The costs associated with starting a business can often times be enough to get a potential entrepreneur to give up right away – something that isn’t a problem if all you’ve invested are a couple of thoughts about taking the leap. However, once the decision is made, maintaining and growing that business from the ground up becomes an entirely new uphill battle that can’t be turned back from. It’s do or die.

For this reason alone, the steps a small business can take to ramp up exposure of their services and engage the general public are extremely critical. While the traditional marketing and advertising tactics are necessary, it’s also very pressing that SMBs know how to stay up-to-date with technology. This is key in understanding and interacting with users who are increasingly finding themselves tethered to the digital world. Once this is realized – enter the mobile app.

Digitizing the SMB Experience

By comprehending the benefits of digital to one’s business in the form of a mobile/native app, fledgling enterprises can easily reap the advantages of lower overhead costs and time, diminishing administrative demands, increased user engagement and exposure, and overall larger profits across the board.

According to a recent 2012 study from the Small Business and Entrepreneur Council, 78 percent of small business owners (about 1.28 million) have cited that they’ve saved an estimated 5.6 hours (a median of 4.0 hours) per day on the job simply from their firm’s use of mobile apps. Clearly, it’s evident that time does indeed translate into money. With the amount of hours of man power saved using apps, the translation into a dollar amount is certainly positive. The report delves deeper by providing an approximate number for savings in the form of $275 a week and $14,317 per year – a staggering figure for anyone with a small business or start up.

The concept of integrating apps into small business operations also has its fair share of marketing advantages. A New York Times article cites the following example in an article from October, 2012 where it outlines a plan by consulting firm PrimeGenesis to market its book via a mobile app. The resulting traffic from the app, which drives users to the PrimeGenesis site in order to buy the book has the potential to net the firm nearly $250,000 a year all with minimal effort and man power.

Underestimation Can Prove Costly

While taking a look at the ways small businesses can profit from mobile apps and cut capital costs, it’s almost just as important to peer into the pitfalls that can occur from dismissing mobile apps altogether from your prospective business venture.

Google research from May, 2012 shows that the average smartphone owner has installed 28 apps, used 11 of those in the last 30 days, and paid for six of them. These statistics show an alarming engagement rate that’s sure to keep growing as time goes on, if it hasn’t already since the study was commissioned. Let’s look a bit deeper. According to a study commissioned by mobile analytics company, Flurry in December, 2012, and reported by eMarketer, US consumers spent an average of 127 minutes on mobile apps per day – that’s up 35 percent from the 94 minutes reported a year prior.

This data is extremely crucial for any small business that might be wary about commissioning the creation of a mobile app for their company. While the initial costs might seem high, averaging from $5,000 to $35,000, the costs can have the potential pay for themselves if marketing efforts are aligned correctly to maximize the advantage an app gives you. For those who find themselves taking the frugal route, there is always a variety of mobile app creation platforms on the market that can allow you to design an app with limited coding knowledge in order to test the waters of its efficacy.

Mobile Marketers Can’t Ignore the Numbers

With the ability to undercut many long running costs that can, in time, leech a small business dry, the value of mobile app marketing and assimilation cannot be overstated.

Yes, it can seem scary to dish out the extra scratch as an investment, but it’s one, as the data above notes, that can essentially make or break your business. This is especially true in this day-and-age, where users are attached to their mobile devices and depend on them to deliver content on such an enormous spectrum.

From television, to social networks, to TV and film on the go, it’s a trend that cannot be stopped. You either adapt or fall by the wayside as technology stampedes right over you.

About the Author - Abhinav Girdhar is the Chief Business Officer of cloud-based Appy Pie, which designed to allow anyone to create their own custom mobile app.