Desktop marketing began with promotional items designed to sit where a customer could see them: coffee mugs, pens, key chains: "chachka". The branded merchandise industry is still big business highlighting the continuing value of getting your brand in front of people as often as possible. The same thinking applies to software with branded desktop applications but these miniature store fronts breathe new life into desktop marketing.
Computers and ubiquitous broadband pave the way for desktop marketing to dominate demand generation and branding initiatives for B2C marketing. The best known example may be the electronic version of the Staples easy button. Since launching in 2006, tens of thousands of Staples customers have downloaded the miniature easy button application to their desktops' where its sits quietly promoting the Staples brand, current sales and offers, and providing single-click access to an electronic storefront when a consumer feels so inclined.
Branded desktop marketing combines the broadcast, one-to-many reach of the internet with the narrowcast, one-to-one quality of personal communication. Placing a static logo on a consumer's desktop – like the splash screen of your favorite office application – may have some value for traditional branding but modern desktop marketing goes beyond branding and is differentiated by its interactivity.
Traditional ads on billboards, in magazines, or on the radio are monologues that transfer information one way from sender to receiver. These tactics are better for branding initiatives than they are for demand generation though a rare consumer will pick up the phone, or drop by the store, as a result of one of these ads. The onus remains on the consumer to take action and to choose another means by which to close the communication loop with the advertiser.
In contrast, desktop marketing lets consumers communicate via the same channel by which the original message is received and is ideal for demand-generation activities. But closed-loop advertising isn’t new. You can see it at work in clickable banner ads, search advertising, and even traditional direct mail and telemarketing. Among these tactics, telemarketing appears to be the strongest in terms of marketing effectiveness with average response rates of 7.1% (Sales Lead Express) compared to 0.2% for banner ads (Promotion Guide); 2.6% for direct mail (DMA); and 4.4% for search marketing (MarketingSherpa). But desktop marketing raises the bar for marketing performance higher still. Some aggregate performance figures for desktop marketing applications reported in a MarketingSherpa case study include:
90% of people that use a branded desktop application once will use it again
87% of active users interact with the branded desktop application on a daily basis
Rates range from 15-40%
This last figure is particularly stark compared to average click-through rates for promotional B2C emails of 2-12% (Email Labs). The low end of the spectrum for click-through from desktop marketing applications is higher than the high end of the spectrum for email. Moreover, sending a new promotional email out to the same people every day just isn't realistic unless you're a spammer. But a branded desktop application sits on the consumer's desktop day in and day out.
Statistics like these should make any marketer take notice. Desktop marketing demonstrates the same consumer self-targeting and global reach as search marketing without any of the competition for attention and position suffered by search engines ads. When consumers are actively interested in a product or service that you provide, desktop marketing is your corner on the market; your uneven playing field. One business maxim says an existing customer is 90% cheaper to sell to than a new customer. Having a desktop marketing application in front of your customer base all day every day could drive that figure higher still.
Even when your customers aren't actively shopping for one of your products or services, desktop marketing delivers more brand exposure than an expensive but fleeting TV ad or billboard. If a consumer spends an hour writing email, reading online news, or downloading music in his living room, that's an hour he spends being impressed by your brand. Moreover, if a prospect spends eight hours at his computer in a work day, that's potentially eight hours of being impressed by your brand. The only kind of brand experience that could compete with that is if you could somehow convince consumers to pay you for the privilege of wearing your brand all day on their wrists, on their chests, or on their feat. But let's stay real.
Once the retail industry recognizes the size of the branded desktop application opportunity, the competition for designing and deploying them will be intense. This is true for a variety of reasons – some obvious and some less so. At first glance, there's the potential for a new, low-cost, recurring, and lucrative revenue channel. The next most obvious motivation is that options like search marketing and email are likely to become more expensive and less effective over time pushing marketers to find new approaches. But there are deeper reasons below the surface.
The competition in this space will be cutthroat because consumers won't want more than one branded desktop application. Once they get one setup to their liking, an invisible switching cost is created that helps the incumbent vendor become entrenched. Until a rival makes an offer compelling enough to overcome human inertia, the original desktop application will remain – reinforcing a brand and generating revenue for that brand day after day. Years from now companies could buy one another just to acquire the house list of loyal desktop application consumers.
Even if a few clever advertisers develop complimentary desktop applications screen space is limited. Picture an application across the top of your screen like the popular search toolbars, another down each side, and one across the bottom. Not many of us will accept that much crowding.
This last point leads us to the real blood in the water that will trigger the competitive frenzy for retail desktop applications. Consumers only have one desktop each but they each shop with many retailers. It's easy to imagine someone who is a regular customer at Esso, Starbucks, The Gap, Staples and more. This means B2C firms will be forced to compete for consumer screen space across retail categories. In addition to their regular adversaries, Esso will now go head to head with Starbucks and Starbucks will fight tooth and claw with The Gap.
So if you want to take advantage of the branded desktop marketing opportunity, if you want to make the smart money and lock in a list of loyal customers before the frenzy begins, pay heed to Jack Trout. The first rule in his list of immutable marketing laws is: it is better to be first than it is to be better. Perhaps this idea contributed to the Staples marketing team's successful roll out of their desktop ‘easy button'. At the time, it was probably difficult to predict whether or not such a novel approach would work. But if you asked them about it today, they'd probably just say ‘that was easy.'
"Klipfolio is taking full advantage
of ROO's RSS feeds by offering our library of over 5,000 video titles to its
users, giving them an unprecedented level of personalization and access."
ROO
Robert Petty, CEO
15-40% daily click-through rate; twice as much as e-newsletters.
87% of users run their BDA daily.
90% of users have or would recommend their BDA to a friend or colleague.
