The information below is a transcription of the material shared in the video above – it was originally delivered verbally as opposed to in writing, so if you have the ability we recommend that you watch the video.
Why Small Businesses Don’t Buy Mobile Apps?
You’re selling features and not benefits
Small businesses are notoriously late adopters of technology
Businesses are more comfortable buying products they understand
So tie the app to marketing channels that small businesses know to work!
Solve Marketing Problems, Don’t Sell Mobile Apps
Sell more Facebook fans and activity
Sell more Twitter followers and activity
Sell more positive online reviews
Sell more emails to add to their newsletter
Sell more repeat business through loyalty programs
Sell more revenue means beating their competition
Sell a mobile app as a complete marketing tool!
Example Questions To Start With
How time are you spending on marketing? Do you do it alone or with a team?
How much money are you currently investing in your marketing? ROI?
How strong do you think your social strategy is?
Is your Yelp rating costing you business?
Are you growing revenue with a customer loyalty program?
Do you currently use email marketing?
Are your customers finding your business by ranking highly on Google?
Problem
1.You’re selling a “mobile app” to have an app
2.You’re selling a vitamin, not a pain pill
3.You’re not solving any problems
Solution:
You’re selling a marketing tool that solves problems for small businesses in many marketing channels.
Example Questions to Start With
Really start making the small business owner understand where they are with their marketing strategy. How much time are they spending on their marketing? Do they do it alone or do they have a team? You might be surprised at the answers that you get.
You might have someone who says, “I have an intern that’s handling my social media marketing and it’s probably really not that effective.” How much money are they currently investing in their marketing? Do they even know their return on investment? I can’t tell you how many times I have run into small business owners that spend $5000 on a newspaper ad and they have no idea what their return on investment is.
Return on investment is key to having a strong marketing strategy in any business and that is especially true with small businesses.
Another question is, “How strong do you think your social media strategy is?” Do they even have one? Do they consistently post on their social media pages? Do they have a plan to get more Facebook followers and Twitter fans? Where are they with that?
Another question is are they losing out to competitors due to a low Yelp score rating? Are they growing their business with a customer loyalty program? Do they have one in place? Have they thought about adding one? These are questions that resonate with small business owners because they understand how important a social media strategy is, an online review strategy is, a loyalty program strategy is.
Other questions include, “Do you use email marketing?” Do you have a way to grow your email marketing list if you do have one? Are your customers finding your business online with Google? How are you currently having customers find you by searching your business on Google? Do you have any strategy with that?
These sorts of questions are great questions to start with and it really starts to get the small business owner thinking “I’m probably behind on my marketing strategy. I’d love to learn more about how you could potentially help with all this.”
The Problem
To summarize, the problem with what I see a lot of people selling to small businesses doing – this is crucial and the main piece of this whole presentation – is you’re selling an app to have an app.
There’s nothing worse than that.
Small business owners do not want to buy a mobile app. If you’re going out and you’re saying, “Everyone has a mobile phone, everyone’s on their mobile devices all the time, there was a million phones sold last year, mobile apps are the bomb,” that’s just not going to resonate. They simply just do not care. They have so many other things going on that, if they don’t understand how it’s going to grow their business, they’re not going to buy. It’s that straightforward, so do not sell a mobile app just to have a mobile app.
That makes no sense.
You’re selling a vitamin and not a pain pill.
If you’re selling just one piece of this giant pie that we have and one benefit of what a mobile app can do for a small business – for example, if you are just selling a loyalty program – that’s what I would consider a vitamin. It will help, it will definitely grow their business, but it’s not going to be that knock-out punch where they’re really going to see their business explode.
So, you want to be selling a pain pill where you uncover these marketing problems and you present solutions to these marketing problems where small businesses understand, “Yes, I don’t have a social strategy, I don’t have an online review strategy, I don’t have a strategy for getting more customers in my business.” Tying all that together, that’s a pain pill.
That lets them know that they are losing customers every single day by not having a strategy in place and that you are able to provide that strategy to these small businesses very easily with a mobile application.
