Ensuring Business Branding Using Mobile Apps

By Author: Yancy Marry
Total Articles: 185
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In the last few years, branded mobile apps have become increasingly pervasive, with the users and owners of branded apps predicted to double by the year 2015 from the current numbers. Since marketers began experimenting with branded mobile apps in 2009, they have come a long way, and are today considered a very viable and effective marketing endeavor.

In fact, interactive branded mobile apps have been called the most powerful form of advertising ever developed. A branded mobile app with a good user experience can positively impact customer loyalty and their overall opinion of the brand / company.

Benefits of a branded mobile app

Relevance: In today’s world, the user consumption of television and print media, and by consequence, ads is on a rapid decline. These were replaced by the web in early 2000s. Now however, smart mobile devices rule the roost when it comes to media consumption. People do everything from reading the news to shopping to work on their mobile devices. Therefore, tapping the mobile space to push your brand is the most relevant today, and will keep growing.

Relationship: A user ...
... and his mobile device have a much more personal connection than a viewer and his TV or a reader and his newspaper. Therefore, the presence of your brand on this device makes it something special for the user. It makes the brand a part of his lifestyle.

Respect: While in a TV or a print ad, the brand is reaching out to the user to promote itself, in the mobile world, by downloading the app, the user is reaching out to the brand and giving it space in a device that is more or less an extension of the user. This means the brand is respected even before the app is actually used.

Reach: A branded mobile app allows businesses to reach out to uncharted territories – demographics and geographies hitherto unexplored. People who were never even a part of the target customers for a brand are now downloading the app, and learning about the brand. They may still not be the customer, but may be influencer to a potential customer. Also, with a branded mobile app, the advertisement is not restricted to a 30 sec slot for a Superbowl match: the advertisement is constant. In fact, the user carries the brand and it’s messaging with himself at all (or most) times.

Considerations for a branded mobile app

Just having an app or game with your brand logo is not enough. For a branded enterprise app to be successful, it has to meet certain criteria. A low-quality app can turn the users away from a brand as surely as a good one brings them closer to it. The app should be compatible with the device and OS of your target user base. Most successful branded apps have cross-platform compatibility.

1. The app should be relevant to the business domain of the brand. A real estate company offering a restaurant-locating app does not make sense.

2. The app should offer incremental, useful functionality that the users would need in real life. This is the key for the app to be successful. The app has to facilitate real life actions and simplify user’s life. A great example is the Walgreens app that allows users to refill a prescription by scanning the barcode, or homes.com app providing a mortgage calculator.

3. The app should have a user-friendly, intuitive UI. The UI is the interface between the user and the app, and should be carefully designed keeping the end user in mind. Complex / poorly designed UI means the app may never be used again.

4. Lastly, the updates and support for the app should be professional and timely. This ensures that the app hype is more than a soda bottle fizz that dies down quickly.

Copper Mobile is one of the prominent names amongst enterprise mobile application Dallas. The iPhone apps development Dallas has highly experienced team of mobile app developers has created over 300 applications on major mobile platforms.