22 Quotes to Inspire Your Marketing Efforts

We all need inspiration on a day-to-day basis, be it in our personal lives or to do our work. And especially if you're trying to build a successful business, start-up life can be quite daunting. One of the toughest aspects of building a mobile-first business is trying to get customers to use your app and get them to come back to it again and again regularly.

Here are some awesomely inspiring quotes from some of the best entrepreneurs and marketers to help you with inspiration while marketing your mobile app:

1. "Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing." -- Rebecca Lieb

2. "When you start with what's at stake for the buyer, you earn the right to their attention." -- Jake Sorofman

3. "SEO is not something you do anymore. It's what happens when you do everything else right." -- Chad Pollitt

4. "The key ingredient to a better content experience is relevance." -- Jason Miller

5. "Your website is your greatest asset. More people view your WebPages than anything else." -- Amanda Sibley

6. "People share, read and generally engage more with any type of content when it's surfaced through friends and people they know and trust." -- Malorie Lucich

7. "Increasingly, the mass marketing is turning into a mass of niches." -- Chris Anderson

8. "Focus on the core problem your business solves and put out lots of content and enthusiasm, and ideas about how to solve that problem." -- Laura Fitton

9. "If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing." -- Guy Kawasaki

10. "You can't expect to just write and have visitors come to you. That's too passive." -- Anita Campbell

11. "Word-of-mouth marketing has always been important. Today, it's more important than ever because of the power of the Internet." -- Joe Pulizzi & Newt Barrett

12. "As you've noticed, people don't want to be sold. What people do want is news and information about the things they care about."-- Larry Weber

13. "To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products." -- Brian Halligan

14. "Marketing is telling the world you're a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world you are one." -- Robert Rose

15. "Not viewing your email marketing as content is a mistake." -- Chris Baggott

16. "The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics who never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors who want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision, and make something for the long haul. Because that's how long it's going to take." -- Seth Godin

17. "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department." -- David Packard

18. "What you prefer or what your designer prefers doesn't matter if it's not getting you conversions." -- Naomi Niles

19. "If your stories are all about your products and services, that's not storytelling. It's a brochure. Give yourself permission to make the story bigger." -- Jay Baer

20. "The key is, no matter what story you tell, make your buyer the hero." -- Chris Brogan

21. "I don't care much for best practice. I care about conversions. That's why I test." -- Michael Aagaard

22. "Don't be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing." -- Mike Volpe

 

5 Myths of Enterprise Mobility in a Mobile First world

Despite having a clear understanding of the benefits of mobile-first, the majority of the organizations still have an ad-hoc approach to app development and are only beginning to consider platform selection to help them to formalize their mobile strategy. Most of the companies start looking at Mobility as a mere "problem solver" rather than creating a complete blue-print of the mobility strategy and the core benefits that the organization aims to achieve.

You may want to create a "mobile center of excellence," but its charter shouldn't be to own everything mobile.  That model simply won't scale. Instead, a mobile center of excellence should serve as an enabler, used to:

·         provide standards and guidance

·         facilitate knowledge sharing

·         offer common means to easily access corporate data

·         supply reusable mobile services (e.g. notifications, storage, offline sync)

·         set a common analytics/measurement approach for mobile initiatives

·         establish outsourcing options for extra capacity

·         ensure security

Here are some of the persistent myths surrounding the building of enterprise mobile apps for today's mobile-first cloud-first world:

1.     Enterprise apps take lot of time to develop and deploy

Industry received wisdom dictates that apps, especially those designed for enterprise, can take at least half a year to build and launch. With some organizations requiring anywhere from 10-100 apps to serve different business units, the time required to build apps can appear prohibitive.

2.     It's too complicated for apps to access legacy systems 


Enterprise organizations that have already made large investments in legacy systems such as ERP and are hesitant to develop mobile apps that cannot seamlessly plug into these existing mission-critical technologies. Enterprises must look at a platform that has capability to integrate into diverse ERPs or legacy systems with an API infrastructure that allows integrating legacy systems easily. 

