Digital Musings for Q1

In the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d jot down a few of them for your perusal and general interest:

Money-saving digital, rather than money-making digital

I am not an economist so I’ll leave the commentary on the financial landscape to those more informed… What I will say is that using digital to save costs rather than generate revenue is definitely a theme for 2012 here at ETV. Most of you will know that we ask each client we meet “what does success look like?” when discussing a new project, and it’s fascinating to see more clients coming back to us with KPIs that focus on reduction of overheads and cost per sale, rather than selling more product.

From mobile apps that feed trade show leads directly into a CRM system, to online configurators that bring the margin of customer error to zero, multi-channel solutions that show positive minus numbers rather than plus are definitely a theme for 2012!

Corporate getting social

It seems we’re not alone in our work in design and development of social platforms for the B2B world. How social intranets are changing the way companies communicate even made front page of CorpComms* (corpcommsmagazine.co.uk) magazine in March.

Our work with Hot Spots Movements across their Future of Work portal, and more recently with their partners at PwC, has proven a great success so far, with one three day “JAM” session averaging 1 post per minute! On top of this, our sister company Enteraction has been working with leading pharma company AstraZeneca on how social gaming principles can be applied to staff training schemes. Q2 will definitely see more developments from us in this space – we look forward to showing you more on this next time.

Angry Birds’ overnight success took 8 years

This is not a new topic, but one that just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. After two years working in the mobile app space, we continue to be baffled at the lack of business models attached to app development briefs we see. In December last year, stats suggested that over 530 new apps are launched every day. Making your app visible and successful is a bigger task than the development of it, just developing one and uploading will not start making you millions… sorry about that.

So, if you’re looking at apps this year, here are a few pointers on what we advise you think about before you start building it:

  1. Is an app the best route – this year’s hot topic is responsive design – would an online presence that responds better to mobile visitors do the same job for less?
  2. If it is an app, what is the marketing model? An app is a product and like any other product, price, placement, and promotion should be considered – launching an app and hoping people will simply find and love it is a risky strategy for the money it costs to build
  3. Device – which one does your audience use? If you can find out by asking your existing customer / fan base, do (sports clubs please take note!) Our work to date sees Apple downloads far outweighing other platforms but they’ve mainly been aimed at media content or for staff armed with iPhones.
  4. Where’s the ROI? Sales leads, cost-cutting, download revenue to advertisers. Essentially, what does success look like for your app?

So, three themes for three months. I hope they’ve sparked a synapse or two, and if you’d like to talk more about any of these, do drop me a line.
 
Here’s to a successful second quarter and more exciting digital developments,
 
Cheers for now,
Jilly Cross

Related content

Thought leadership is widely recognised as a powerful (if complex!) tool to differentiate your B2B brand and engage audiences. But its deployment has typically been focused at top or mid-funnel, and opportunities to leverage its

Access full article

B2B strategies. B2B skills.
B2B growth.

Propolis helps B2B marketers confidently build the right strategies and skills to drive growth and prove their impact.