The number one reason is when someone installs a mobile app on their phone, they are visible to their customers at all times. I mean, the stats show on average, people spend more than two hours a day on their mobile devices. Now, granted there are probably only a few applications which make up the bulk of this total usage.

However, it doesn’t change the fact that a user has to scroll through on their phone to find apps that they want to use. So that being said, they’re still going to be scrolling past your company’s app icon. Now whether they open that app you or not is irrelevant, the fact that your logo and your branding is always within their eye shot, subconsciously they’re aware of that and it helps to reinforce your brand

There are countless businesses these days that run loyalty card programmers that use snail mail, coupons, offer sent in the post to people’s doors. And granted it’s still effective but I’ve lost count of how many of the cardboard loyalty cards I’ve lost. I’ve lost count of coupons which have come through my mail box which I want to use but I just forget about it.

I simply forget to bring the coupons with me to the shop. (I never forget to bring my phone out with me though) Now with an app you can digitalize all this by having the loyalty card within the app, you can have the coupons within the app. And not only that, by harnessing the power of push notifications you can send a message making people aware of this.

A push notification message to a user of your app when they enter a certain radius that will send them out a coupon to come into your store, and they’ll get 10% off; which is immensely powerful because you are marketing the people based on the location they are currently at.

If they’re near your store, and they’re thinking about going to another store to buy something which they could buy from yours. When they get a coupon through to their phone that makes it a very easy decision of where they want to go.

It does not matter what you’re selling. You could be selling floors, physiotherapy, coffee, lunch menus and lunch deals at restaurants, dental treatment, styling, home decor…  if your users have a way to get the same end result without having to pick up the phone and call you, then it’s going to improve your business.

Let’s say for example, they want to make a booking for a restaurant or they want to make a booking for a massage. Well, then, they can just open up the app on your phone, enter in their booking, select the date, select the time and then they can make that appointment, all without having to pick up the phone. So that’s the level of customer engagement that you want.

Maybe you’ve got some new product lines in; well, you can add them to your catalogue. People can open up your app, look at your catalogue and they can make an appointment to come in. Maybe you’ve got a real estate app and people are looking for properties in a certain area. Or you’ve got an auto car dealership or you sell parts for mountain biking, road biking. So that just creates a better level of engagement with your customer.

When you think about how much advertising the average person must see; whether it be TV advertising; whether it would bill boards they drive past; whether it will be advertising at bus shelters, on their Facebook news feed. When they search Google on websites they visit with banner ads; coupons that are posted through the door, I mean, emails they get sent. It’s a lot of space to compete with so many when you try to advertise you’re going to slowly… unless you’re right on the ball, you’ll lose… you’ll begin to lose your impact with your customers.

Now if they have your app on their phone, you don’t need to compete with everyone else. You don’t need to compete with anyone else with Facebook ads; you don’t need to compete with anyone else in adword ads because they have their own… you have your own little space on their phone, which is your app. So you’ve got a nice little bit in their pocket where you’re able to communicate with them directly at any point.

So when you’re running an offer, rather than relying on them to look at your fan page or visit your website to see what offer it is you’re running; you can just send the push notification which will alert that user to that offer. So there’s no competing with anyone and that will help to build return business.