With 17+ million users and counting, the pocket-size iPhone is no small venue. As marketing and advertising budgets shrink, mainstream advertising may seem a bit less attractive to some. An iPhone app can be a powerful and more cost effective alternative - and a great complement to well run traditional media campaigns.
1. Building Brands with iPhone Apps Consider the lighter company Zippo. Their iPhone app is an interactive, virtual lighter displayed on the phone’s large screen. A simple concept that has been downloaded over 3 million times. This app put their brand in the pocket of over 3 million people - a constant reminder, a whisper from their pocket, “hey, buy a Zippo…”
And online companies like Facebook, Flickr and Amazon have used the iPhone marketplace to make their services more ubiquitous. If your service can be distributed electronically a mobile phone app gives potential customers one more convenient way to get what you got.� 2. Is an iPhone App Right for Everyone? Maybe not. But with some creativity you may be surprised. The app store is filled with simple and useful (as well as simple and silly), but wildly popular apps. If your product or service can be promoted as fun or useful you have an immediate advantage.
Service Businesses often have the most obvious opportunities, as much of the value in a service business is delivering information. Delivering info that is complementary to the existing service and provides convenience to your customers could go a long way to win new customers.
Retail Businesses can tie products into fun apps that connect with the right demographic, or be cross-promoted with helpful apps used by the right audience. Plus, using the phones’ built in GPS means you can target your products by a user’s location. There are all sorts of location based apps popping up - maybe you should get your products in the mix!?
3. Can it Generate Revenue?
Yes.
Not all apps need to be free. Companies as varied as Kraft and Major League Baseball have generated real revenue by using this massive user audience. MLB’s AtBat app offers real-time game coverage and video highlights. The app is tremendously popular and costs $9.99.
Some companies are learning that people will pay money for an app that makes info and software available on their iPhone - even when they could otherwise get it for free online from a PC. Convenience, it seems, does have a price… a price many are willing to pay.
And many free apps can generate real (and significant) revenue. Amazon, for instance, offers an iPhone version of it’s Kindle book reader. This creates a significant market of iPhone users that can purchase books through an iPhone version of the Amazon bookstore. Similarly, Target has a free app that let’s users “window shop” right from their phone. If you find something you want the app helps you find it in a store near you, or links you to buy it online.
Believe it or not, there are ways to drive business for your clients in today’s market. When budgets are tight people spend more time on product research before they buy. And more and more, that research is done on the web. Your clients’ products and services need to be in the research zone. Put their products where the research takes place. We’ve identified key areas that consumers turn to on the web for their research, here’s our short list:
Social Media: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, are all proving effective referral networks for everything from babysitters to dog food to the Snuggie.
Blog Networks: what better way to dissect a product or service than reading the brutal honesty from someone that doesn’t get paid for it?
Viral Videos: what happens every time you do research on the web? You waste 30 minutes. Well, your client can be the inspiration for that lost time!
Experts: being an expert, and influencing experts, is easier and cheaper than you think.
Search Engine Text Ads: sure, the links on the side of your search results are ads, but people click them anyway! Text ad campaigns can be micro-targeted and scaled according to budgets.
EffectiV is helping our agency partners pitch these concepts with clients. We’ve crafted some simple but compelling materials that we would like to share.
If you would like to learn more regarding our pitch concepts, please click on the icon below.
I started to post an entry about IBM’s recent announcement regarding their LotusLive cloud computing software. But i quickly found myself hacking out an explanation on cloud computing. Then, i realized we’ll probably need to start with a quick break-down of the Software as a Service concept.
So, here goes… Software as a Service, put very simply, is the use of a website to perform functions that normally would be installed on your computer as a software application. The most commonly used example is web-based email. Most office workers use email through software programs like Outlook (or Eudora, or Lotus, etc.).
Here’s our quick list of 5 technologies that we think advertsing and pr agencies should be considering in 2009.
Video Ads on the Web- Look for video ad services from giants like Google to gain serious momentum in 2009. Businesses large and small are getting comfortable with the ubiquity of text ads. Now it’s time for better brand-building with video.
Social Media Apps- Sites like Facebook continue to add users in every demographic. Your clients can capitalize on this growing opportunity with meaningful tools that connect to a laser-targeted audience.
Mobile Mania- As the screen gets smaller our audience gets larger. Much larger. While PC based Internet usage is currently between 1.25 - 1.6 billion, mobile handsets have reached over 3.3 billion people - and that number is expected to grow fast over the next couple of years.