It all comes down to you want to be solving problems. You want to be uncovering problems and I’ll show you how to uncover these problems even more, but you want to be solving problems. Don’t sell mobile apps; solve problems.
The Solution
You’re selling a marketing tool for small businesses that helps them with many marketing channels.
This includes their online reviews.
This includes their search engine optimization strategy.
This includes their social media strategy.
This includes their email marketing strategy.
This includes their customer retention and customer loyalty strategy.
With a mobile application, you can help with all those marketing channels and small businesses understand how important all those marketing channels are.
A mobile app can be a complete marketing tool that helps a small business owner really increase their online reviews, increase the amount of traffic they are receiving from local searches, increase the amount of social media activity, help grow their mailing list, and then, most importantly, help them to have happy customers, which is customer loyalty and customer retention and getting those customers to come back and re-purchase and that is crucial. Small businesses legitimately live and die by how many customers they have coming back to their business and all of this ties together into one singular strategy that can be accomplished through a mobile application rather than having a separate solution for each one of these items.
Online reviews are critical for small businesses. What’s the big deal here? As I’m sure you guys know, Yelp and general online reviews – I’m talking not just Yelp but Google reviews, Trip Advisor reviews, there are many online review sites – online reputation for businesses is huge. Customers basically will not go to a business if they have a low score on Yelp or Google reviews.
It’s crucial for a business to be proactive when they are trying to increase their online review rating and, if they have a great rating already, they need to have a strategy to retain that rating. If they have a low rating, they definitely need to get a strategy immediately to increase that rating. One really powerful statistic I want to point out here is a 1 star reduction in a Yelp score rating can reduce a company’s revenue by 5-9%.
So, if we help a small business get, say, ten more positive reviews on their business and it increases their revenue by 10%, that is a huge return on investment for that small business owner and they are going to be a customer for life for you. Just understanding how important online reviews and how crucial they are for small businesses’ success is very, very important to the overall strategy on how a mobile app can help a business grow.
Solve Marketing Problems, Don’t Sell Mobile Apps
These are the things you want to be targeting and selling, as you want to be selling more Facebook fans, more Twitter followers, more Yelp reviews, more Google Places reviews, more email subscribers, more loyal customers, more repeat business, which in the end helps them beat their competition and helps them grow their business, which is, again, all they care about. Small businesses, if you walk up to them and ask them, “Do you understand how important a social media strategy is to your business?” they’re going to probably say, “Yes.” If you ask them, “Do you think that online reviews are important to your business?” they’re going to say, “Yes.” The same with email marketing, repeat business.
But a mobile application is still in that infancy stage where it’s going to be hard pressed for a small business owner to really understand “Why do I need a mobile application? I have a mobile website.” That’s a very common thing that we hear from small business owners, but by tying what a mobile app can do and showing the small business owner that they can solve all these problems with the app, it becomes a very powerful marketing tool and it’s no longer viewed as just a mobile app to the small business owner.
That really sets up buying triggers and makes them take a meeting and eventually purchase a mobile app from you because they see how much of a difference it can make within their business.
How Can a Mobile App Increase Social?
I’m sure some of you guys are wondering this and it’s pretty simple. Within our product, you can integrate your Facebook and Twitter accounts. If you’re using, say, our white-labelled mobile app management tool called Skipper – if you don’t know what Skipper is, go to skipperapp.io – it’s an app where you can essentially send out push notifications and integrate your Facebook page and your Twitter page and you can update all of that all at once.
So you can send out a push notification like “Like our Facebook page today and get 10% off your next meal” and instantly they’re going to have more activity on all of those pages and they’re going to be able to update those pages at the same time, driving more activity and more engagement to their customers. Because there’s nothing worse than going to a Facebook page and seeing that there has been no posts. It looks like the business is dead. With our platform, we are able to easily allow the small business owner, who’s probably really pressed for time, to update their Facebook and Twitter accounts and send out push notifications all at once right from their phone. You can even do this from the dashboard.
