According to some estimates, the number of mobile devices in use globally soon will be greater than the number of people in the world. Considering this remarkable tipping point, it may come as no surprise that consumers today expect to find an app for that—and “that” is virtually everything. For marketers, this expectation means that every brand likely needs to establish an app that, at the very least, acknowledges the company’s presence for app users who search for it.

Mobile apps, unlike the dedicated, native apps written for a particular operating system, exist freely online. They are not collected, organized, and available from an easy-to-navigate app store. Therefore, consumers must search for the app for their local bakery, say, if they want to know what flavor the daily muffins will be each day. If that bakery fails to provide an app, it also might lose a customer.

Yet even as customers increasingly expect to find apps, many retailers struggle with getting them to use the existing apps in ways that produce revenue. As one small store owner noted, a mobile self-checkout app might be cool, but it remains difficult “to change 100 years of shopping habits, where the in-store experience is bringing your items to a cashier.”

Accordingly, the focus for most of the apps being introduced today has shifted away from direct selling efforts. Instead, brand-specific apps offer information, whether about the products themselves or about the service the firm provides. For example, a realtor in the Nashville area developed an app to give its agents and their prospective buyers more detailed information about the properties they visited. Another app from an executive consulting firm offers some details about the consultants’ general start-up plans for new businesses. If users find this information helpful, they can visit the consultancy to get personalized recommendations—at a much higher price, of course.

In this sense, dedicated apps represent a new brand element that can communicate a technologically savvy, attentive image for the company. When a four-location preschool chain developed an app to allow parents to watch their children, playing in well-supervised rooms throughout the day, it helped the school support its claim that it had its clients’ best interests at heart, that children were well cared for at the school, and that it was constantly looking for ways to benefit parents.

Source: Eilene Zimmerman, “Even Small Players Can Seize the Day with an App Strategy,” The New York Times, October 10, 2012

 

 

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According to some estimates, the number of mobile devices in use globally soon will be greater than the number of people in the world. Considering this remarkable tipping point, it may come as no surprise that consumers today expect to find an app for that—and “that” is virtually everything. For marketers, this expectation means that every brand likely needs to establish an app that, at the very least, acknowledges the company’s presence for app users who search for it.

Mobile apps, unlike the dedicated, native apps written for a particular operating system, exist freely online. They are not collected, organized, and available from an easy-to-navigate app store. Therefore, consumers must search for the app for their local bakery, say, if they want to know what flavor the daily muffins will be each day. If that bakery fails to provide an app, it also might lose a customer.

Yet even as customers increasingly expect to find apps, many retailers struggle with getting them to use the existing apps in ways that produce revenue. As one small store owner noted, a mobile self-checkout app might be cool, but it remains difficult “to change 100 years of shopping habits, where the in-store experience is bringing your items to a cashier.”

Accordingly, the focus for most of the apps being introduced today has shifted away from direct selling efforts. Instead, brand-specific apps offer information, whether about the products themselves or about the service the firm provides. For example, a realtor in the Nashville area developed an app to give its agents and their prospective buyers more detailed information about the properties they visited. Another app from an executive consulting firm offers some details about the consultants’ general start-up plans for new businesses. If users find this information helpful, they can visit the consultancy to get personalized recommendations—at a much higher price, of course.

In this sense, dedicated apps represent a new brand element that can communicate a technologically savvy, attentive image for the company. When a four-location preschool chain developed an app to allow parents to watch their children, playing in well-supervised rooms throughout the day, it helped the school support its claim that it had its clients’ best interests at heart, that children were well cared for at the school, and that it was constantly looking for ways to benefit parents.