Cloud Marketing Triggering an Application Land Rush

As software and Internet companies boost revenues with cloud marketing, they’re effectively triggering a land rush of new and innovative applications that would not have been economically viable any other way.  Entirely new companies are springing up to grab their share of entirely new markets by building their core products on top of cloud marketers’ platforms.

The advantages of building a product on top of another company’s cloud marketing platform can be quite compelling.  You tap into an existing market that doesn’t require early evangelism, and your product development costs plummet when you focus on your unique value proposition, letting other companies build your product’s not-so-unique back end systems.

Just as engineering departments get budgetary leverage by reusing platform technology built by another company for cloud marketing purposes, marketing departments also get revenue-boosting leverage in the form of market awareness, interest, lead generation and the inherent value already baked into the cloud marketing platform itself.

“We’ve been able to focus nearly all of our development effort on functionality that adds value for our users.”

—Simon Stanlake
CTO, HootSuite

One great example is HootSuite Media, a social media SaaS company founded in 2008 and based in Vancouver, Canada.  Their namesake product, HootSuite, is an on-line application that makes it easy for professional marketers to collaborate as a team to engage prospects and customers through social media.  A team of marketers can use the same group of social media accounts in a coordinated fashion using HootSuite.  And HootSuite combines every major social network into a single, uniform interface, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Foursquare, not to mention general RSS integration.

By focusing exclusively on the application layer, HootSuite’s engineering team didn’t have to invest in reinventing the wheel by building their own messaging networks to compete with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media networks.  Instead HootSuite could leverage those existing networks through APIs and focus their development efforts on the unique value of their core product.  The social media firms benefit from exposing their APIs as part of an overall cloud marketing strategy, because it means more traffic and usage for them, which in turn increases the overall value of their networks.

According to Simon Stanlake, HootSuite’s CTO, “We’ve been able to focus nearly all of our development effort on functionality that adds value for our users.  We let the social media companies do what they do best while we do what we do best.  In the end, it’s the user who comes out on top.”

“[Our users] already know social media has value.  They just need a way to tap into that value.  That’s where HootSuite comes in.”

—Ryan Holmes
CEO, HootSuite

When it comes to adding value for users, both HootSuite and the underlying social media networks add to the total value users receive.  The social media companies provide the network for users to communicate on, while HootSuite provides users with a streamlined, collaborative, team-based approach to interacting with those communication networks.

And just as HootSuite drove down development costs by leveraging external technology, so too has HootSuite tapped into the benefits of externally funded marketing efforts.  Instead of going through the risky startup phase of evangelizing a new solution, HootSuite has inherited the preexisting market awareness and interest already surrounding popular social media networks.

As HootSuite’s CEO, Ryan Holmes, put it, “We’ve seen overwhelming demand among Internet marketing professionals who need an application like HootSuite to help them develop an organized, team-based approach to handling social media.  They already know social media has value.  They just need a way to tap into that value.  That’s where HootSuite comes in.”

“It seems all but inevitable that great companies over the next 30 years will also be building great products on top of Internet-based platforms driven by a cloud marketing strategy.”

But HootSuite is by no means the only company leveraging cloud marketing as a platform on which to build innovative, new products.  The cloud marketing initiatives of companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook have prompted countless developers to build applications on top of a platform built for cloud marketing purposes.  One need only browse through app directories like Google Apps Marketplace, oneforty or the Facebook Platform Showcase to find numerous companies building cool, new applications on top of these companies’ cloud marketing platforms.

Of course, the benefits of leveraging cloud marketing platforms must be weighed against some serious risks, especially if you’re relying on such a platform as an essential part of your core business.  All the usual question marks about any cloud computing service still apply, including data security, performance and scalability, service level agreements (SLA) and even the long-term solvency of the company you’re relying on.  There are also strategic risks.  For example, if the company offering the cloud marketing platform later decides to build a competitive application, you may find it impossible to compete effectively.

But just as great companies have been built by selling software products that rely on Microsoft’s operating system “platform” for nearly 30 years now, it seems all but inevitable that great companies over the next 30 years will also be building great products on top of Internet-based platforms driven by a cloud marketing strategy.

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