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How to Build a Successful Branded Mobile App

How to Build a Successful Branded Mobile App

There are a lot of mobile apps available to consumers, but only a small percentage of those apps become highly popular. However, apps are extremely important to companies and brands because consumers spend a lot of time using them. Research by Nielsen breaks down the average daily mobile activity on Android smartphones as follows:

  • Apps = 56%
  • Emailing and Messaging = 19%
  • Phone = 15%
  • Web browser = 9%
  • Camera = 1%

Now, consider how many people are purchasing new tablet devices such as the iPad. You can bet these consumers are spending even more time using Apps than Android users. Bottom-line, mobile apps are important, but you need to plan ahead to build an app that has a chance for success.

In its recent Consumer 360 Conference, Jonathan Carson (CEO of Telecom at Nielsen) and Heidi Browning of Pandora offered the following tips to help businesses create the types of mobile apps that consumers want and need. Some of those tips include the following:

  • Apps that “give back” are more popular than other types of apps. For example, rewards apps are very popular.
  • The app must be extremely easy to use.
  • The branded experience should be seamless across all devices.
  • The app should be personalized.
  • Provide something useful such as price comparisons or helpful tips.
  • Make sure the app works perfectly.

Once you develop your app, you need to promote it so consumers can find it. If they don’t know it exists, it won’t do them or your company any good. Nielsen’s research states that consumers find branded mobile apps most frequently through:

  • A friend or family member = 28%
  • Searching the app store on their phones = 21%
  • Third party website = 17%
  • Television advertisement = 15%
  • Newspaper, magazine or radio = 13%
  • Apps promoting other apps = 9%
  • Email tips from mobile carrier = 6%
  • Device home page = 5%
  • Carrier home page = 5%
  • Sync software (e.g., iTunes, etc.) = 4%

It’s important to note that the ways that people find branded apps differ significantly from the ways people find non-branded mobile apps. Advertising plays a much larger role in spreading the word about branded mobile apps. For non-branded mobile apps, 45% of people claim to find them through a friend or family member and 58% claim to find them by searching the app store on their phones. Advertising plays a much smaller role in spreading the word about non-branded apps.

Before you develop and launch a mobile app, consider the tips and research provided above and be prepared to create a useful app and to promote it as part of your overall marketing and branding strategy.

Image: Flickr

Mobile Content Consumption Positioned to Surpass Online

Does your brand have a mobile strategy? Is your brand’s mobile strategy a top priority for your company? It should be.

Predictions say that mobile content consumption is expected to surpass online content consumption as more people purchase smartphone and tablet devices. With price points coming down on popular mobile devices, this prediction is poised to come true sooner rather than later.

At a recent ELEVATE conference panel session moderated by Will Richmond of VideoNuze, Major League Baseball Advanced Media’s executive vice president, Noah Garden, offered some statistics about branded mobile content consumption and demand that might surprise you.

  • Garden stated that Major League Baseball’s page views from mobile devices will exceed page views from online within the next 12-18 months.
  • For Major League Baseball, Garden revealed that mobile is a significant growth driver, increasing from just 8% of use in 2008 to 37% in 2010.
  • Major League Baseball expects to sell 2 million subscriptions to its MLB.tv and mobile services in 2011 — a 33% increase over the 1.5 million subscriptions sold in 2010.
  • With the increased demand for mobile content, Major League Baseball responded by offering 100 million streams of games in 2011, which is up 47% from 2010.

If a mobile branding strategy wasn’t a top priority for your company before you read the above statistics, I hope it is now. Your customers are using mobile devices more every day, and the growth rate is staggering. Your brand needs to be there, and you need to be offering the types of branded experiences and content in the mobile environment that your target audience wants and needs.

At the very least, you should be researching what those wants and needs are and evaluating what your competition is doing in the mobile space to develop your own mobile branding strategy. If you aren’t already doing that, you already need to catch up. Do it now before you fall so far behind that your brand becomes irrelevant.

Image: mlb.com

The Network and the Corporate Audience

What do you think about The Network?

No, it’s not the latest dark cyber-thriller, but the newly launched newsroom on the Cisco site.

Unusually, it was launched with a YouTube video with cartoon characters and explosions; I don’t know of any other corporate site section launched on YouTube, do you? (If you do, please let us know in the comments below!)

There’s lots to like:

  • The design is crisp and clean, and there is a range of good integration of social elements: Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and a list of links to coverage of Cisco elsewhere. There’s even a widget showing news that can be embedded on your own website, should you want to. And comments are enabled.
  • The topics covered are appropriate to the company, and there is an impressive list of contributing writers – each with a bio, links to their own online spaces, and a list of the articles by them available on this site (with dedicated RSS feed available).
  • There’s a Topic Page Manager, who is named, and their Twitter handle provided. There’s even an image of each, though sadly, the videos have been removed from YouTube. This is a nice touch, and makes the topic pages more welcoming.
  • And on the All News page, there’s a good range of filters, to make tracking down items of interest easier.

