Does Your Brand Need a Mobile App?
May 1, 2012
It seems like only yesterday that brands were scrambling to get Twitter profiles and Facebook Pages. Now, those things seem ancient as brands are realizing that mobile is the future (a future that’s already here).
Brands in every industry are launching branded mobile apps, and executives are demanding that brands get on board the mobile app train because it’s the cool thing to do. It doesn’t matter if a mobile strategy has been developed for a brand. Everyone else is doing it so few brands are confident enough to ignore the mobile movement.
But does your brand really need a mobile app? Is developing a mobile app where you should be investing your budget today?
At its core, the answer to those questions is very simple. If you can create a mobile app that provides meaningful or interesting information in a manner that is useful to your consumer audience, then a mobile app can help your brand. However, simply creating an app to say that your brand has one is a mistake that’s unlikely to deliver positive results in the long-term.
Of course, it could be argued that in order to stay relevant, brands need to have mobile apps because consumers expect them in 2012. While it’s true that brands should have a mobile presence since that’s where consumers spend more time every day, it’s not wise to make the leap to investing in a mobile app without doing your legwork first.
For example, you need to conduct some research and find out what consumers want from your brand when they’re on-the-go. Are there specific types of information or content that you can deliver via a mobile device that can add value to consumers’ lives? A mobile app isn’t an ad. In other words, don’t use a mobile app to regurgitate marketing messages and sales pitches.
Furthermore, you need to analyze your competitors and understand what they’re doing in the mobile space. You certainly don’t want to fall behind or launch a mobile app that’s not unique. Spend time analyzing brands beyond your industry as well. Your mobile app should be creative and innovative. While such an app might not exist in your industry yet, you can find inspiration from brands in other industries that have found creative ways to bring brand experiences to mobile consumers.
Remember, mobile apps are focused on delivering content to an audience whenever and wherever they want it, but branded apps should also leverage the real-time nature of mobile devices. Deliver something valuable and timely via a branded mobile app, and you’ll be on your way to driving positive returns.
What do you think about branded mobile apps? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.
Image: renatomitra
Ten Principles for a New Economy 3/3
April 30, 2012
(This concludes the Ten Principles for a New Economy series, based upon the New Economy Network publication Principles for a New Economy“. Part one and part two looked at the Ten Principles in detail; this post looks at four things a new economy should NOT be.)
The first two posts in this series looked at Ten Principles for a New Economy and how these could fit into today’s business environment. This last post looks at four things a new economy should not be.
The Ten Principles document states that:
“the purpose of an economic system is to organize human activities in ways that support healthy and resilient communities and ecosystems for both present and future generations”
It then goes on to describe how current global, regional, national and global economies have failed. In today’s language the economy is largely made up of for-profit businesses, so if there is any fault to be found in the economy then it also points to faults within how businesses conduct themselves.
These failures show that businesses, along with the wider economy, are currently: Read more
The Evolution of Influence in 16 Minutes
April 28, 2012
For brands, influence matters. It really matters. But how does a brand gain influence and develop an audience of influential brand advocates?
Amplify created a short film called FanCulture that explains how the relationship between brands and consumers (i.e., fans) grows and how that relationship evolves into increased influence. The video features branding experts and academics as well as “superfans” of brands. Amplify says that the video is intended to help brands learn how to move from logo to cultural icon by cultivating a powerful relationship with consumers.
The video is also a great example of effective content marketing through online video storytelling. As you watch the video below, consider how you can create similar content related to your brand and business to offer useful, interesting information to consumers, clients, vendors, and so on. That’s what content marketing is all about.
The concept of superfans and brand influence isn’t a new one. The Amplify video talks about brands as diverse as The Beatles to Nike. Regardless of the industry a brand is in or when it debuted, consumers can become emotionally involved in that brand, develop loyalty to it, and ultimately become powerful brand advocates. Their influence can create a form of word-of-mouth marketing that money can’t buy.
As Sheila Shayon wrote on BrandChannel, “Engaging enthusiasts and brand ambassadors should become more than just buying “Likes” on Facebook.” Getting people to like your brand is just the first step. In fact, likes are meaningless if the people who like your brand aren’t emotionally connected to it. Look beyond likes and you’ll see your brand advocates increase and your brand influence grow.
