What must you consider before going down the app route? Ryan Malone, director at Propeller Mobile gives the following tips
The Internet and mobile generation offers a new and effective way to engage with business professionals; one that B2B marketers should readily embrace and exploit. All business individuals have a mobile phone, which they wouldn’t be caught without. It’s an essential item – not only for diary, news and contacts, but increasingly for latest features, such as apps, to inform and entertain.
Cutting through on the move
Directors and senior managers have one thing in common: a lack of time. But organisations can use this to their advantage by creating a mobile tool that decision-makers can interact with while on the move. The growing mobile phone app industry has been picked up by marketers in all sectors as a useful tool to address target audiences.
Apps are perfect for engaging mobile phone users outside of their offices and homes, and they can enable businesses to inform their key market while offering alternative services.
Marketers have to embrace the new possibilities and innovations mobile marketing offers in order to promote themselves as a cutting-edge company.
However, there are a few rules that businesses should obey to get the best ROI from their app, which I call the six golden rules of creating a customised B2B app.
1. Never turn your website into an app
The first step, even before starting to develop an app, is to think about the reasons why an app is important for your business. Ask yourself questions such as, who is the target? What should it achieve?
Rather than just turning your website into an app, you must consider why people would want to use your app on the move. Take advantage of the time people have while they are away from their desks.
2. Use information you already have
After clarifying these underlying reasons, the gathering of information starts. Organisations have a huge amount of data about their target market that is created as a by-product of day-to-day office work, market research, conference lists and best practice. It’s important that you consider how this data can best be transformed into useful information and in turn utilised in order to develop a valuable app for your target audience.
3. Good things come in small apps
Usually businesses will come up with huge ideas they want to realise in a tiny app. This never works. If an app is too complicated or too filled with random information, people will get bored and feel exploited. Branded apps with user-friendly and useful information achieve much more than blatant marketing tools that just try to capitalise businesses.
4. Build a relationship through your app
Recent stats reveal that 70 per cent of people sleep with their phone at arm’s reach, which means that marketers can build up a personal and intimate relationship with business professionals and extract relevant data of the user’s interests.
Brands should build relationships based on trust by using this data to send relevant information to their users. Knowing your target group is half the way to the finish line.
5. Outsource the app development
The creation of an app is something that most businesses will want to put a lot of effort into developing and make a strategic part of their business.
Even if the organisation already has a very good development team and track record, it could be worth investing in special mobile developers.
6. Promote your app
Once the app has finished being developed, it is time to promote it. The worst example of sharing an app with your target audience is to send out an email saying “Please search for our app on the App Store.” If you do send out emails, it is vital to include a direct link to your app, so that the user can download it immediately and without having to visit another website.
Don’t forget, if the app is the first of its kind in your industry, the press will be happy to write about it. Public relations is an excellent tool to promote an innovation and to let people know about it for free.
Some marketers think that creating an app is the easiest thing in the world. I’m afraid it is not. If apps are new territory for your business then it may be worth seeking advice from specialist app developers.
And like with everything in marketing, integrating apps into your marketing mix is a hard process of learning from mistakes until you’ve got to grips with it.
