Increasing Leads Through Mobile Apps

Over the years, we have learned that building your business and increasing sales mean generating more qualified leads. To do that, you have to first go to where your B2B customers are online, then engage them by giving them what they’re looking for. Increasing leads through mobile apps is the next logical step, as most customers are on their mobile devices, and therefore, want to use mobile apps.

A VAST AND GROWING MARKET

In 2013, sales of mobile devices overtook those of PCs for the first time, and that momentum is expected to increase over the next few years. By 2017, no less than 87 percent of all connected device sales will be smartphones and tablets.

Increasingly, being on a mobile device means using a mobile app. In just the past year, use of mobile apps has increased by more than 50 percent. ComScore estimates that mobile device users spend almost 90 percent of their mobile minutes on apps, and according to Nielsen, mobile users are spending about 34 hours every month connecting to the Internet via their smartphones and tablets, meaning owners of mobile devices are spending 90 percent of their 34 connected hours using mobile apps – that’s more than 30 hours a month, or 360 hours a year!

A GAME-CHANGING OPPORTUNITY

For B2B marketers, those 30 hours of mobile app usage represent a game-changing opportunity to generate leads and increase sales. The trick is to get your app noticed and downloaded and to create real-time communication between users of your app and your marketing and sales staffs.

Here are four strategies to increase lead generation with a mobile app:

1. Create an effective marketing plan: You must first get your mobile app noticed and downloaded, but that can be a quite a challenge. Google Play and the Apple App Store feature about 800,000 mobile apps each, so you will need to build a sound and cost-effective marketing plan that cuts through all of that background noise. Offering financial incentives (such as discounts), issuing press releases, and leveraging social media will help, but there are also a host of free services you can use to promote your app (Entrepreneurlists 25 of these), from creating a microsite, using services like Snapchat andPath, to creating a product video or submitting your app to review websites like AppAdvice.
2. Keep your lead forms simple: A robust marketing plan will drive more traffic to your mobile app. The trick is to convert increased traffic into increased leads. Keep in mind that your online footprint is much smaller on a mobile device, and lengthy lead forms will prove frustrating and contribute to higher abandonment rates. Think of lead generation as an iterative process, and make the initial contact as user-friendly as possible with a simple lead form.Keep fields to a minimum, preferably no more than five or six, but large enough to accommodate smaller screens.
3. Build a responsive infrastructure: If you’re using an online form, leverage reverse engineering software, which screens leads for accuracy and sends qualified lead data to an experienced call center staff in real time for improved customer service. You can also use click-to-call technology to put customers into immediate phone contact with your call center representatives.
4. Promote an online community with social media: Integrating your mobile app with social media will promote viral user growth and improve opportunities for lead generation. Use your social media landing page to advertise your app, or use Facebook’s Activity Feed feature to promote user activity around a community of like-minded prospects sharing information about your app and your business.

CONCLUSION

A mobile app can help your B2B business tap into a vast and growing online market. The challenge for B2B marketers is to create a robust marketing plan that effectively leverages online traffic and to integrate that app seamlessly with your communication platform, making it simple for customers to contact your sales staff and giving staff members the information they need to make sales.