B2B mobile apps can be an effective marketing tool.

It’s predicted that nearly 6 billion mobile app downloads will occur in 2010 according to Marketing Charts and ABI Research.  Of course the growth in smartphone sales (up 20% in 2009) is driving the development of apps. 

So I started thinking about how B2B marketers could benefit from apps beyond increasing brand engagement. A more powerful use of B2B apps is to enable greater personal productivity and connectivity.  Find out what would make your customers and prospects more productive.  Based on my work with B2B high tech and industrial companies, the following list offers ideas for B2B mobile apps:

• Let’s say you provide a B2B software application.  Is there a dashboard or other view that would simplify a process for your customer?  For example, a busy plant manager spends a lot of time working throughout the plant.  Could an app connect that person to his or her desktop and your software application from a mobile phone or device?  Most likely, the answer is yes.
• In a similar manufacturing setting, could a mobile app enable more efficient equipment reliability and maintenance?   For example, the use of a mobile application that would allow a machine operator to connect to the equipment manufacturer for troubleshooting.
• In regulated industries such as food and pharmaceutical, could a mobile app help streamline regulatory compliance or avoid non-compliance for processes such as commissioning and qualification, hazmat handling, etc.?
• Connect your app to location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, where it can enhance productivity by optimizing support resources and improving customer response time.  (Ok… that one may seem like a stretch today, but not in the near future.)  Read more on Geo Location Trends from Mashable.
• Calculators and reference tools are popular B2B apps, especially for the technical audience.  Whether it’s ROI, popular engineering formulae or productivity/efficiency calculations, calculators can be an effective B2B app for boosting your brand and your customers’ productivity.

How much does a B2B mobile app cost?

B2B mobile app development costs vary widely.  Apps can range from $10K to $300+K depending on the complexity of the app, number of platforms on which it will operate (iPhone, Android or Blackberry) and interface with other platforms or systems such as a CRM sytem, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Typical rates for developers range from $50 per hour to $100 per hour.  Despite the wide range of pricing, the average cost to develop a robust app appears to be around $30K, although I’ve heard of less robust apps coming in at around $5K.

Consider how the app will be used to determine whether it should be free or fee-based.  If your B2B mobile app is designed to help further engage prospects within the buying cycle, then a free app may be justifiable based on the potential return on investment.  If the mobile app is an integral part of your product offering or a value-added service, then consider a fee-based mobile app or a free trial period.

When determining the cost of a B2B mobile app, you should also factor in promotional costs.  After  your app is developed, you’ll need a marcom plan for promoting the app and driving users to download it.

Should you be “app agnostic”?

With more than 125,000 apps and growing, the Apple iPhone is one of the most popular destinations for apps .  However Google’s Android OS is quickly gaining popularity along with Blackberry and other devices.  As B2B marketers, consider what device your customers are primarily using for business connectivity.  The Blackberry is a popular device among enterprise users and a likely destination for B2B apps.  You may wish to consider other devices such as iPads and Windows Mobile OS devices as viable alternatives.  You’ll have to weigh the development costs of each to determine what is feasible. 

Measure the success of your B2B mobile app

The number of downloads  is one metric, but it only tells part of the story. Consider the category in which your mobile app will reside and seek to be in the top for your category.  For example, the “lifestyle” category is one of the most popular. Of course, the more specialized the app, the less crowded the space.  When developing your app, consider building in tools to monitor usage such as AppViz,  Heartbeat,  or Pinch Media.

A B2B mobile app can be another element in your marcom mix designed to move prospects to the next step in the buying cycle or as an added value to your product.

I’d love to hear more from other B2B marketers and mobile app developers on what you’re seeing in B2B mobile apps.  Thanks!

More information on mobile apps for B2B:

BEST PRACTICE: Seven rules for developing iPhone apps – James Hepton shares practical advice for developing B2B mobile apps.

What Offers a Bigger Opportunity Than Paid Mobile Apps? – Paid or free mobile app?… Rob Weber offers advice.

Marketing Mobile Apps – Davis Brewer offers good suggestions on marketing your mobile app.

Mobile Ad Campaigns More Effective Than Online – If you’re a MarketingProfs member, you’ll be able to read these excellent recent stats on mobile ad campaigns.

Marketing Your App is More Important than You Think – iCombat provides a good review of how to market your mobile app from a gaming perspective… worth a read.