Ten Principles for a New Economy 2/3
April 27, 2012
(This post follows on from Ten Principles for a New Economy 1/3 and covers the second 5 principles in the New Economy Network’s Principles for a New Economy (PDF) )
Taming Finance
“All monetary systems and financial institutions shall be regulated as essential public utilities for the benefit of society as a whole, and for nurturing the real economy.”
The two key phrases here are “essential public utilities” and “real economy”.
One core reason there was a financial meltdown in 2008 was because the real economy (the actual production of goods and services) had become secondary in financiers’ and politicians’ minds to the buying and selling of shares, options and positions on the financial markets.
This is like expecting a car to drive as fast as possible irrespective of the engine put into it.
Another core reason, and arguably a much more important one, is that finance remained essentially in the hands of a few people even though it’s almost impossible to survive in today’s capitalist society without getting into debt. It is, in effect, a utility required by society in order to function correctly, and so should be treated as one.
This is a good moment to pause and reflect on why these Ten Principles are actually “good stuff” and worth taking on board. They’re not anti-capitalist or pro-socialist … there’s no mention in there of nationalising banks, and there’s no concept that capital investment wil always be for society’s good.
Like sustainability, these Ten Principles push businessmen and economists beyond the left/right wealth and class arguments of the past century and look instead at how politics and finance can be shaped in a way which reflects today’s multi/social media society .. not the society of our great-grandparents who barely knew what a letter or an automobile was.
Enhancing Fairness
“Significant economic inequality shall be understood to be inherently and profoundly antihectical* to achieving human and ecological well-being, and shall be rapidly reduced.”
One of the deep flaws of the market economy is that it relies upon economic inequality. This is why we’ve had cheap goods from China for so long and where there is now a rush to market at the “Bottom of the Pyramid”.
There will always be social and economic inequality .. that’s the nature of the beast. However whether that inequality translates to unfairness is a different matter. There are plenty of examples around, from a privately educated child who’s expected to write 10 pages on the solar system vs a publicly educated one who’s expected to write one sheet of A4 on one planet, through to the withdrawal of the Colombian candidate from the race to be President of the IMF because he felt the contest had become politicised.
Equality has to mean equality of opportunity, not equality of income, wealth or social standing. It is how the economy is run and regulated which allows people to make their way according to their desires and abilities, not their background, race, gender or class. Today financial return is allowed to trump these equitable considerations, and that makes the economy profoundly unfair.
Providing Fulfilling Livelihoods
“Individuals shall be assured of substantial opportunities for decent paid work, employee ownership, and the right to organize in the workplace, and shall be accorded proper recognition for work performed outside the formal wage economy owing to its fundamental role in enriching community and family well-being.”
In other words: no more slaves, no more servants.
Many people’s quality of life has deteriorated significantly over the past 50 years or so. Gone is the suburban commute of Reggie Perrin (or even the consummate breakdown) and in are long working hours, evening and weekend toil and the sacrifice of personal fulfillment over professional advancement.
Employees at all levels must have a significant voice in how the business is run, have opportunities made available to them as they arise and should be able to count their professional training as part of their working day. This is the only way in which a proper work-life balance can be achieved.
Fostering New Values
“Economic values shall be redirected, by all fair and reasonable means, away from excessive materialism and shifted towards values that prioritize flourishing communities, individual happiness, and a healthy and resilient world based on lower material flows”
The economy, through consumerism and capitalism, has become an engine through which luxury is sold to those who can least afford it, no matter where on the income scale those consumers sit. This emphasis on luxury means that people are encouraged to get into debt in order to gain more material possessions.
In the meantime pubs and corner shops are closing, effective working hours are increasing and social media is exploding. There is no halcyon of yesteryear which we should try and restore, but we need to look very carefully at how the need for stuff is driving us apart and causing us misery.
The values which are being inculcated into our communities are driving us apart, reducing our ability to meet each other face to face and driving brand-orientated wedges between sectors of society who could otherwise get on with one another.
A new set of values are needed which will put the community at the forefront and enable people of disparate background and wealth to view one another as equals. These are the new values of the new economy.
Redefining Globalization
“International economic relations shall rest upon the same principles enumerated above that apply to economic activities within nations, such that economic justice also becomes embedded in such relations.”
