Overview:

Businesses go through many changes adapting to market fluctuations. in order to stay at the forefront, you have to analyze the environment and create effective strategies to help you achieve your company goals. Building an effective strategy will depend on the scale of your business. First of all, you have to get a diagnosis that defines the challenge you are facing. The second step is to create a guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. A policy directs action while also ruling out other approaches. Once you know how you are going to approach the challenge, you need to set coherent actions to accomplish the policy established. The future is digital and the market place has evolved in accordance, therefore strategies have to be focused on the digital.

Identify your audience:

 There wouldn’t be business without customers, but you need to know what their profile is. Chaffey and Smith (2013, p155), state that there are two sources of competitive advantages, the ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition, and the ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition. Chaffey and Smith (2013, p160) also state that in the EU, customers are consuming less TV, newspapers and magazines and more internet.

It’s important to identify online consumers buying behaviour differently to offline consumers, doing so, you could move through their online mental stages. online customers talk back when the brand breaks what promised, they have unlocked the brand control. You need to know if your segment buys more frequently your product compared to your competition. How much time they spend on your website? , how much and how often they buy? , do they give feedback or compare different products before buying them?. All these questions are key for developing better customer experience as an outcome of your strategy.

Make your brand mobile:

The explosive growth of mobile devices is helping with the transition away from desktop web-based applications. Old systems have cluttered displays, complex and inconsistent layouts that make customers feel frustrated when they are purchasing and the network drops. The steady interest in user-interface design (UI), stems from designers’ desire to improve the users’ computing experience. When you decide to make your brand mobile, the user interface (UI) is important to define the functionality of the platform you want to launch. UI focuses on how the elements are laid out and how they communicate with the user

 Always take into account your available digital marketing channels or assets to incorporate into your strategy, for example, your social media influence. It’s helpful to first consider the bigger picture to avoid getting overwhelmed.  The development of a mobile app is the best way to take advantage of your competitors, ensure a boost of sales, reassure customers loyalty and gain a bigger market share. Apps have become necessary tools in which we spend 82% of our time when using mobile devices comparing to 18% we dedicate to browse the web. Here are some tips to take into account when creating an app for your brand.

• Create a good product: your app has to outstand among similar ones,  it has to be well designed for a good UI and UX ( user experience), and be able to solve a problem or address your audience needs. Build your app in-house will benefit you in many different ways like retaining full control, making it easy to customize or change the app whenever needed, and also respond quickly to user requests. keeping the app in-house will eliminate worries about compatibility with third-parties.
• build virality: You can achieve this through UI and UX, incorporating a key feature in the app that’s going to make users want to attract potential new users
• Promote the app: Let your marketing team prepare a good promotion for the app, necessary to test metrics, so you can know users acceptation and understand the real value of each one of them.
• Track and measure traffic: Use tracking tools to monitor user’s clicking patterns and usage of the app
• Make it Free: Always use the magic word free and you will increase the number of people that will try your app.

Despite the pros of developing an app for your business, not everything is as easy and beautiful as it seems, here you have some cons to consider before investing your resources to develop the app for your business.

• your app has to suit both ios and Android platforms, which will increase the budget
• Mobile websites are easier to optimize than apps
• If the development of the app is done poorly, and consumers see a shoddy app, it makes the business seem amateur.

References

Chaffey, D. and Smith, P. (2013). Emarketing excellence. New York: Routledge.

gu9creative. (2019). pros and cons of developing mobile apps for business. [online] Available at: http://gu9creative.com/useful-stuff/the-pros-and-cons-of-developing-mobile-apps [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].

Larizadeh, A. (2019). Eight Tips For A Successful App. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/avidlarizadeh/2013/07/19/eight-tips-for-a-successful-app/#391710b453e5 [Accessed 25 Feb. 2019].

Ryan, D. (2014). Understanding Digital Marketing. 3rd ed. kogan page.