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5 Reasons Why It’s Insane for a Small Business Not to Have a Website
Aug 6th
Some small businesses may be extremely special and may be able to get by without any web presence whatsoever. If your business is one of these, you can stop reading this article now (right after you leave a comment explaining how you can operate without one … seriously, we’d love to know)!
For the other 99.9999% of small businesses, you absolutely have to have a website nowadays. The advantages are too sweet, and the problems that come with not having one have become far too damaging.
Here are the biggest reasons why we say that:
1. Credibility
We’ll be honest. If we go looking for a business online and can’t find their website, our first thought is, “How legit can this business be? They don’t even care enough to have a single-page website so we can see who they are and how to reach them?” It doesn’t inspire confidence, and makes a bad first impression.
Your website doesn’t have to be complex, it just needs to exist to show that your business isn’t a fly-by-night operation. The existence of a website boosts credibility and reassures prospects that you are up-front and reachable. The most critical components are the address of your location, your phone number, and your email address. That way, prospects from the web can find your business and get in touch with you.
2. Reference
People are far more comfortable learning about your business from browsing online than from calling you, or visiting your location blindly. Thus, a website is hugely important for getting people the basic info about your business that they need. If you can deliver quick explanations of your offerings, along with testimonials and other information to round out your website, it can become a very robust reference point and an effective way to pre-sell customers.
3. It facilitates SEO (search engine optimization)
Without a website, you can’t take advantage of the thousands of searches that take place on Google for businesses like yours. Each search is a potential lead and a potential sale, and capturing 0% of that traffic is a massive missed opportunity.
With a simple website (and beyond that, an active blog), you can enjoy your share of the prospects searching in your industry, and get a big sales bump if you focus your efforts in a dedicated and intelligent manner. The science of increasing your visibility and rank in search results is known as “search engine optimization.” Done right, it’s as good as money in the bank.
4. In enables online sales and marketing
Email marketing is a tremendously cost effective way to increase your sales, but without a website to support your program, it can be quite difficult (if not impossible) to make use of this marketing channel. In addition to providing a base for email marketing, your website also allows you to participate in online pay-per-click advertising. This opens up another stream of leads to help your business keep sales and revenue strong.
5. Your competitors have one
This is the clincher. If people go looking for a business in your industry, or for your business specifically, and they can’t find you online, guess what happens? They immediately browse to a competitor. This strengthens your competition, sends your leads into their arms, and puts them at a huge advantage.
Don’t rely on old methods to keep your business afloat forever. Things change, and the Internet becomes more critical to small businesses each day. Stay up-to-date with an easy, low cost website, and make sure that tomorrow’s sales are strong as today’s.
5 Ways to Increase Customer Loyalty with Apps
Jun 25th
Make new friends, but keep the old, right?
For businesses, this means increasing customer loyalty. Loyal customers are the key to long-term success, and the more you have, the more you know your business is on the right track. So, what’s a great strategy for increasing loyalty and deepening the bonds with your customers?
An app!
Apps are tremendously cost effective, and because mobile devices are always with us, they provide businesses with an opportunity to connect with their customers wherever they are. To that end, below are five tips you can use to create an app that keeps customers satisfied and coming back for a long time to come.
1. Target loyal customers
Not every ad, feature, or app description should be all about bringing new customers on board. Sometimes, it pays to provide some attention to existing customers, and to shape messaging to speak directly to them. This helps your loyal clients feel appreciated, and reminds them that your business doesn’t forget about people once they’re through the front door. With the Bizness Apps loyalty tab you can increase customer loyalty, engagement inside of your mobile app, and repeat customers.
Check out additional information on our loyalty tab here.
2. Deliver great content
Make sure that your app is about what it provides to users, not about what your business can get from it. If you focus on the experience users have, instead of simply generating more downloads and promoting products, they’ll have a reason to keep using it. That way, it becomes a tool for increasing customer satisfaction, and ultimately drives the sales and referrals you’re looking for (in the right way and for the right reasons).
Check out additional information on our news tab here.