Globalisation, like capitalism, is a fact of life today. Get over it.
However globalisation, like capitalism, has to date been driven by the near medieval need to make profit and dominate communities. Thanks to the liberal policies of yesteryear this trend has also gone hand in hand with a desire to educate and enlighten the local population, meaning that people around the world now realise they have been taken advantage of, used and abused in order to make a few people at the top even more wealthy.
I’m not going to say “this has to stop”. To do so would be like condemning a farmer for sowing his crops because he then has a monopoly on selling his farm’s produce. Out of his own effort he has produced the basic nutrition upon which we all rely. Of course he has a right to retain power and control over his own farm, but he would rightly be condemned for withholding produce on the grounds of who could pay for it and would be doubly condemned for making healthy sustenance a luxury item.
The simile extends quite happily into the economic environment. Any part of the economy should address the public need and provide tangible benefit to the community addressed. This is where globalisation has gone wrong. Big brands, from sports goods manufacturers to peddlers in nicotine and financial advisors, see nothing more in globalisation than an opportunity to sell their product or service for a centralised profit.
It may be their only community involvement is that they’ve brought their brand into a new community which will better that community because, um, they’re now buying that brand. Or, perhaps, a vanishingly small proportion of the profit made from selling in that community will be reinvested in it. Wonderful!
Globalisation needs to be redefined, and with it the very premise of capitalism. The use of capital to support and invest in businesses should be primarily to build a a more equitable and resilient economy for the good of all concerned. This is the change of values which is needed, and globalisation should see it propagated the world over.
*antihectical is a remarkably obscure word, even for an essay on economic principles. I’ll leave to you to look up for yourselves, but suffice to say its meaning is self evident by its context
(This is part 2 of Ten Principles for a New Economy. Part one can be read here; part three will look at the four things a new economy should NOT do)
Picture Credit: Meeting image from the New Economy Network website
Real Impressions Drive More Display Ad Conversions than Clicks
April 26, 2012
For years, marketers have relied on two primary ways to track the ROI of online display ads — clicks and impressions (based on how many times the ad loaded regardless of whether or not a person actually saw it). New research from comScore and Pretarget suggests that relying on clicks and traditional display ad impression measurement is a bad idea.
According to the research report, these metrics don’t account for the number of people who convert to a sale or a request for information after hovering over a display ad or engaging with it without actually clicking on it. In other words, traditional display ad ROI measurements are inaccurate because it’s missing critical data related to conversions absent of clicks.
A comScore press release explains the following findings:
“The research findings indicate that the traditional way of buying mass impressions and hoping for conversions (aka “spray and pray”) is not the most effective approach. The results showed that ad hover/interaction (correlation = 0.49) and viewable impressions (correlation = 0.35) had highest correlation with conversion, while gross impressions (correlation = 0.17) was significantly lower. Perhaps most interestingly, clicks (correlation = 0.01) had the lowest correlation with conversion, far under-performing all other metrics analyzed in the study. These findings suggest that advertisers and media planners ought to break their addiction to clicks and instead look to more meaningful metrics for evaluating campaign performance.”
This isn’t the first study to find that clicks don’t correlate to conversions at a rate as high as hovers do. In its 2009 Benchmark Report (released in July 2010), MediaMind reported that, “on average, increasing Dwell [hover] from 5% to 15%, increases conversion rate by 45% from 0.4% to 0.6%,” and Casale Media reported in its 2011 Ad Visibility Report that ads displayed above the fold were nearly 7 times more effective at driving conversions than ads displayed below the fold.
Bottom-line, relying on click metrics is selling your campaign short. You won’t get the full story, and it’s highly likely that far more conversions are being driven by hovers and engagement with display ads placed above the fold than you realize. As Kirby Winfield, SVP of Corporate Development at comScore explained, “It’s time to start measuring the impact of campaigns using metrics that really matter, not just the ones that are most easily measured.”
Of course, until more brands get access to the tools that can measure hover engagement, clicks will remain the go-to metric for measuring display ad effectiveness. However, companies that invest in this type of advanced data collection and analysis will come out on top in the end.
What do you think? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
Image: Ariel da Silva Parreira
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