Corporate Eye

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Archives for October 2012

Should Your Brand Have a Mobile App?

iphone and ipadIf your brand hasn’t jumped onto the mobile app bandwagon yet, should it? There is no doubt that the future is mobile, and it could be argued that all brands should be investigating ways to deliver value to consumers in a mobile environment. But is a mobile app right for your brand today? Should you bump mobile app development up to the top of your brand priorities?

The answer isn’t simple. You really need to evaluate your goals for joining the mobile market to identify if now is the time to devote money and resources to app development. Following are five things to consider as you make a decision for your brand:

1. Your target audience must be mobile and comfortable using apps.

If your target audience isn’t currently using mobile apps on smartphone or tablet devices, then developing a mobile app shouldn’t be at the top of your list of brand building priorities. Do some research before you invest in mobile app development and make sure your target audience has the ability to use your app if and when it rolls out.

2. You need to have money and manpower to build the app now and manage it throughout its lifecycle.

Unfortunately, mobile app development doesn’t come with a one-size-fits-all solution. Different devices require different coding. It’s easier to only create an iOS version of a branded app for iPhones and iPads, but doing so leaves a large audience unable to use your app. Furthermore, the work isn’t over when the app is launched. Updates, enhancements, and more must be done on an ongoing basis to ensure the app works, is generating the results you need, and is evolving in order to stay relevant and useful to consumers.

3. You need to promote your mobile app.

Visit the Apple App Store or the Google Play app store, and you’ll find a lot of apps and a lot of clutter. Unfortunately, people won’t find your app unless you promote it before and after launch. That means you need a marketing budget to develop awareness of the app and drive downloads (or sales if it’s a paid app). You also need a team to put the marketing plan into action, monitor the app’s performance against goals, and calculate ROI.

4. You need to develop an app that your audience actually believes is useful and/or adds value to their lives.

The barrier to entry in the mobile app market is almost non-existent, but if you launch an app that no one finds useful or meaningful, the app will fail. Even the biggest marketing budget can’t save a mobile app that is irrelevant and useless to consumers. You need to do your research up front and get a clear understanding of the type of app your customers want from your brand. Don’t assume you know what they want, because you don’t. This is an area where making assumptions will lead directly to failure.

5. You need to develop an app that actually does something and builds a deeper connection between the brand and consumers.

Don’t just make your corporate blog content available in a branded mobile app. Instead, make sure the app you create for your brand taps into consumers’ emotions and builds connections with them that lead to brand loyalty and advocacy. This is where the marketing team can show off their innovative thinking and turn the data collected from market research that identified consumers’ wants and needs into a successful branded mobile app.

Image: Yutaka Tsutano

My Networked Life

Cisco’s newsroom has featured topics; one of these looks at how technology enables people to thrive in today’s connected world.

The hero image is an interactive picture that allows you to expand and play videos of real people discussing how networks impact on their lives and businesses. The videos are from around the world, from artists to entrepreneurs, and the page provides further links to the subjects’ and/or their company’s social media.

We like this because it is an interesting and well presented way of showcasing the variety of ways that connective technology can be applied, and promotes Cisco as an authority in its field.

How To Create The Perfect Corporate YouTube Channel

YouTube seems to be lost on many businesses as they don’t understand how it can benefit them. They therefore choose to set a basic channel up and ignore it for months at a time, or don’t bother to set one up at all.

The reality is over 800 million people worldwide watch videos on YouTube each month, and millions of subscriptions to channels happen daily. Meaning YouTube is a form of social media that can no longer be ignored by businesses, but some don’t quite know where to begin. That’s why I have put together this guide to creating the perfect corporate YouTube channel, with examples of corporations who do it well and why.

 

Step 1: Test The Water

Online marketing and social media are ever-changing, as are your audience’s reactions to them, and therefore experimentation and adaptation are musts. When you first create your channel it won’t be perfect instantaneously, as you will need to use analytics and insights to shape your channel’s design and content according to your audience’s reactions and engagement (or lack of).