So, it’s all about being active, it’s all about sharing on Facebook and just understanding that these are very important marketing channels. They need to have a strategy to increase their social media presence because 53% of people recommend companies and products on Twitter. If they’re posting things on Facebook and they’re being shared amongst their customers, then they’re going to see an increase in their search engine optimization strategy which leads to more local searches and more people finding their business through Google.
64% of Twitter users and 51% of Facebook users are more likely to buy the products of brands they follow online.
So, if they are following them on Facebook or Twitter, then they are much more likely to purchase products online from them, as you can see here. So, again, very, very, powerful stuff which you can easily do by just updating it all at once either from your phone or from within the Bizness Apps push notifications dashboard. You can connect your Facebook page and your Twitter page extremely easily.
How Can a Mobile App Help Get More Online Reviews?
This one is pretty straightforward. If you send out a push notification that says, “Hey, review us on Yelp today,” or “Review us on Google Places” or “Check out our Yelp page, we’d love to reward you for that,” you’re going to see an increase in Yelp reviews, guaranteed. Some strong statistics that I want to share with you, 90% of Yelp users say that positive reviews affect their purchases and people who search on Yelp are ready to buy, so this is a huge opportunity.
By just sending a simple push notification and having that strategy and letting businesses know, that is only one of the ways to connect with a customer.
What’s great about a mobile application is, the people who download a mobile application are typically going to be happy customers.
When you send out a notification asking for reviews or just hinting, “Check out our Yelp page and potentially give us a review,” they are already happy customers because they’re downloading your app, they’re engaging with your business. So, you have a high chance of getting mostly 4 and 5 star reviews because they’re downloading your app, they’re a repeat customer, you’re incentivizing them to come into your business more, you’re doing a great job with your marketing.
This is a very powerful and easy strategy to get more online reviews, whether Yelp is important to you, Google Places, Trip Advisor, Zomato. I know there’s a ton of review sites out there, but it really applies to all of those sites and the strategy is just the same.
How Can an App Increase Customer Loyalty?
Rewarding customers for their patronage. That’s huge.
Letting customers know that you really care about them and that you want them to come in more than once and that you are willing to actually reward them for it. It’s been proven that people will come into a business more when they have some sort of loyalty program and they’ll choose a business that has a loyalty program over another business simply because they feel rewarded and everyone likes free stuff. If you’re going to get ten coffees and the eleventh one is free, you’re probably going to go to that same coffee place and that has been proven over and over. There’s no doubt that a customer loyalty scheme is a great way to drive customer retention and really get customers coming back in.
The loyalty solutions that we provide are really endless; we have digital stamp cards, we have loyalty reward programs, we have a QR coupon system. I want you guys to read this. It says, “People buy again and again from people they trust.” By offering a loyalty program to your customers, you’re really saying that you are appreciative of their business and you’re willing to reward them for being a repeat customer.
You can even set up a geo-fence, so that every time they pass by your business, you can send them a little reminder, “Hey, come on in today, write us a review and we’ll give you 20% off. We’d love to get your feedback.” Whatever it might be. We have geo-fencing technology that allows you to essentially, if you look down here at the bottom, fence off a certain area that, and whenever they pass through it, they’ll get that reminder. Maybe today they don’t feel like a burrito, but maybe tomorrow they do and when they pass through it, they’ll see that reminder. They’ll write that review, and again you reward them and that really strengthens that relationship. You’re rewarding them for marketing your business and that’s what’s so powerful about a mobile app. The solution that we provide is essentially a tool that can help businesses have their customers market for them.
So, customers are marketing a small business for them by ‘liking’ their Facebook page, following their Twitter account, by writing more online reviews, by subscribing to their email marketing list, by sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter. There is so much you can do within a mobile application that small businesses really understand and the return on investment in these activities is absolutely massive.
Just another simple example of this – very simple, but very effective – “Write a Yelp review today and get 20% off your next order!” And, again, you really want to increase those Yelp stars or whatever review site that relates to your business. I know it’s different for real estate, I know it’s different for different countries. Whatever it may be, the same strategy applies. Just ask for reviews and, what you do is, when they receive the push notification, take them directly to your page that you want them to post the review on. Don’t make them search for it. You can do that inside of our app builder.