When you click through, some of the links go to newly designed pages (press releases and articles), and some (the blog links) to the pre-existing pages. This smart new design does make some of the older pages look a little dated in comparison…

What’s in it for the journalist?

The new press release pages include sections for Related Information (mostly photos) a link to the RSS feed, and Supporting Resources (though on at least one of the releases I looked at, these go to home pages rather than directly to useful information).

Note the record of the number of shares… while I have seen the number of likes, tweets and visits before, a record of the number of people who have emailed the page to another is unusual.

The Press Contacts page is nicely handled, with a dedicated email address and phone number for each contact, and an explanation of their interest area – so the visitor is more likely to find the right person. And the filter option here is a good idea, given the number of potential contacts.

Interestingly, there’s a ‘hands-off’ editorial approach, so it is much more of a news hub than a resource for those wishing to write about Cisco. Their aim is to create, curate and share content on relevant technology content, not simply to spit out corporate press releases.

The corporate resources are available via the footer, or by a small link in the top right services bar, which is where to find executive bios, contacts, and links to request B-roll and logos.

Typically, in a corporate newsroom or media section, there would be an image gallery, with images of executives, products, buildings… Alternatively, images of executives would be available for download with the executive biographies. Here, though, there is a PDF biography available, but not an image. This would seem to be a shortcoming, as it means that there is less that can be picked up and reused elsewhere. This may be part of the plan, though: their aim is to get repeat visitors, and to generate conversation on their site.

The YouTube-hosted videos can be picked up and embedded elsewhere, so it is really only the images that puzzle me. I haven’t found any indication that the images used as part of the press releases and on the site are available for reuse, but perhaps I missed something.

Curiously, the alerting service is hidden behind a small icon in the footer, and is SMS only, not email. Is this part of what seems to be becoming a trend, to reduce the alerting service options?

What do I think?

Overall, I like it, though I do wonder whether it provides enough of a resource for two key elements of their audience:

  • journalists looking to cover the company
  • bloggers looking to pick up and reuse content on their own sites

It will certainly provide a lot to mull over, for those of you responsible for maintaining the media sections of your own corporate websites.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below…

Marketing Branded Mobile Apps

Mobile is here to stay and brands need to be represented on mobile devices to stay competitive in the future. That means your brand needs a mobile website and a mobile app might be a good idea, too. However, developing a mobile app for your brand is just the beginning. You need to market your branded mobile app to ensure people know about it, download it, use it, keep it, and tell other people about it, too.

In other words, you can’t look at your branded mobile app just as a tool to market your brand. You also need to look at it as a product unto itself, which needs to be marketed. The 4 Ps matter when it comes to marketing a mobile app, so make sure your price, place, product, and promotion are right or your mobile app won’t help you meet your overall brand and business goals at all.

To that end, let’s talk about promoting your branded mobile app. Simply getting it in the iTunes App Store or Android Market isn’t enough. According to research from MTV Networks, the vast majority of mobile apps that people download and try are chosen based on friends or acquaintances’ recommendations or based on user reviews and recommendations published online.

Another important finding in the MTV Networks study reveals that consumers are fickle when it comes to mobile apps. They’ll quickly replace one app with another that does the same thing but is newer or offers better features. There is very little loyalty when it comes to mobile apps and even favorite apps are replaceable to mobile audiences.

The MTV study focused primarily on entertainment apps, so it’s highly possible that business-oriented apps have longer lifespans on consumers’ mobile devices. However, the fickle behavior of mobile customers is likely to permeate through most consumer segments. This is a fast-moving audience that wants access to information quickly and easily. They’re very willing to try the next great thing, so brands need to continually research their competitors in the mobile space and make sure their mobile apps continue to deliver the features and functionality that consumers want. There is no time to “wait and see” in the mobile market.

Bottom-line, app users listen to other app users, and they’re always looking for the next app that will make their lives even better. Social media and content marketing can help you listen to the online buzz and jumpstart conversations about your own apps to ensure they’re meeting consumer needs and beating the competition at all times.

Are you marketing your branded mobile apps? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

Define Your Brand Promise

It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about the basics of branding here on the Corporate Eye blog. As marketers and brand strategists, we often get too busy to do the self-checks on our brands that are necessary to ensure we haven’t veered off track.

In other words, you need to ask yourself if your brand is still living up to its promise?

At its core, every brand is a promise to consumers. That means, a brand promises something to consumers based on consumer expectations that are built through perceptions over time. What do consumers expect from your brand? Do those expectations match your brand promise? Does your brand promise the right things to consumers?

