How Brands Can Build a Successful App Strategy: 12 Lessons From Benjamin Moore, Bank of America, Kraft and Others

Last week’s Apps for Brands event in New York gathered some top marketers to talk about best practices in developing a mobile app strategy.

The Sensis Take: The marketing of an app is fundamentally the same as the marketing of any other digital property.  Notably:

• You have to integrate both getting and using the app into a user’s natural workflow.
• Apps spread through word of mouth.  With over 85,000 apps in the Apple store, it’s difficult for users to find the signal in the noise without a little help from their friends.
• Keeping that positive word of mouth effect requires you be hyper-responsive to fixing problems with the app.
• Mobile apps are about what’s going on right now. The content can’t be on delay.
• Apps must be integrated into your other marketing platforms and messages.  They should not be about a one-off project, and need to take advantage of your other marketing vehicles.

Other Takeaways:

• Apps must be real-time, no time delayed content.
• Make it easy for consumers to pay.  Put the app into app stores, don’t make them come to your site.
• People will pay for value, but free works to drives sales for your core product
• Utility, frequency and viral distinguish long-term success
• Do not discount the iPod Touch, it is a sleeping giant.

In this AdAge Video Podcast, you can hear an excerpt of MLB.com president Robert Bowman talk about the need to balance an app strategy alongside a mobile web strategy.

Mobile Apps: And Now for a Contrarian’s View: They’re Hot Now, but the Web Will Win in the End

The Sensis Take: While custom apps are a hugely popular tool in the marketer’s arsenal right now, it requires a significant time investment on the part of the consumer to go find and download your app, whereas your WAP site requires only that they visit the site to get the information.

As the mobile web grows, we may find again that platform neutrality trumps the intimacy of a branded app.

STATS: 84% of Social Media Programs Don’t Measure ROI

The Sensis Take: As an organization that has experience in creating and running social media campaigns, we know that there is a strong ROI in a good campaign.  While ROI is not the only metric worth monitoring, the CFOs of the world will start tightening the purse strings if marketers continue to neglect financial benchmarks.

Social Media Policies from 80+ Organizations

The Sensis Take: If you are reading this blog, you are probably ahead of the curve (or looking to be) on the issues surrounding social media use.  Mashable has put together a list of social media policies of over 80 different organizations.   Take a look and see what organizations are doing things that you really want to emulate.

Experiments in Digital Creativity: 87 Cool Things

At last week’s Advertising Week in New York, Google’s Creative Lab gave a presentation on some of the coolest uses they’ve seen of Google technology.  We are more than a little impressed.

-Blair Goldberg, Associate Digital Strategist

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