Consumer Application Marketing: Sponsoring an Application
I read an article by Steve Smith for MinOnline this week titled, “Vanity Fair Gets Social With Oscar Race iPhone App.” This article discussed how Vanity Fair was going to capitalize on the Oscar buzz with its Vanity Fair Hollywood Oscar Race iPhone App and how L’Oreal will be the sole sponsor.
This is an excellent approach to application marketing—tagging into major events that naturally get a lot of buzz by providing relevant content and weaving in one sponsor. This approach gives that sponsor more prominence since there is less advertising clutter.
The W3i Application Network can be viewed this way as well. Consumer application marketers with demand for their content sponsor consumer applications during the installation process. This allows advertiser prominence when the consumer is already installing an application.
The article also discussed another problem with consumer application marketing, namely getting consumers to actually use the app once installed. Vanity Fair tries to solve this problem using several messaging features: pop-up instructions when the application is installed to orient the consumer with the app’s functionality and a headline crawl on the bottom of the app to showcase additional content. Vanity Fair also built in the important “sharing” feature to ignite viral distribution by creating voting pools with groups. These are excellent consumer application marketing tactics.
To excel at consumer application marketing not only does the app need to get installed, but it must also engage the user. Providing timely content, ways to discover content and navigation tips are essential for an application’s success.
Deborah Manthei, Director of Marketing Communications, W3i, evangelizing the use of consumer application marketing to engage brands’ essential users.
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