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Is A Mobile App Necessary For My Business?

For small businesses, creating a mobile app was not realistic two to three years ago, when the median cost to build an app was between $37,913 and $171,450 (but could rise to $500,000 or more).

In reality, the majority of small businesses tend to devote less than $10,000 a year total to advertising and marketing efforts, including mobile app creation.

However, with the majority of our time (86% or 2 hours and 19 minutes a day) spent on a mobile device, it’s crucial for a business to have mobile visibility.

The “mobile revolution” is transforming everyday lives. Customers now expect companies to have an app and to share information about products and services that are useful to them.

Mobile is the fastest-growing industry in history. Offering mobile services increases customer retention, attracts new customers, and differentiates your business from the competition.

Essentially, mobile devices are putting power back in the hands of the customer. This transformation in how businesses interact with consumers has brought about compelling market opportunities and some impressive statistics(link is external):

  • The mobile app market is predicted to grow 270% to $189 billion by 2020.
  • The mobile app industry is forecast for over 270 billion downloads in 2017.
  • The App Store will hit 5 million apps by 2020, more than doubling its current size.

From predicting the weather, to encrypting messages, to sharing photos with friends, to requesting a personal driver, there’s an app for most imaginable needs. But how many of these apps come from small businesses?

Small businesses steadily are entering the mobile app realm – creating apps to engage their customers and streamline internal business processes. In fact, nearly half of small businesses plan to create a mobile app by 2017 or later, and, at the beginning of 2017, 41% of small businesses already had a mobile app, up from the 20% in 2016.

What’s causing this increase in small business adoption of mobile apps? Data suggests that small businesses are building apps to increase sales (39%), improve customer service (29%), and compete in a specific market (22%).

Still on the fence as to whether having an app for your business is the right fit? Take a look here to view some of the most popular industries and how they are utilizing mobile apps. Then get in touch with us and we can sit down with you and discover what exactly you’re looking for and what the best fit it.

The Importance Of Utilizing AdWords

If you’re unfamiliar with AdWords, it’s simply a pay-per-click service which allows you to create and run ads for your business. These clickable ads are then displayed in Google’s search results. By using the right keywords for your target audience, you’re already ahead because you’re reaching people you have an interest in your product or service.

1. AdWords is Measurable and Flexible

One of the main advantages that online marketing has over traditional marketing channels, like TV or print, is that it’s extremely easy to measure. However, it can be a challenge to effectively measure your SEO campaign since you can’t always get a precise measurement on what increased or decreased your rankings. Enter AdWords PPC. This is probably one of the best resources you have to measure what’s working and what is not because it comes equipped with plenty of PPC metrics that do that task for you.

2. Faster Than SEO

A huge drawback with SEO is that it can take months before you notice any results thanks to competition and the time it take to “prove itself”. This is not the case with AdWords. Once your AdWords campaign goes live, ads will appear and you’ll get instant results, like visitor data.

3. More Engaging

Google is constantly improving AdWords because it’s one of its primary sources of income. Along the way Google noticed that product listing ads and in-video ads on YouTube get more more clicks from users. These engaging ads mean more revenue for Google, and advertisers as well because of new ad formats and extensions.

4. Can Control Your Advertising Costs

Here’s something that’s really awesome about AdWords. You can set a maximum cost per day for your campaign. And, it’s help to you on how much that amount is set at. How does this help your business? It allows you to budget your campaign accordingly without worrying if you’re going to go over budget. The worst case scenario is that the amount of ads will begin to decrease as your budget gets lower. However, you can increase your budget accordingly. This scalability is a nice option if you want a lot of leads in a short amount of time.

5. Helps Beat Your Competitors

Because of the speed of AdWords, when compared to SEO, you have a major advantage of your competitors. Because you’ll already be appearing in search engines, your site will be receiving more clicks from search results than all of the other companies in your industry.

If your company utilizing an effective PPC strategy? Contact RSM today for a free, no-risk evaluation. Get Started!

 

Increase Your Businesses Exposure With Beacons

Beacons – those electronic Bluetooth devices that alert you to sales and specials inside chain restaurants and big retailers – are spillling out onto Main Street, and everywhere else that people shop. The technology that induces you to buy more is predicted to skyrocket in use, and is increasingly popping up in small businesses and even beaming coupons to people walking past shops, jumping on a bus or buying a beer at a sports arena.

“Beacons allow businesses to bring location-based content down to the microlevel – to any aisle, lobby or display,” says Megan Martin, account manager at mobile agency Iversoft Solutions. Beacons “ultimately drive more sales.”

Today, the vast majority of beacons deployed in the U.S. are either in retail stores (which have 57 percent of the devices) or restaurants (another 20 percent), according to an SMB Retail study.

That’s changing as the technology, which can send discount deals to shoppers or a welcome greeting to hotel guests, is starting to show up everywhere.

  • 6.9 million: Number of beacons worldwide in the third quarter of 2016, according to Proxbook. Total number of proximity sensors (which includes beacons) is up 42 percent from the previous quarter.
  • 8 million: Number of beacons estimated to be in use at the end of 2016, according to ABI Research.
  • 372 million: Annual shipments of Bluetooth low-energy beacons by 2020, according to ABI Research.

So you may be asking how exactly can a beacon help my business and how much does this all cost? Well RSM is the areas first and largest provider of beacon technology and we would love to show you how affordable it can be!

Contact us today and schedule a free consultation.