The folks at B2B Voices hosted a group of marketing and communications professionals to discusss the topic   “Social Media and ROI: Dare We Talk About It.”  One of the most important outcomes of the meeting was the fact that metrics used to determine social media ROI should be money-focused such as increased sales, lower cost per acquisition, etc.   However, what often are reported as ROI metrics–number of followers, likes, subscribers, etc.–don’t really cut it when talking to marketing execs… especially when it comes to asking for more money for your social media program.

The following slide show by Weber Shandwick’s Aaron Pearson (@apearson) and Andy Keith (@andykeith) shares helpful information on where most B2B marketers are when it comes to measuring B2B social media effectiveness.  Interestingly, most B2B marketers are still struggling with where to begin.  The 20-slide show offers a practical good start.

B2B marcom managers solve the content conundrum with a social media workflow.

Content , links and trust are the currencies of the internet. Relevant, useful content provided on a regular basis across multiple social and online media helps build trust. This same content can also generate the links that boost search traffic, leads and sales.

Whether you’re a B2B marcom manager who’s taking on social media as a grass roots effort (you and one or two colleagues) or you’ve enlisted a team, content creation can be daunting, even meeting the bare minimum frequency. A blog alone takes a minimum of 12 posts per month, and it’s recommended that you have at least two months’ worth of blogs already in the queue to ease the pressure of developing content on demand. Like many B2B marcom managers who are beginning a social media program, you and your already burdened staff are responsible for creating most of the content in addition to your day jobs. Before you read any further, make sure you have a content marketing plan and a conversation calendar.

How to develop a B2B social media workflow

One of the biggest hurdles to social media adoption in B2B is adapting the B2B marcom workflow to allow for social media. For starters, you need to develop a sharing mindset and integrate it into your daily activities. Any media that you consume or develop has the potential to become “social media fodder” that can be finessed into a tweet, blog post or comment on someone else’s blog. For example, when you’re monitoring your news feeds, copy one or two articles/posts and quickly post them to your social media status updates or your Facebook fan page, and then bookmark them on Delicious or Digg them. Social bookmarks serve as a good reference for future blog posts and Twitter tweets.

Note: If you’re not monitoring the social sphere and you’re new to social media, start by setting up your listening posts. It will save you a lot of frustration and embarrassment later.

As you develop the social media workflow, you’ll need a repository for all the content you collect (The new buzzword for collect is “curate.”) You’ll also need a system for managing content. Your repository can be as simple as a “content” folder on your desktop and a Delicious social bookmarking account or a Digg account. There are many other social bookmarking sites; so sign up for one, and as you come across content, bookmark it.

Organize your desktop for social media success

Begin each day with a blank document on your desktop. Then, as ideas come to you, add them to the document. If your idea came from something online, remember to copy and paste the URL for future reference. The blank document approach also works well when an opportunity arises to comment on another blog. I find that you can write your comments more freely in the blank document, than the blog comment box. Plus, you can run spell check before copying and pasting your comment into the blog and do a character count to make sure your post is suitable for 140-character status updates. Remember, comments posted on other blogs often become good fodder for a blog post of your own. So save the document each day and revisit it for future blog posts.

Then, organize your browser to optimize time spent online. Save tabbed groups for the social media-related sites you visit such as productivity tools (mentioned below), your listening posts, bookmarking sites and your company’s social media venues.

Take advantage of the free productivity tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Seesmic which allow you to monitor your followers’ and your activity in the Twittersphere and on other social sites. These apps also allow you to schedule tweets as well as simultaneously update statuses on other social networks. Be careful with this one. The idea behind social media isn’t to batch and blast status updates, but to connect with real people real time. Although it’s perfectly acceptable to post what I call reference content—something that you read or saw that may benefit others in your community, but be mindful of the social idiosyncrasies of each community. For example, some posts are more suitable for Twitter, while others may be better for LinkedIn. Remember, not everyone has a Twitter account. So @replies and hashtags, although perfectly acceptable in a tweet, may appear confusing on another social media platform.

Effective B2B social media marketers are masters of time management

In the world of B2B social media, busy B2B marcom professionals must make every minute count. It helps if you think of time in smaller chunks. You may have five minutes before a meeting, which is plenty of time to post a tweet or two. While you were in the meeting , did any discussion spark an idea for a blog post or even a series of posts around a given topic? Make sure you capture those thoughts in your “content” document for future reference. An extra 15 minutes is enough time to outline a blog post. Then carve out a little more time to complete it and post it. Most B2B marcom departments have plenty of existing content that simply needs to be adapted to social media—usually that means shifting from a company focus to a community focus. There are numerous blog posts on the topic of repurposing content. I’ve listed a few below.

