What is your favorite mobile app for marketing and interacting with customers on the go?
This was the question posed to eleven business experts. The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC),
an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the world’s most
promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC
recently launched #StartupLab,
a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs
start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content
library and email lessons.
1. Twitter
Twitter is my favorite mobile app for marketing, because it allows you to engage your audience on a personal level without using too much effort. In fact, a perfectly crafted tweet can do as much for a company as a long-winded advertisement. — Zach Cutler, Cutler Group
2. CardMunch
CardMunch lets you scan your business cards for easy follow-up, as all the info translates into your smartphone’s address book. The app also allows you to connect on Linkedin with the click of a button. —Alexis Levine, Savvy Media
3. Text Messaging
I’m a little biased, but when you look at what the most popular use of any mobile phone is, it’s text messaging. With this sort of consumer adoption, it would be crazy to build a mobile app or even develop a mobile website before you figure out how you can reach your current and future customers through text messaging. The best part, 98% of all text messages are read by customers within 3 minutes! — Derek Johnson, Tatango
4. Pinterest
Pinterest is absolutely critical for mobile marketing on my e-commerce store. My social media manager posts at least 5 pins per day: 3 are images from our store, while the other 2 are image inspirations from other stores online. Consistency and inspiration are the two principles to adhere to when on Pinterest. As long as your community is inspired, they’ll click through and check out your site. — Jay Wu, Best Drug Rehabilitation
5. Facebook
Facebook is the most useful mobile app for marketing. For me, I can see what my peers, colleagues, and friends are sharing. For brands, they can promote what their customers are posting and sharing and spread positive feedback about their brand and interactions with their brand. — Jesse Pujji, Ampush
6. Buffer App
I love the mobile version of Buffer App. It makes it so simple for me to stay engaged and share new content on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. With Buffer App, I can queue up social media posts while getting my nails done or standing in line at Starbucks. The posts get delivered on my social media profiles throughout the day so I’m not bombarding my community with tons of posts at once. — Rachel Rodgers, Rachel Rodgers Law Office
7. Instagram
Creating something with visual appeal for fans creates more engagement. The quality of cameras on phones, mixed with Instagram’s filters and effects allow everyone to feel really creative (even if they’re not!). By engaging customers to take — and share — images, you can build emotional connections with your audience. Critically, it’s simple to use both as the photographer and when browsing. — Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
8. Statigram
Everyone know posting visually appealing photo’s on Instagram is a great marketing tool, but how well is it working? Enter Statigram. This app has all the analytics in place to measure your social media marketing performance. Some in-depth metrics include the average lifespan of a photo, best time to post a photo, and which filters trigger the most amount of likes and traffic. — Anthony Saladino, Kitchen Cabinet Kings
9. HootSuite
HootSuite is my day-to-day go-to mobile app for marketing — for both B2C messaging for our client needs as well as our internal B2B agency marketing. It allows me to monitor social conversations, schedule social messaging as needed, and allows me to do this via a snapshot dashboard view of all my social accounts. — Alex Frias, Track Marketing Group
10. LinkedIn
Tons of potential customers are having discussions in LinkedIn groups. By staying on top of those, quickly responding to relevant posts, and engaging people one-on-one, I’m able to build relationships and awareness of our service. The app quickly allows me to jump in there, and sometimes taking 10 minutes to compose an answer results in new business! — Anthony Krumeich, Bloodhound
11. Genius Scan
I use this app all the time — it eliminates the need for a scanner which helps me to get contracts, marketing content, and a huge variety of other documents that need signatures or writing to the recipient while I’m on the go. — Caitlin McCabe, Real Bullets Branding