3.     Mobile app developers must keep up with a myriad of coding languages and frameworks – it's impossible

Learning new development languages in order to build individual apps for each device platform can be tedious, and for some enterprises entails constantly hiring fresh developers with different skill sets. When creating hybrid cross-platform apps, developers often employ as many as 10 different coding languages for enterprise app development projects. To simplify development, developers can use mobile app platforms using a 'bring your own toolkit' approach that allows them to use the languages and toolkits they are most comfortable with. Choose a platform that allows developers to use both native as well as hybrid development environments.

4.     Enterprise apps are always data-heavy, placing high loads on handsets and backend systems.

The best mobile app platforms take large amounts of data from the backend and transmit a small filtered set of data to the handset: reducing overall demands.

5.     Companies need a Chief Mobility Officer to successfully handle company-wide app development

This myth assumes that one central figure will successfully oversee app development and deployment across the enterprise. By collaborating and using the same technology standards and requirements, a Mobile Centre of Excellence or Mobile Steering Committee can guide mobile projects across multiple business units without creating new silos. This has elevated mobility to a strategic level. Companies should look more to cloud based and agile mobile application strategies to support their growing mobile workforces, without which enterprise productivity and profitability improvements will suffer.

Why businesses fail to capitalise on mobile apps

Businesses must maximize mobile app management or risk wasting investment and disappointing users. This is according to a recent study which seeks to explore how companies are applying digital technologies to improve organisations.

According to the study, the vast majority of executives surveyed recognize the value of mobile apps for their business but few are well prepared to successfully deploy and maintain those apps. Despite the overall enthusiasm for mobile apps, widespread adoption and use of apps within the enterprise has yet to occur.

Within the enterprise, app adoption is far from widespread. The most pervasive types of apps – productivity, operational, management and customer facing – were reported as being currently deployed. One possible reason that mobile apps aren't more pervasive in the enterprise is that many companies have yet to put in place measures that facilitate successful adoption. Most organisations lack a comprehensive strategy at the start of any mobile app project, or do not have the in-house skills to look after the management of applications post-launch.

Lack of internal skills when developing, building and managing apps is a challenge for them. Businesses are not keeping a close eye on their apps. They see high customer demand for effective mobile apps, but despite those mobile apps cannot be appropriately secured for business purposes. To get the best results from apps, businesses must do rigorous testing before launch and robust app management once deployed. Not only does this help to provide the best possible user experience, but it will also help make sure that security challenges are addressed as an ongoing priority.

Many companies are neglecting to continually improve their existing apps. So, they risk wasting their investment. Mobile apps should be considered as part of a broader enterprise IT and digitization strategy from the start. To get the greatest value from apps, businesses must implement strong testing and ongoing app management programs, in order to provide the best possible experience to all users.

Mobile Management Solutions - MDM vs. MAM

Mobile device management and mobile application management do different things but also have some overlap. Knowing their differences is important.

Mobile device management and mobile application management are two of the more popular technologies for enabling secure Smartphone and tablet use in the enterprise. They have different use cases, but some of their features overlap, and more vendors are combining the two technologies into single products.

       Mobile Device Management (MDM) takes a full-device approach to securing and controlling smart phones and tablets. IT can secure access to the device by requiring the use of a pass code and keep sensitive data out of the wrong hands by remotely wiping a lost or stolen device. Other basic features of MDM tools include the ability to enforce policies, track inventory and perform real-time monitoring and reporting. The problem with MDM is that the full-device approach can be too heavy-handed in an era where employees, not their employers, own their smart phones and tablets.

       Mobile Application Management (MAM) offers more granular controls. MAM gives IT the ability to manage and secure only those apps that were specifically developed to work with a particular MAM product. Admins can also use MAM to deploy apps and limit the sharing of corporate data among apps. MAM has its own challenges as well. Because every app requires unique coding to work with each individual MAM product, the availability of apps for a specific platform can be limited.