You’ll find that as you become more proficient at writing for social media and more comfortable with your workflow, you’ll become more efficient at managing social media, making it less of a burden for an already burdened marcom staff.

Here are a few tips culled from the advice of top bloggers and content creators that will help you overcome the B2B marcom content conundrum:

13 Ideas to Inspire your blog by Denise Wakeman

What’s your social media diet by Paul Dunay

Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2010 by Michael Seltzner answer the question, “How much time does social media take?”

Warning Signs You Might be a Blogcrastinator by Michelle Russell

Leverage the strength of B2B channel partners while gaining greater visibiltiy to your end-user customers.

In the past, B2B integrated marketing communications (marcom) was about control—ensuring that the marcom mix had consistent brand messages, tone and approach.  Social media is about letting go of control but offering a framework.   

For B2B integrated marcom managers, social media represents a double-edged sword.  On one side you have the outbound marketing communications, which you control; and on the other hand there are the channel partners, who are putting up Facebook pages, Tweeting about the brand , creating YouTube videos and conducting other social media activities that are beyond your control.

How B2B marcom managers can lose control without losing context

Integrated marketing communications in B2B companies with multiple channel partners presents an even greater challenge for marcom managers in the age of social media.  Thanks to social media, it’s even easier for channel partners to publish content.  More importantly, social media creates another opportunity for customers and prospects to learn about your products and services. 

So what does this mean for B2B integrated marcom?

It means that if you’re a marcom manager, you need to at least start monitoring the social media sphere to find out which of your channel partners is participating in social media and what they’re saying.  This is another opportunity for B2B marketers to join the conversations already taking place in the social sphere as well as an opportunity to help frame these conversations in a way that supports the brand message.   You may not be the originator of the posts, but you can still participate in the conversation and provide context.

B2B integrated marcom and channel partners:  It’s not about control… it’s about content and collaboration

Knowing the Twitter handles, Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn Groups and profiles of your channel partners isn’t about controlling the message.  It’s about collaborating with your channel partners in a way that adds value for customers and prospects. 

Think of it this way.  If you’re a marcom manager at an industry trade show, for example, and a prospect walks up to you with a concern, you would try to involve the sales manager, rep or dealer right away.  This may take a phone call or two.  However, by monitoring the social sphere, this type of exchange can occur much faster and at greater scale.

It’s a good idea to engage your channel partners, particularly those who are influential in social media.  You can do this by offering content that channel partners can repurpose in their communities or by your direct participation in your channel partners’ communities.  Likewise, you can feature your channel partners in your social media and content marketing programs.  For example, interview a channel partner and publish the interview on your corporate blog.  Social media enables you to leverage the strengths of your channel partners while gaining visibility to the end users of your products and services.

For B2B marcom managers, collaborating with your channel partners in the social sphere, can help move prospects through the buying cycle and engage existing customers.   Participating with  your channel partners ensures that you maintain a stake in listening to and learning from your partners and your customers and prospects. I’d love to hear from my B2B industrial marketing colleagues.

Here are a few additional resources for collaborating with your channel partners in B2B social media:

Facebook Community Pages – New addition by Facebook to better delineate brand-owned pages from those set up by channel partners/ brand enthusiasts.

Social Media for Channel Partners – Linked in Group specializing in helping B2B channel partners use social media

Channel Enablement Class – online learning modules designed to help high tech channel partners understand how to use social media.

More B2B companies are tweeting, blogging and posting news, but I’m curious… are we really communicating or are we still using a bullhorn disguised as social media?

I’m bringing this up because I’m as guilty as some B2B marcom folks who put out good, relevant content on the various social media outlets, but fail to make a real connection with real people.  In other words, telling your networks about a really interesting article or helpful tweet is a good use of social media, but it needs to go to the next level to really build relationships… the aim of most social media programs.  You need to interact with the communities in which you participate.

