Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Before you jump in to a new idea, it’s always worth asking yourself if it is a good fit for you and your company and is this the right time add it to your business.
Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/
Transcription
Should you get an app or not?
Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.
I’ve worked with a lot of companies that have gone from having no app to getting an app. And the real question is, should you have an app or not?
Well, that depends. And the main question that nearly everybody I work with, don’t ask is, the one question they need to ask.
That’s why do you want an app? Why do you think it will help your company?
It’s not that it won’t or that it absolutely will. If you don’t know why you want it, if you just want it because everyone else has it, or that you think you should have it, You’re getting it for all the wrong reasons.
It’s the same question I say, whether it’s a social media presence, whether it’s a website, I mean, anything, these are tools, these are merely tools to create something, they’re tools to create an effect to create a final result, right.
That’s what an app is. a mobile app is nothing more than that. If you don’t know what the result is that you want to get with it, then it doesn’t matter whether you have one or not, it really doesn’t. It has no bearing on anything, because you can have a bad app, or you can have a good app. And whether it’s bad or good is based solely on the results you want to get from it.
So this is one of the things that I oftentimes will have with clients or with people asking me, should we have an app?
Should my company have an app?
Should my organization have an app?
And I say, Why? Why do you want an app?
Why do you think you should have an app?
What do you plan on getting with that app, and then we match up what you’re looking to get with what an app can actually provide. Because I have a pretty good understanding of app technology.
What can happen and can’t happen, or at least what can be done relatively easily. And so that tends to be where the conversation goes. So I will tell you a story of two different companies.
One company just recently launched, made public this brand new app. And I knew that it just had to do a few things more than their previous version. And one of the one things that had to do was just have the process of notifications on a weekly basis.
So that it was notifying people, if you have an app that everybody gets involved and on to, but they are it but it’s easily forgotten. It’s not something that they go to naturally, it’s not something that they’re used to going to, you have to have a process for notifications to get people to go to it on a regular basis to build up that habit of going to the app and getting something from the app.
If you don’t have that, that that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And that once again, this is very circumstantial. This has a lot to do with that company, and how it how it functions, they deal with a lot of new people on a regular basis and ongoing flow of new people.
So you have to have that regular flow, you have to continue training people, because an app can very easily get lost on a phone or a tablet. It’s very simple, it’s invisible. It’s virtually invisible, because most people have too many apps.
There’s only a handful that they go to any time. And if you’ve got that little function on your phone, where you could say, hey, delete the apps that I’m not using, you’ll realize that you don’t use very many apps on a weekly basis, you only use a handful, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller with time the apps that you use regularly.
This is most people most of the time, obviously, there’s there’s circumstances where people use a bunch, but it’s unlikely most people, it condenses to a very small number of apps. And so you have to have something very special that people would go to on a regular basis. Otherwise, it gets ignored and all of a sudden, all this money that you put toward building the app, designing the app, putting it together and then maintaining it.
There’s companies charging 1000s of dollars on a monthly basis to companies just to keep an app going just to make it available and present.
Amazing waste of money if you don’t expect it to have a result. So that first company did great because all they had all they need to do was hit a very low bar to be able to have a very successful app and they’ve done wonderful with it.
Another company I’m working with right now got the app before they had the reason for having the app they did not have a very clear reason.
They just want the app because someone had offered it for sale and they believed they needed an app, they needed a presence in the app world. And so they put it out there, that app has gone and it has not done as well.
But it’s tough because, to this day, there’s not a result tied to the app.
So it may do well, it may not do well, they’re not really tracking how much traffic it gets, or what type of attention it’s getting. Every once in a while something will go wrong with it, and someone will call or email, and they’ll go in and they’ll fix it. But other than that, they’re paying on a monthly basis over and over and over again, for that app just to exist, for no reason. But to exist, it has no function beyond that.
Not that it doesn’t have value. There’s an extreme value there. There’s extreme value to the consumers, there’s extreme value with just being in the App Store, there is a value to that.
But what is that value and does it match how much it takes to maintain and keep going and update and all the rest that goes along with it.
Because there are a number of people that update that app on a weekly basis and more all the time because they keep adding features to it. But there’s no, there’s no tracking.
And so you get lost, and you get this situation where bureaucracy takes over. It doesn’t bureaucracy isn’t just contained to government. bureaucracy happens in small businesses, in medium sized businesses. And of course, it happens in large businesses.
It happens when you when you lack direction, you lack result and goal orientation.
And that’s how things go. So if you really want to know about whether you should have an app, first, you got to know why you want the app. If you know why you want the app, then you could work with someone who understands that technology well enough to be able to direct you on as to whether the app is the best use of that.
Maybe it is and if it is great, put it into place, make sure it functions and track it to make sure it does what you want it to do. Whether it was a success, or a failure, if it’s a failure, cut it down, or limit what you put into it and move on.
But if you’re talking to someone that knows what they’re what they’re talking about, they not only will they suggest an app, they’ll probably suggest a couple other options that you haven’t thought of as well. Because if you’re after the result, it doesn’t matter what tool it takes to get it. What matters is that you get the result, right. Hopefully that makes sense to you. If you’d like some strategies to be able to help grow your business, I just put out a book this last year, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get your own free copy at AmazonProofBook.com or you could buy a hardcopy anywhere the books are sold Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and what have you. You have a great night. We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.