You can set up a push notification, and then you can send them directly to where you want them to go on their phone, so you don’t have to send out a push notification, they open the app and they have to search for it. The conversion rate on that is going to be very, very low. But with our technology, what you can do is, let’s say in this example, say “Please give us a Yelp review, we’ll give you a discount,” and then what you can do is have it slide open and it will take them immediately to the page on which you want them to review.
These are very, very simple but powerful tactics that you can use and these are the things that will resonate with small businesses, that are really connecting the dots on how a mobile app is so much more than just a mobile app; it’s a marketing tool that can solve so many marketing problems that they have in their business. By revealing all of this to them, it really makes a very, very strong sales pitch because the return on investment is so hard to object to, because, if you are successful in any of these channels, you are going to see a very high return on investment.
These are our two most popular customer loyalty systems. On the left hand side you see our digital stamp card and then on the right hand side you see our advanced loyalty system. So, we offer legitimately four different types of loyalty systems for you to choose from, whichever one fits best with the business that you are working with. At Bizness Apps, we have the strongest footprint in terms of technology for customer loyalty in the industry.
Customer loyalty is huge for mobile applications. You want to entice them in and from there be able to market to them. You entice them in with a loyalty program, a mobile food ordering system or a reservation system, something that’s going to make their lives easier, and from there be able to market to their customers. The number one thing with mobile apps is you need to give customers a reason to download the mobile application.
Powerful Push Notes Ideas.
Just to give you guys some ideas of how you can leverage push notes even more. Promote a deal or special within your business. You can run an app only sweepstake with a strong call to action. Promote a feature in your app that users may not be using as much; this could be your mobile commerce feature, this could be your mobile food ordering feature, this could be your reservations feature, this could be your loyalty feature, or this could be just updating them on events that are coming up. The options are literally endless.
Research With Health Score Cards
When you’re implementing a strategy like this, you’re definitely going to want to do some research and this is where the sales strategy gets really interesting.
A lot of people go up to small businesses and they don’t really have a strategy beyond, “Hey, this is a mobile application. Here are the benefits. Would you like to purchase one?” That’s just not going to work, so please don’t do that!
What we recommend is really look at the business, and do your research. Because, when you do your research, first of all you gain their trust. You’ve done some research and you want to let them know, how their business stacks up against the competition. Because no small business owner likes to hear that they are behind on marketing to, let’s say, the hair salon down the street, because that hair salon is stealing customers from them.
If you are able to surface those problems in their marketing, their online reviews or their social media activity, or they don’t offer an easy way for their customers to schedule reservations or they don’t have a loyalty program, you’re showing them that they are behind and that creates pain within the business. When they see that, they start to realize that every single day they are losing out on customers. The best part about this is, you are able to let them know ASAP and you have a solution to their problems.
How would you research your prospects? I would ask – you can do this online, obviously – how many Facebook fans do they have compared to their competition? How many Twitter followers do they have? Do they have a strategy to grow any of the above? How are they getting positive Yelp reviews? Do they encourage customer loyalty?
The best of all is that you can help with everything.
You can help with giving them a social strategy.
You can help with giving them a loyalty strategy.
You can help with giving them a local strategy.
All at once, with a mobile application.
That’s where a mobile app becomes very, very powerful. When speaking to a small business, you’re not just talking about a mobile app anymore, you’re talking about a social strategy, a loyalty strategy, a local strategy, even other items like an email marketing strategy. The options are literally endless. The whole point I’m trying to get across is that, when you tie a mobile app to other channels that a small business is familiar with, it really makes the sales pitch so much easier because they understand the importance of these channels and you don’t have to explain why a mobile app is so important to them.