Ardath Albee’s blog post touches on the concept in a helpful way for B2B marcom folks.  She explains how to create content that “inspires conversations.”  This is especially important for B2B marcom because without inserting your company into existing social media conversations, your sales people are less likely to be invited to the meeting, not having been involved earlier in the sales cycle.  Robin Teigland, associate professor at Stockholm School of Economics says, “Build relationships before you need them, while making sure you create value and foster trust.” (from her SlideShare presentation, Leveraging Networks And Social Media, slide #72)

This issue is typical of many B2B industrial companies who don’t see the value of participating in the conversations early via blogs (their own or someone else’s) and other social media.  If not for the sake of sharing the company’s thought leadership, B2B companies should at least consider the SEO value of participating.  I often hear from B2B marketers, particularly in the industrial space, “My market isn’t really on the internet.” or “My market doesn’t really participate in social media.”  But they are searching, and the depth and breadth of your company’s social media activity helps drive search results by putting your content in front of the right prospects.

Forget about social media and think about people

My fear is that many B2B industrial marketers with the mindset described above are putting themselves at risk and in a potential reactionary posture, waiting to see if their competition invests in social media.  By the time their competition’s social media activity becomes apparent, it will be too late, and the competition will have garnered a larger percentage of interest.

There’s hope for B2B industrial marketers who don’t think the internet or social media is the right place to be.  Forget about “the internet” and “social media,” and instead, think about people—what they need; how you can help.  Be a useful resource.  If you were at a conference and met with a few prospects talking about a specific issue and later you found a trade journal article, you would likely copy it and send it to the people with whom you spoke.  Social media enables that type of transaction to take place en masse and quickly.  That’s why the first step in social media is listening.  It provides an opportunity to hear on a broad scale what’s being said around a given topic.  Listening helps shape the content you develop in a way that better addresses the needs of the audience and cultivates conversation.  Then, after getting a feel for the social media landscape start connecting with prospects—real people and real conversations—by asking questions, offering answers to their questions, providing content that’s relevant to their needs.

I get social media, but my boss doesn’t…

If you’re the B2B marcom person who gets this, but doesn’t have the support to sell it to management, then here’s what you can do.  First, start listening by setting up a few Google alerts based on your brand name and a specific category.  For example, “ABC Company” is the brand and “discrete manufacturing software systems” is the brand category.   Then do the same for your largest competitor in the same category.  Monitor the activity and draw conclusions that will not only support your overall marcom goal, but also the business objectives.  You’ll need to show management that conversations around your brand and brand category are occurring and whether or not your competitors are participating.  If they’re not, then it’s an opportunity to take a leadership role.  If your competitors are participating, it’s an opportunity to claim your seat at the table. 

Additional B2B marcom resources:

• Burson-Marsteller research report The Global Social Media Check-up (opens a pdf file) pages 11-12 offer a helpful social media summary.
• Visit the links on my Facebook fan page discussion on social media and the B2B buying cycle.
• Robin Teigland’s presentation Leveraging Networks And Social Media, slide #125 has a good list of how to match the social media tool to the purpose.

Some small to mid-size B2B companies are soliciting the help of others in the organization to contribute to a social media program. In reality, it’s the thought leadership and technical expertise within these companies that adds value far more than marketing messages (social or conventional advertising).

Accepting B2B social media as a fundamental way of doing business

These B2B companies have accepted social media as a fundamental way of doing business—it’s an ongoing program and not just a campaign. Although they don’t have the resources to abandon conventional marketing, they are diverting some financial resources from conventional marketing to social media. (Cutting back on trade shows, reducing ad spend, etc.) Additionally, they’re involving new players instead of relying solely on the marketing department. After all, social media is really not just a marketing activity. These are the folks that have the knowledge and experience that the market is looking for. This is where the human connection is made… at the point where the company connects with its customers in a meaningful way.

Social media is an enabling platform that influences sales

Most importantly, some B2B companies are starting smart and small in social media by developing a focused and well thought out plan with which to experiment. Then, based on the metrics and results, scale the program. This approach has helped them sell the idea to upper management in lieu of strong immediate ROI data, although there are plenty of good B2B social media success stories now.

One of the things I ask clients is, “Do you know the ROI of a brochure?” “What’s the ROI of your telephone system?” These are part of a system of enablers that when combined lead to business. Social media is another enabling platform, that when integrated with other marketing activities, has the influence to drive sales.

Social media is all about trust and building relationships in the social world. Just as in the offline/conventional media world, trust often translates into business. Trust takes time, so some companies are carefully selecting the market segment they think will be most conducive to social media and pursuing it with a plan, monitoring/measuring and reporting.