To App, or not to App? iPhone applications and your business

[Gruden]

The success of Apple’s iPhone app store has led to a stampede of brands creating games, services, and other applications as marketing tools. It’s an entirely new*platform for most, and it is quickly becoming a powerful way to influence consumers. More and more, our clients are asking our advice on the value of* iPhone apps. How do you decide if*having one is*a good idea for your organisation?

I came across a great article on BNET highlighting the five key strategies for making a smart application. The full article is distilled from a Forrester Research report on the topic, and is a useful starting point for any marketer looking to engage a digital agency such as Gruden to build an application for their business.

In brief, their key recommendations are to:

1. Make it Useful
2. Make it Interactive
3. Make it Entertaining
4. Make it a Mixture (Combining Utility and Intractivity)
5. Make it Free

However, before even embarking on the iPhone application discussion, it’s important to set out your key marketing goals to see if an iPhone application would assist with the realisation of these goals. It’s not very useful long-term to take up the “I’ll have what she’s having” approach if it’s not*engaging your consumers.

The key question to ask yourself*is what you are trying to accomplish. *Are you trying to build brand affinity? Engage customers? Drive people to a physical location? A web site perhaps? There are many options, and many different ways to address these goals using various digital channels.

Additionally, look at the*break down of your market segment and see*what percentage*of your audience are utilising iPhones. You may be surprised to find that many of them use other brands of smart phones, such as the Blackberry. In this instance, you’d be looking to build a completely different type of application. A majority of your audience may not even*be using smart phones at all.

The Forrester Report, ‘Matching iPhone Capabilities to Customer Goals’, comments:

Simply building these richer experiences doesn’t ensure success. Companies looking to harness the power of these devices must design experiences that match appropriate device capabilities with user goals. To design successful mobile data experiences, companies must understand how people want to use mobile data channels, fit those data channels into multi-channel scenarios, and focus on their strongest capability — timeliness.

Don’t get me wrong, iPhone applications have been used by hundreds of companies*in recent months to achieve outstanding marketing and branding*results, and there’s nothing that turns a Gruden*developer on more than getting the chance to show off the rich user experience they can create for mobile users.

Kraft’s iFood assistant, for example,*combines both utility and interactivity.*The application suggests recipes, lets users upload their own and share them, and assists users in creating shopping lists.*Other apps by brands such as Target allow users to find bargains and locate their nearest shop.

At the end of the day, focus on strategy.

With the array of new, innovative technologies and marketing channels which have opened up within the last few years, it’s easy to get carried away in an attempt to stay ahead of the game. It’s important to set your key marketing objectives first*and then match the appropriate medium by which you engage with your consumers, rather than the other way around.



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