Compare Businesses Marketing To Their Competitors
How would you go about comparing businesses to others? What’s a good approach? How would you even start this conversation? The way I would do it is, I would go into a business and I would say, “How’s it going? I’ve been doing some market research on businesses in your area and I have some information about your business compared to your competition. Do you have 15 minutes to chat?” This is going to do a few things.
It’s going to get them curious.
It’s going to let them know how they compare to their competition.
Then you’re going to be able to provide real solutions to their problems to help grow their social, their local, and their mobile presence, such as, increasing customer loyalty, email marketing, their online reviews or social strategy. There’s a lot that you can do here.
I’m sure you’re wondering, how do you present this? What sort of research? How does this look? This is where it gets interesting. You want to show a business how they compare to their competition. Go through some ideas here and show them how important all of these aspects are. Customer loyalty to email marketing. And then, how do we present it in a way that will resonate with the business and what do we do with it?
This is what we recommend when selling to small businesses because this is what really creates pain and this is what really helps a business know that they are behind on marketing. This is where you can really leverage your research in to a format they can understand. We call this the business health scorecard. This is one example and you can edit this in Photoshop. We give you the raw source files for these.
So, if you look at this, we are looking at Joe’s Bar and they have a low Yelp score. They have very few Twitter followers. They’re doing OK on Facebook. They have no mobile strategy. So, we are giving them a D-. Then we compare them to their competition who is maybe at a B, a C, or an A – that’s really going to make a small business’s eyes open up and be, like, “Woah! I’m pretty behind here. I had no idea!” The thing is, you’re not just saying stuff, you’re proving it to them. You’re saying, “Listen. You post less than your competition. They have way more likes than you. What’s your strategy behind this? You have way fewer Twitter followers, definitely fewer than your competition. Your health score is pretty low, and you don’t have a mobile strategy. What are you doing to combat your competition who has all of these things in order?”
That is where you create pain for small businesses and that is what makes a small business buy. They don’t buy vitamins to help grow their business.
They buy things that they know will have an immediate impact on their business and when you present something like this, it shows them that they’re behind and they need to act quickly, because every single day Sally’s Hair Salon is stealing their customers and you have a solution to fix all of these problems you’re pointing out to them.
You’re giving them a digital marketing assessment.
You’re letting them know, how they stand in the market and uncovering these marketing issues that you have found. So you’ve built trust with the business, they’re really curious on how you plan to solve these problems and it gives you a great opportunity to present a mobile app as a solution to all these problems. To drive the score even further, you do research and give them a grade. There’s no rhyme or science to this, it’s basically comparing them to their competition, because no small business owner likes to hear that they are being out-marketed by their local competition. No business does.
Objections
What if they say, “I don’t have enough money for this”? What if they say, “It’s too expensive”? This one is really easy to get around. If they say they don’t have enough money, figure out what they are spending money on. If they are spending money on, let’s say, a $5000 newspaper ad, ask them whether they know the return on investment for that product. Maybe they are spending money on some software that they don’t even use anymore. That’s a great way to understand what are they spending money on and where can they reallocate resources to a better product where you can prove the return on investment. The idea here is to understand where they are spending their money and see if there is a way to replace whatever they’re using with your solution which is a mobile application.
Another common objection is, “My customers wouldn’t want to download a mobile application.” First off they need to view this as a marketing tool, not just a mobile app. This would only be true if they had zero repeat business. But, if they incentivize customers to download an app with a valuable offer, they will download the app. The key here is really let the small business know you will help craft a marketing strategy that will make this mobile app successful and will help increase all the marketing channels that I went over in this webinar.
Summary
Mobile apps can help grow revenue in so many different ways that I think a lot of you are just not uncovering.
You can get more Facebook fans, you can get more Twitter followers, you can increase your online reviews, you can get more newsletter subscribers, you can increase loyal customers, you can increase customer engagement. Mobile apps are such a powerful marketing tool that can help a small business manage other aspects of their marketing.
In summary, I want you all the say this together; “Mobile apps are a powerful marketing tool that can help a small business manage other aspects of their marketing.” When you tie it all together, it really paints a picture for a small business of how important a mobile app can be and how much it can benefit their business.