3. Don’t be a one-night stand
Once your app launches, that’s just the beginning. Solicit feedback, implement sensible suggestions, and continue to tweak your app. Measure and analyze activity on your offering, and look regularly for ways to improve. Many of your competitors are always attempting to get better. If you’re not improving, you might actually be falling behind.
4. Be social
Provide users with a means to share your app, it’s content, and their activity on it. This will enable them to spread the word about your business, but also keep up with fun features that they’ve come to expect and enjoy.
Check out additional information on our tell-a-friend tab here.
5. Provide a fast and seamless experience
In the mobile world, nothing’s more useless than an app that doesn’t work. Your app should function as advertised, and should also do it well. If your app works smoothly and quickly, users will enjoy using it. If it doesn’t, it’s headed to the trash bin for sure.
Follow these tips, and you’ll build relationships that last with your customers, keeping the future of your business bright, and providing for continued growth using the power of the surging mobile marketplace.
Choosing the Best Email Marketing Platform for Your Business
Apr 1st
You may think of email solicitations as annoying spam, but for many businesses, they are a highly cost-effective way to generate sales. Even at low open and conversion rates, email marketing can be well worth the effort.
Using the right platform, however, is critical to ensure that your email marketing solution is a good fit for your business.
To get things started, below is a comparison chart for the features of the six of the most popular email marketing platforms:
As you can see, the platforms are very similar, and it is hard to differentiate one from the other based on features. So let’s check out monthly prices:
(In the table below, some pricing levels for certain products were omitted to make comparison easier. Also, the number of emails that can be sent each month are unlimited.)
(Please note that Constant Contact and iContact offer yearly prepay discounts of 15%. GetResponse also offers one at 18%, and ActiveCampaign offers a yearly prepay discount as well.)
As you can see, the best price depends on the number of emails in your subscriber list. For many businesses, these differences in price will not be meaningful enough to control a decision.
One service, however, has a high-value option that should be checked out: MailChimp.
For MailChimp, up to 2,000 addresses and 12,000 emails are free monthly forever, and it appears that MailChimp stands alone with this offering. For this reason, for businesses that are new to email marketing, MailChimp is likely the place to begin. You don’t have to worry about a free trial expiring, and you can use a robust subscriber list. You can also send out up to six emails to each subscriber each month, which should be enough to get started.
After you’ve established a basic understanding of what features matter most to you for email marketing, it may be worthwhile to start testing out other services.
Good luck!
Recorded Webinar - Apps For Realtors
Jun 16th
Bizness Apps - Apps For Realtors from Bizness Apps on Vimeo.
Why should I work with Bizness Apps?
Bizness Apps is unique in that we are the only mobile app company focused on providing mobile solutions for small businesses. With our specific aim on small business industries we are able to provide the necessary features and functionality that any business will need to make their app a successful marketing tool. A proper application will allow a small business to successfully expand their presence into the mobile market, correlating to a direct increase in revenue.
• Backed by some of the best investors in the business
• Exceptional customer service via live chat, email, and phone support
• Our platform is extremely powerful, flexible, and easy to use
• Build beautiful applications for iPhone, iPad, Android, HTML5 in under an hour
• We provide the fastest TA and the most affordable mobile apps in the industry
Watch all of our recorded webinars here!
6 Simple and Effective App Reseller Marketing Tips and Guidelines
May 1st
The mobile app world is a highly-competitive industry, most especially for app resellers and developers who are just starting out. The App Store, Google Apps Marketplace and other mobile app stores are undeniably composed of millions and millions of mobile applications of every kind—all battling to become the next top app. Here are a few ways to improve your app’s marketability:
1. Come up with a creative, catchy and SEO-friendly mobile app name. This not only boosts name recall, but also its visibility on various search engines and app marketplaces. Besides, no one wants a plain, boring name.
2. Create a video demo of your white label mobile app and publish it on YouTube (much better if you have your own YouTube channel). Of course, link the video back to your website or blog so people can learn more about your application.
3. Give free trials. Take advantage of the fact that consumers love freebies. Doing so also offers them a chance to “test the water” first before actually deciding to upgrade to the full, paid version.
4. As an app reseller, you must also consider writing a press release about the features and benefits of your app. Distribute it to different media companies, including press release sites online like PRWeb.