Content is King- Get past the mundane content updates and move on to bigger projects! Delivering a slick website is great. But providing a platform that allows clients to manage their own content will drive traffic for clients, and revenue for you.
Get Syndicated- RSS and Atom feeds are great ways to get good ideas to the right people, and great content on your websites. Boost your client’s expert status using these tools in 2009.
Let me state my bias front and center: we web developers need another web browser like a hole in the head. Cross platform/browser compatibility issues are what’s making flash sites all the rage for frustrated control freaks designers these days, throwing a third major browser into the mix is sure to make our heads explode. With that sentiment in my heart I watched the release of Google’s new web browser “Chrome” with great interest. If you read the 38 page comic book Google released, Chrome boasts faster performance, a simpler interface and a far more efficient JavaScript engine.
Early benchmarks indicated that Chrome was indeed faster, but as time went on (by “time” I mean just 48 hours) and the browser was put through some more real world testing, it began running into a few problems (note: link requires free registration). Namely, browser crashing, SSL Certificate failure (thats a doozy), and even causing laptops to spontaneously go into hibernation mode (non-invasive app indeed).
So okay, its their first version and bugs are bound to occur. They’ve already released a patch and after all, the technology they’re using seems to be pretty innovative. Some of the benchmark studies are pretty unfavorable, but then some show its javascript capability to be phenomenal. But the problem is, what does that matter at this point?
Think of it this way, there are basically two types of people on the internet. Savvy and non-savvy. I don’t mean that in an elitist kind of way, my own father, he’s pretty non-savvy but he browses the internet and participates in forums about fishing. For all intents and purposes, a legitimate internet user. So folks like myself saw these bugs the first few days and said “Meh, I’ll pass.” and folks like my father said “A Google what now? Huh?” And even if you’re an anti-Microsoft type of savvy user you still have your beloved Netscape Firefox. Or even Mozilla, Opera or Safari (and for you old school hardcore Linux folks, Lynx).
So kind of like this.
Sure enough, according to the author of the commentary I linked above’s research, Chrome has so far peaked at just over 1 percent browser share followed by a plummet of 30% of its users. Only time will tell if Chrome becomes a viable alternative for the average user.
The blender. A pretty simple thing really. But unless you needed to buy one would you really find yourself googling a blender, though? A random survey of friends (in my head) all say “meh, not really.” You know it, I know it and most of all, the companies that make blenders know it too. But one clever blender company employee, George Wright of Blentec, had an idea to turn the psychology of the internet to their advantage. George knew that with a well-conceived viral video, a dash of humor and a coolness-factor you can get people to watch almost anything, even your company’s blender. And thus the Will It Blend viral video series was born. There’s no better way for me to describe it than to show you for yourself.
I give you Will It Blend’s iPhone episode (much to Kevin King’s horror):
One of the greatest, yet oft overlooked, innovations of the wildly popular YouTube website is the ability to embed its videos on other sites. In one sweeping move, YouTube made it possible for any website operator to easily host high quality video streams on their web pages.
Prior to YouTube, if a client wanted video we had to get a digital copy from the client, select which format would be best for the client’s audience, rip the video to that format and host the video file at a significant expense. And if the client wanted a cheap solution, well, they just didn’t have one. Now, if a client wants a cheap and easy video solution we just create a YouTube account for them, upload it and post. Simple.
But there is a catch. Once the video runs the viewer sees thumbnails of “related” videos, enticing them to visit the source of this video extravaganza - YouTube.com. And now YouTube (or shall we really say, Google, which purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006), is trying to drive this cross-over marketing strategy even further. All embedded YouTube clips now automatically include a video search bar. Read More
Adobe announced yesterday that it is finally releasing a version of it’s omni-present flash player for cell phones. According to Adobe the Flash player is currently installed on 98% of all PCs. The multimedia engine currently provides millions of users and websites with a media-rich web experience. Flash drives animation, sound and video on most websites that are currently using anything but plain text and images. But until now that same experience is difficult to replicate on a handset.
Google has launched it’s much anticipated voice enabled search application for the iPhone. This new feature allows users to simply talk to the phone to retrieve search results. Touch the app, hold phone to face, speak your search request. That’s it. The new Google app uses the location targeting built into the phone to automatically filter by location. Looking for a restaurant in downtown Philly? Just say “Thai Restaurant” and the app will retreive results relevant to where you’re standing.
What does this technology mean for your business? Your company may need a mobile web presence. Because your website needs to be here, uh, i mean there, umm, everywhere.
If you manage a website this means two things:
1) Make sure your website looks ok on the iPhone and other cell phone browsers.
2) Make sure Google knows where your business or service is located.