Instead of concerning yourself with gaining thousands of views and subscriptions straight away, use this time to test the water. Set up a channel with a simple but customised design—something that reflects the look and feel of your website often works well—and populate the channel with some content along the lines of what you plan to add more of. Then post some links to this content on your other media, write a blog post about your new channel and ask people for their feedback.

 

Step 2: Set Objectives and Plan Campaigns

dell youtube Dell’s YouTube Channel[/caption]Now you have received some feedback and a general response to your first few videos and the overall look and feel of the channel, you can now start to make some changes and plan marketing campaigns.

When planning the campaign it is important to determine what your marketing objectives and overall brand strategy is, and how YouTube fits into this. Are you planning to use the channel for customer support, to promote brand awareness with a list of subscribers and/or generate leads? It is important to remember that it is likely each video you upload will not be able to encompass all of your objectives, so decide what content will cover which objectives, and where possible group them. A good example of this is large B2B and B2C technology company Dell. They have encompassed lead generation, brand and product awareness, and customer support all in one YouTube channel by using tabs to group the different categories of video.

 

Step 3: Perfect The Design

The overall look and feel of your YouTube channel should feel comforting in a way that it doesn’t differ too much from your website design and the feel of your brand. It should also be engaging and exciting in that it offers something slightly more than your website in terms of video. Siemens is a prime example of this. Using a custom design they have turned a generic social media channel into a unique place of their own, almost like having a second website. A home from Siemens home in effect.
siemens youtube
 

Step 4: Never Let Things Get Stale

Now you have set up your channel, customised the design and got the right content balance, don’t be tempted to sit back and relax. Keep using analytics and insights to gauge your visitors’ reactions and engagement, see what gets their juices flowing and what’s boring them. And use this information to tailor your future content and adapt new design tweaks to the visitor’s preferences. You may even find this information makes you change your original objectives and strategy, but that is what it is there for. Keep mixing things up, experimenting and adapting to your visitors, and they will keep coming back for more, guaranteed.

 

1 out of 2 Consumers Think Brand Facebook Pages Are More Useful Than Websites

According to a survey by Lab42, about one out of two consumers think a brand’s Facebook Page is more useful than a brand’s website. Of course, it’s imperative that brands maintain their own controlled online presence via a website as well as a Facebook Page as parts of a comprehensive, integrated marketing plan. However, for brands that aren’t completely sold on the value of a Facebook Page, the results of this study simply add to the ever-accumulating data telling us that consumers want to find brands on Facebook.

For example, the study also revealed the following statistics related to consumers’ opinions and preferences about brand Faceboook Pages:

  • 87% of people like brands on Facebook.
  • 82% of people who like brands on Facebook believe that Facebook is a good place to interact with those brands.
  • Out of the people who think Facebook is a good place to interact with brands, 35% believe that brands listen to them more on Facebook.
  • 75% of people who like brands on Facebook feel more connected to those brands.
  • 69% of people who like brands on Facebook have done so because a friend liked the brand.
  • 34% of people like brands on Facebook in order to get discounts and promotions
  • 21% of people like brands on Facebook in order to get free giveaways.
  • 14% of people like brands on Facebook because they are already loyal customers of the brand.
  • 11% of people like brands on Facebook because they trust those brands.
  • The top three ways consumers interact with brands on Facebook are: print coupons, like/comment on the brand’s page, and learn about new products (in that order).
  • 46% of people who like brands on Facebook have liked brands that they have no plans to purchase. 52% liked those brands to get a free item. 46% liked those brands because they actually like the brands but can’t afford them, and 24% liked those brands to help a friend.
  • 73% of people who like brands on Facebook have unliked brands on Facebook.
  • The top three reasons consumers unlike brands on Facebook are: the brand posted too frequently, they stopped liking the brand, and they had a bad customer experience with the brand (in that order).
  • 47% of people do not like brands because brands clutter their news feeds. 36% don’t want to be contacted by brands. 30% are concerned about their privacy, and 27% only post things relevant to their own lives.

