Everywhere you turn these days, someone is sending a text, looking up a website, or snapping a picture with a smartphone. As I mentioned in a previous blog, consumers are busier than ever. They also spend more and more time on their phones, so it’s often hard to grab their attention with your brand. Mobile marketing, a new advertising trend, instead brings your brand straight to the customer’s mobile device–you successfully deliver the message, and they don’t even have to look up! If you’re looking to enhance your business with mobile marketing, let these top mobile shopping apps be your guide.
COUPON SHERPA
One easy way to entice consumers to shop is with coupons, but clipping coupons out of the paper every week can get tiring and messy. Coupon Sherpa is an app that solves this problem for shoppers. It keeps all of a user’s coupons in one place, so they can be accessed and used with ease. This app also searches the Internet for in-store coupons and offers exclusive deals to Coupon Sherpa users.
GOOGLE SHOPPER
The Google Shopper app is just like the Google Shopper computer service, only in pocket-sized, mobile form. This app relies on a shopper’s smartphone camera, and it can scan barcodes as well as recognize pictures of books, CDs, DVDs and video games. The app provides pricing information and has a browser that allows consumers to instantly connect to a retailer’s website and make a purchase.
SHOPALERTS
Like coupons, sales and special events are useful for increasing customer traffic. ShopAlerts is a location-based AT&T app that allows retailers to connect with their target market through text messages, Facebook and Twitter. Once a consumer activates ShopAlerts by filling out an online form and confirming that they are over 18, the retailer can tell them about local sales and events in a store based on location alone. Pricing is still being considered by AT&T, but for a two-month trial, advertisers must pay $50,000.
Equal parts lucrative and customer-friendly, these apps solidify the brand while spreading information. And once again, they prove how social shopping is paving the way for other mobile technology trends.