Brand Apps Can Help You Create 10X Value

In the business world, everyone, but everyone has their own branded app. Or so it may seem. And let’s be honest, from a user perspective, don’t we often pick an app over a website when we have the opportunity? 

Of course, things aren’t cut and dried here. Some apps are doing more harm to customer experience than good. Other businesses may have a mountain to climb to translate their service or product offering in a meaningful way on an app. Challenges aside, it is still absolutely worth investigating. Here’s why. 

Benefits of branded apps for your business

There are huge business benefits to creating a brand app. They include:

• Building brand awareness.
• Increasing customer loyalty.
• Providing another revenue-generating touchpoint. 
• Improving the customer experience with your brand. 
• Attracting new customers, especially if your app ranks on App stores and is easy to discover.

You don’t have to be a B2C business to reap the benefits here either. Successful B2B brand apps include Dropbox, Google Analytics and Hootsuite. 

How do I create a marketing app?

As with any software development project, there is a lot of work involved in creating a brand app. And we’re not just talking about the techy part, or the bells and whistles. It has to start with the audience. 

Understanding them and creating an app that is intuitive is key to its success. Here are a few of the main things to consider:

• Research your market to unearth opportunities and discover what your competitors are doing well, and where you can improve.
• Develop customer personas and ensure they are focussed on your app. 
• Get a feel for the tone of voice you need to adopt on the app. Like any marketing platform, you may find that you need to tweak your brand’s tone of voice, depending on the platform you’re using.

Things to consider 

Building a brand app isn’t simple, but it will be worth it! Before you start, take note of the lessons learned from other businesses. While having a feel for what challenges you may face isn’t a foolproof way to avoid stumbling blocks, it can help you to form strategies to pre-empt them wherever possible.

Typical issues include:

• Distributing your app and getting people to download and use it.
• Overcoming technical and functionality issues.
• Finding ways to compete in a busy app environment. 

In conclusion …

Brand apps are a powerful way to connect with your audience, attract new customers and grow loyalty. When executed in the right way, they will also enhance the user experience and enable businesses to monetise another platform. 

For all these reasons, apps are a must for many brands and an innovative way of hitting all those goals. The important thing is to create branded apps that are seamless and intuitive. Remembering your audience and building an app that does this is what makes good apps succeed and substandard ones fail. And let’s not forget, apps aren’t just for B2C businesses. B2B can reap the benefits too.