The general perception is that MDM is more of a security play, while MAM focuses on enablement. MDM takes care of basic security and controls, but mobile application management tools allow organizations to unlock the full potential of mobile devices. With MAM, IT can enable workers to get more real work done on their smart phones and tablets -- which is what they want in the first place. Some mobile device management tools can integrate with MAM to automatically deploy and update mobile apps. Others also offer mobile document management features that can tie in nicely to server-based applications such as SharePoint. 

Reasoning of why your app should include Push Notifications

Push notifications are a powerful tool to connect with customers and boost business. You should use your push notifications to keep up with their hectic daily pace. Keep it simple, make it efficient. The shortest distance between you and your customers is a push notification.

Push Notifications allow you to market directly to your clients: If you are able to get your customers to download your app and opt in for push notifications, they are essentially providing permission for you to market to them directly. 

• Your notifications should offer your customers something useful, relevant, and delightful.
• They should make whatever action you want the customer to take quick and easy.
• You should send them at a frequency and time consistent with the habits and lifestyles of your clients.

Push Notifications increase retention rate: push notifications are an effective way for the app to interact with a user. Optimal timing for sending out push notifications varies by business or service. Your ultimate goal is to catch your target audience at a time when they are most likely to read your message and act.

Push Notifications have a high read rate: Email marketing has a dismal read rate. In comparison, push notifications have a higher read rate with click-through rates that are twice as high.

So, if you are currently developing an app you should consider adding the ability to send push notifications.

When you do find your golden formula, stick to it and be consistent.

Fingerprint security is finally coming to Android apps

Fingerprint sensors are going to be big on Android this year with support being built right into Marshmallow. A number of Android phones already have a head start on including these sensors — some better than others — and it looks like we can expect apps to start adding support now that they're rolling out wider. Among those apps is Bank of America, which announced today that it's added support for fingerprint scans on Android, allowing people to set up a fingerprint within the app to log them in. It's also adding support for Touch ID on iOS, which draws an interesting parallel: it took Bank of America a full year to add this feature on iOS, whereas Android only begins to offer proper support for fingerprint sensors this (or maybe next) month.

Bank of America is also launching an Apple Watch app today. Given that it's out now, the app can't be one of the new native Watch apps that should start launching as soon as tomorrow. If Touch ID is any indication, Apple Watch owners can expect a native Bank of America app next year.

Why Your App's UX Is More Important Than You Think

Mobile application development technology is evolving at a very shocking pace. However, in a market where quality and performance always come before brand loyalty, creating a fluid user experience (UX) is key to the success of any mobile app development project.

User experience is becoming an increasingly crucial feature when it comes to the digital landscape. It defines how the user feels and thinks about your product from his or her own perspective. It is about making something valuable, easy to use and effective for your target market. If your app is confusing or frustrating, then it is providing a poor UX, and users will likely uninstall or abandon it in a heartbeat.

Therefore, there is a need to adopt a user-centred approach to mobile application development that gives emphasis to the needs of target users. Improved UX translates into several key benefits for the companies that provide it.

A poorly designed application reduces customer loyalty. Users won't have a high tolerance for unstable applications and nothing can turn them away faster than a bad first impression. A good user experience can create the kind of loyalty that keeps people coming back for more, increasing engagement. Giving users a reason to return by being engaging and useful is one of the ways to enhance UX and encourage member loyalty. This leaves a positive first impression on the user and gives them a sense of value for having downloaded your app.

A well-thought-through mobile solution needs to conform to your overall digital strategy, offering a seamless and unmatched user experience. This means that the functionality and content that are delivered on your app must be in line with what your target audience actually wants. Regardless of the function or purpose of your app, the end product must provide a superior quality user experience. If you are unable to provide a quality mobile experience, you could be doing more harm than good to your reputation.