5. Submit your app or white label Android app to review sites like AppRater, AppVee and many others. Getting reviewed by industry key influencers could offer you more publicity. Furthermore, many avid app users trust these review sites when looking for new mobile apps to download.
6. Get actively involved in social media. Many successful app resellers use the power of social media to promote their white label mobile apps, while also connecting to their audience. Two great platforms to start with are Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to have all your friends and acquaintances create buzz around your mobile app by sharing your social media pages to their network, and posting positive feedback about your app.
With hard work and creativity, earning as an iPhone app reseller is feasible. Enjoy tons of downloads and higher ROI by implementing these simple yet effective app marketing tips and guidelines for app resellers. Learn more about how you can become an app reseller today.
Bizness Apps partners with Campaign Monitor
Jul 21st
Bizness Apps is proud to announce our partnership with Campaign Monitor.
This partnership will allow you to gather contacts inside your mobile apps created with Bizness Apps and easily import these contacts into your Campaign Monitor email campaigns. You can even set the import to happen automatically with each new contact so the emails go directly from your into your email campaign with Campaign Monitor!
What is Campaign Monitor?
“Campaign Monitor offers everything a designer needs to run successful email marketing campaigns for themselves and their clients. You can even rebrand the interface, create sub-accounts for your clients and let them send their own campaigns.”
Why should you be excited about this partnership?
If you’re a marketer, then you know how effective a simple email campaign can be. By utilizing Campaign Monitor’s email marketing software you can take your businesses marketing to the next level. Send your customers special offers, keep them informed, and stay in touch with them. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to improve customer communication and education about your business. With our mobile apps you can gather more contacts that ever. As soon as your customer opens your mobile app you have the opportunity to ask them to join your email list. “Would you like to join our mailing list to receive exclusive updates?”
Bizness Apps and Campaign Monitor are providing powerful marketing tools for small businesses for less than the price of a news paper ad.
How do I take my mailing list mobile?
1. Sign up for a Bizness Apps account
2. Build in a “Mailing List Tab” into your mobile apps
3. Connect your Campaign Monitor account
4. Viola!
Does Campaign Monitor have a white label solution?
You bet! If you’re a reseller for Bizness Apps you definitely want to check out Campaign Monitor’s white label solution. “Campaign Monitor is built from the ground up for designers to resell as their own product. Create sub-accounts for your clients, rebrand the interface and set your own marked-up pricing. You’ll make a tidy profit every time your clients send.”
You could easily integrate this software into your company’s current product offerings to include mobile apps backed by powerful email marketing software. Sounds like a match made in heaven for small businesses!
Want to learn more about Campaign Monitor?
Check out their website here: http://www.campaignmonitor.com
MailChimp pays for us to integrate!
Dec 15th
As per the official “1 Million Integration Fund” announced by MailChimp - Bizness Apps has officially been given the green light by MailChimp to integrate our do-it-yourself iPhone app platform into the MailChimp API.
MailChimp makes it easy to design and send beautiful emails, manage your subscribers and track your campaign’s performance. This strategic alliance will help small businesses build up a powerful mailing list through the use of their very own iPhone app.
Check out this article for more information on their integration fund:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/mailchimp-launches-1-million-integration-fund/
So how is this going to work for Bizness Apps? Pretty simple - We are planning to develop a prompt that will launch when a user opens a businesses iPhone app that will read, “Would you like to subscribe to our mailing list?” And if yes is selected the app will open up a simple email form to send their information directly into the businesses MailChimp mailing list.
In addition, if a business doesn’t use MailChimp for their mailing lists Bizness Apps will store the collected emails into a list that can be easily exported via a CSV file.
Our personal take at Bizness Apps is that integrating with others should be high up on a company’s priority list. In addition to MailChimp, we have also begun development for integration with WuFoo!
Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet and soon to be with the integration of Bizness Apps - the easiest way to collect information over iPhone apps! If any other companies are interested in integrating with us feel free to reach out!
We are extremely excited for this feature to be released and should be finished within the next couple weeks or so.
Thanks MailChimp! You rock!
Andrew Gazdecki
CEO at Bizness Apps
[email protected]