You can see all of the data from the Lab42 study in the infographic below. Click to view it at full size.

facebook brand likes infographic

On Purpose: Detail and Tone

I invited Jordan Mendys to write a post for us today. His photos are lovely (do go and look at them) and I thought he’d have some interesting views about the visual aspects of the corporate website.

His point about intentionality, detail and tone is an extremely important one, whether you are considering your first corporate website or maintaining the latest iteration of a long-standing web position.

Visualizing Your Corporate Website

When it comes to web design, there is literally an unlimited possibility for what you can do. Of course, depending on what you are looking to do, there are directions you should steer clear of… Visual design for websites is very important. You want it to reflect the tone of your company and the business you do. Just as individual bloggers pay close attention to what is on their site, so should a corporate website. Every decision you make, from colors used, font of the text, and of course the layout all play a role in creating a tone for your business, and every role is just as important as the next. If you want to have a good, clean, and effective website, then you must take each of these into close consideration.

Layout

This is the basic starting point for your site. You want to know how to organize your information for effective reception of your audience, as well as make it look professional. Typically, a corporate website should have some symmetry and solid form. Symmetric webpages show order and professionalism, whereas asymmetric websites are typically more whimsical and art driven. That’s not to say it doesn’t work for businesses, but make sure it fits your company and what you provide. For instance, Wolseley gets to the point by heavy use of symmetry, even their links to deeper pages. The deeper pages have the same layout. As you see, all the information on the site is well organized and planned out, making the user’s experience (UX) very easy.

As mentioned, your site doesn’t have to follow that same layout, but you have to clearly define your goals before you start to build a site. Are you there to entertain visitors to your site? Then a non-traditional, artsy, unbalanced site might be visually appealing enough for them to come and stay on your site. However if your goal is to give information to your potential customers and clients, you want access to your information simply laid out in a good order.

Color

Color is sometimes overlooked, but plays a big role is UX. There has been a ton of research into colors and their effect on mood. Reds and yellows create anxiety and a need to move quickly. This is why so many fast food restaurants use those colors; they want customers in and out quickly so more can come in. Yet, look at McDonald’s website, and while you’ll see bits of their famous color scheme, a lot of the pages and images used are not that color. That is because while they want you in and out of their restaurant quickly, they want you to spend as much time on their site as you can.

Using comforting colors like blues, browns, and others will make people want to stay on your site. Of course you’ll want to use your company’s colors for brand identity, but if those are comforting colors, they might should not play a major role in your design. In other instances, look at your industry. Are you a company with a “green” product? Well, that color might resonate with your audience. Or maybe an aqua color reminding them of the ocean, a big role that green technology plays. Whatever the case is, do some research on color, and make sure it fits your overall mood. The aforementioned ‘anxious’ colors can even work if your site and product is centered around adventure and an adrenaline rush. Just make sure the colors you pick are intentional and in line with your goals.

Font and Text

This one is pretty basic, but nonetheless should be paid some love. Font is often overlooked in regards to web design. A lot of times, people will want to look into flashy and neat looking fonts. You see this a lot of times on blogs, but when it comes to a corporate website, keep it simple. There is no need to use flashy fonts or text. Not only is it not necessary (good content is), but you also run the risk of looking unprofessional or detracting from your message. Just look to use to trusty fonts. Pretend you’re writing a business email or memo. Would you want to use Comic Sans or Wingdings? Most likely not, so keep the same professional mentality on your website. It is not a hard task, but certainly one you will want to pay attention to.

So these are the basics to getting your corporate website up and running. Make sure that you have a clear goal that you want to achieve with your website, then execute those tasks accordingly. Every little thing that goes on your site is important, as every little detail will be scrutinized. Pick colors, fonts, and even pictures with complete intention, and don’t let anything fall through the cracks. You want visitors to come to your site and stay there, so make sure is a welcome environment once they make their way over.

Jordan Mendys is a media professional and blogger. He is also a freelance photographer and filmmaker who lives in North Carolina with his wife. Jordan is also a content creator and writer for Digital Satellite Dish TV.