For some small to medium businesses it is easy to feel behind the curve in technology terms when all you really want to do is create engagement and cut through that creates high impact to all of your customer base for a low cost that does not take up too much of you or your team’s time. The good news is that there could be a way for you to connect with your customers in an innovative way and leapfrog your nearest competitors by miles for little cost and little effort on your part. Sound too good to be true? Read on......
The advent of smartphones such as the Apple iPhone, Google G1, Nokia E71, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre all give businesses (including yours) the opportunity to not push heavy sales messages via SMS but actually be helpful to your customers and potential customers whilst engaging them in what you do.
It is really simple to create smartphone applications all you need are some ideas on how you want to engage your customers, a modest budget and the help of a good technology partner who can help make your idea a reality.
Questions to ask yourself:
1) What does your business do? What is your main trade?
2) What do your customers want? What do they tell you they want from you and you do not deliver on, or alternatively what do they really like?
3) What budget could you spare and how would you let people know about the application to promote it?
Great examples of the best applications that are small business relevant would be:
- Inner fence Visa payment app to help all small businesses pay via credit card in an instant. This is a small company development but was so good it made it into the actual Apple iPhone TV advert
- Spirit level application - would be great for a small business builder to have released this
Great examples could be:
- a local church could have a pocket bible or audio hymn book plus the app could send you a reminder of when services and group activities are on.
- a local guitar store could launch a tuner, backing track or an application to enable the phone to be a mini amplifier.
- a hairdressers could have an app where you can upload your photo and choose a new hairstyle. Similarly this could work at an opticians.
- a landscape gardens could have a garden planning app that featured a calender of what to plant when, drag and drop garden redesign feature and guide to plants that work together.
Who could help me then?
I would recommend contacting an excellent agency called Coolgorilla via their website www.coolgorilla.com. I had the pleasure of working with Roy Forsdick at Coolgorilla to create lastminute.com audio translation books on the iPhone for a very small cost and they went onto have over 1.5m downloads on iTunes and via the iPhone. The company name did not matter or how big a company it was. It was the idea, distribution channel and connecting what we did with what customers would want, all rolled into a neat bestselling application.
Good luck and be brave, it could pay massive dividends for you.
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