Special Report: AppsVillage Australia is one of five companies selected by Facebook to take part in an initiative to help small and medium businesses build their digital presence and help meet the challenges presented by COVID-19.

AppsVillage Australia (ASX:APV) has announced it has been selected along with Fiverr, Wix, Lightrics, Monday and Honeybook to take part in the initiative, dubbed, “it is the business of us all”.

AppsVillage says it was selected based on its unique ability to provide small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) “with fast, advanced and cost-effective ways to get a mobile online presence and start advertising on Facebook”.

The initiative is scheduled to commence in Israel later this year before being rolled out to other select international markets.

AppsVillage’s JARVIS platform

AppsVillage in June launched a platform it calls JARVIS, which allows SMBs to easily build and manage online advertising and promotion campaigns on Facebook that would normally require a dedicated campaign manager.

Already, global enterprise resource provider Priority Software has selected JARVIS as the lead ad manager for its global SMB customer base.

Priority’s vice president of international sales Avi Troub said the company believed that JARVIS would “give measurable added-value to our global customer base, to significantly help them grow their business and online presence”.

 

JARVIS spinout plan

As previously reported, the success of the JARVIS platform has led AppsVillage to spin out the tool as a standalone product.

The tool has previously only been available to subscribers of AppsVillage’s flagship app-development platform, allowing the company to engage with an even broader customer base.

JARVIS will initially be offered under a freemium model for non-subscribers, who can access the tool via a standalone app and pay once per advertisement.

The standalone version will include the same features as the subscriber version, including a powerful lead generator and three-click full advertisement cycle from creative through to lead generation.

Importantly for AppsVillage, JARVIS can integrate with third-party SMB service providers including mobile carriers, credit providers and financial service operators for promotional and advertising purposes.

 

Statistics back approach

In early September, AppsVillage released statistics showing how well JARVIS had performed since launch.

The software marketplace said that since June, a total of 2550 advertising campaigns had been placed through JARVIS.

One of the key highlights was that new leads as “Interested Customers” exploded by 300 per cent via Facebook Messenger compared to the standard approach.

JARVIS has also helped customers cut down their costs. Cost-per-lead was reduced by nearly 50 per cent down to $3.80. As a result, small businesses increased the total number of Facebook ads by 30 per cent in the past month alone.

JARVIS has been particularly popular among customers in shopping, retail and beauty, and cosmetics, with the US, UK, Canadian and Australian markets showing the highest effectiveness rates and doubling the number of monthly ads.

This article was developed in collaboration with AppsVillage, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

 This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.