Brands must evolve as consumers evolve. A stagnant brand is unlikely to survive over the long-haul, particularly in today’s fast-paced world where consumer preferences and expectations can change overnight.

If your brand continually meets consumer expectations for it based on their perceptions of the brand promise as it relates to their experiences with your brand, then you’re on the right track for long-term success. However, if your brand does not meet consumer expectations for it based on its promise in every consumer interaction, then consumers will become confused with your brand. They’ll turn away from your brand in search of another brand that does meet their expectations in every customer interaction.

Consumers can’t become emotionally involved in your brand if they don’t feel secure in its ability to meet their expectations. That means they won’t be loyal to your brand and they won’t talk about your brand to other people.

Bottom-line, living your brand promise is critical to your business. Not only does the strength of your brand promise open doors to sales today, but a brand that consistently meets consumer expectations benefits from repeat sales, loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing that advertising dollars can’t buy.

Don’t discount the value that a powerful brand promise can deliver to your business for years to come. Define your brand promise, live your brand promise, and spot-check your actual performance in terms of living that brand promise periodically. Be ready to adapt and evolve, but always remember that consistently meeting consumer expectations is paramount to your success. You can’t change your brand promise without taking time to change consumer perceptions and expectations at the same time.

What does your brand promise to consumers? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

How should CEOs Engage with Social Media

A guest post today from Jerry Burrows: if you have a CEO who is keen to embrace social media, how would you advise them?

How Should CEOs Engage With Social Media?

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
Source

Forbes’ article, ‘Yes, CEOs should Facebook and Twitter’, provides a sound argument for why CEOs should abandon their traditional prejudices toward social media and hop on the bandwagon.

The idea certainly has the support of “Web 2.0 evangelists [who] argue that social software can be used to boost productivity. They say it can facilitate an open-ended corporate culture that values transparency, collaboration and innovation. Most important, it can be an effective way to build a customer-centric organization that not only communicates authentically but also listens to customers and learns from that interaction.”

Blogs and social media can facilitate that genuine conversation between CEOs and customers–and encourage those customers to become brand evangelists.

If you need one example of how company CEOs can use social media to their advantage, look no further than Tony Hsieh, founder and CEO of online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos. Hsieh’s Twitter following is massive. He has just under 2 million followers–clearly, the man tweets hard. And Zappos is a more than successful enterprise for the 37-year-old entrepreneur: it sells about a billion dollars worth of shoes and accessories a year. (And Tony’s not the only one who tweets; at least 440 other employees do, too.) There’s even a dedicated microsite. So how can you replicate his success? How is it done?

Be Careful

Yes, the goal is transparency, affability, and authenticity. But there are limits to that kind of sharing, too. Be casual, but if your personal life is especially tumultuous, you may want to leave the details out. The golden rule? Don’t speak ill of anyone. No, not your competitors, either. Recall the social PR disaster that occurred in 2007 when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey made comments on various finance forums under a pseudonym attacking rival company Wild Oats Markets, and predicting that it would fall into bankruptcy. The result was a permanent tarnish on the Whole Foods brand image.

Don’t Spam

In an interview with Kevin Morris for Wikinomics, Zappos’s Recruiting Manager, Christa Foley, writes:

“It wouldn’t be in our culture to be salesy/pushy so we’re not using Twitter to promote Zappos just for the sake of promoting Zappos. We’re using it for what I think it was intended, which is a social network that we all enjoy.”

If you want to follow in the successful footsteps of Zappos, make your interactions on Twitter and Facebook as genuine as possible by avoiding spammy language. Use your microblogging platform to post useful links about topics that relate to your industry, reply to questions from inquisitive customers (or direct them to the appropriate source), handle customer service requests, etc. Transparency is key; other potential customers that come across your social media profile will be able to view and appraise your customer service dealings without the traditional barrier of secrecy.

Show Leadership

As the CEO, you’re the face of your company. Remember that you’re also setting an example for the rest of your employees. That means that you should use your social networks to remedy problems and address widely-held customer concerns. No, it’s not the same as indiscriminately airing out your dirty laundry; but it helps to keep your brand’s image fresh and timely. Moreover, don’t be afraid to link to blogs and press releases that quote you as an authority. Encourage others to take actions on a social issue that is important to you.

Celebrate Your Fans

The Zappos brand likes to give their fans recognition for their loyalty. Hold contests and competitions for your followers (maybe something to the tune of how many followers can you get to follow you), call out loyal retweeters, etc. It’ll make them more appreciative, and know that they’re the center of your brand. Ask them for their input and they’ll feel appreciated–turning them into even more passionate advocates in the end.

About the Author: Jerry Burrows is a freelance writer for Tektronix. Tektronix is a leading supplier of test and measurement equipment like a digital multimeter or a pulse generator.