for any major brand refocusing campaigns on behalf of the owner.
More reliable customer service
Customer service is one of the main pillars of the present-day business world. Speaking in cold numbers, as much as 52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a brand that has previously delivered a positive CR experience. Keeping that in mind, we have to point out that the easy-to-interact-with and always-on nature of the mobile apps present the perfect channel for this critical business activity. As a matter of fact, a growing number of companies are choosing apps as their go-to tool for communication, promotion, gathering feedback, and other important CR tasks.
The potential for revenue growth
Serving such an important role in the marketing and CR process, the mobile apps also represents a tremendous asset in stimulating revenue growth within one company. In 2021, the spending on mobile apps reached $133 billion which is a nearly 20% increase in comparison to the year before. Even if attribute some of these numbers to the global spread of the COVID-19, the fact remains that mobile apps represent the perfect ground where companies can market, convert and trade all at the same time. With that in mind, we can expect the apps to take a more important role in driving global revenue.
Taking over the global digital traffic
Putting aside all the interesting benefits we covered above, we have to finish this article by concluding that apps are slowly but firmly becoming an exclusive source of all internet traffic. According to recent research, 70% of digital traffic in the USA is generated by smartphone and tablet use. We can also translate these numbers to the rest of the developed world. Putting things into perspective we cannot help but question the efficiency of traditional digital marketing strategies. According to all indicators, the battles of the future will be fought in the app backyard and that's where your focus should be.
We hope these few considerations gave you some general idea about the growing relevance of mobile apps in the ever-changing world of digital marketing. The modern world is growing heavily reliant on smart devices and the apps present the best way to use them. This creates an incredibly vast landscape you can use to build your business empire for the grounds up. Take this into consideration when devising the marketing strategy for the next year.
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