Reach new customers fast: Learn how to sell your cloud app on the Google Apps Marketplace

Enterprise – Scott McMullan, Jay Simmons (Atlassian), Chuck Dietrich (Sliderocket), Amit Kulkarni (Manymoon)

In this introductory session we’ll provide an overview of the Google Apps Marketplace and learn product and marketing best practices directly from 3 Marketplace ISVs.

Session type: 201
Attendee requirements: None
Tags: Enterprise, Google Apps, Customization, Apps Marketplace, ISV, SaaS
Hashtag: #enterprise1

Date: Wednesday May 19
Time: 10:45am-11:45am
Room: 8

Live Notes:

A designated Googler will be taking notes during this session, but feel free to join in below!

• http:/bit.ly/SellWithMarketplace — shortcut to get here

Google Apps – suite of applications, such as Gmail, Sites, Google Docs, etc. Designed for organizations of all sized, including non-profits and .edus.

Free or $50/user/year depending on whether you’re an edu, a business, etc.

Over 25M active users and over 2M businesses.

Why did we build the marketplace? Customers want more apps!

Goal: make it easy for customers to add more apps to their Google Apps suite.

All types of applications: accounting, admin tools, scheduling, finance, and more

Launched with 50+ companies

Demo showing the user experience.

Walking through categories on the left, featured apps in the center, ratings on the right.

Looking at Manymoon’s listing. To add it, click the Add it Now domain and enter your Google Apps domain (all editions can use it)

Only admins can install apps.

1. Review Manymoon’s TOS.

2. Review and grant access to data

3. Enable the application

Now, on the Dashboard, the Manymoon application is available.

How does this work for the user?

From the More menu, choose Manymoon – that’s it.

Steps to sell your app:

1. Build your app

2. Integrate your app

Use OpenID to add SSO

Acces integration points using OAuth (optional)

3. Sell your app

2M+ businesses, 25M+ users

One time fee of $100, 20% rev share for new customers. This will start in the second half of the year, once the Google Checkout Marketplace billing API is released.

Integration: Application Manifests

Describes links to TOS, privacy policy, access points such as Calendar, etc.

How to get started?

1. Become a vendor and create a listing

Paste the manifest XML file during this process

2.

3. Launch – and don’t skip your launch marketing: high quality listing page and landing page, blogging/tweeting, PR & press outreach

Post launch – what’s the customer acquisition lifecycle like?

It’s a funnel, just like on your site:

How does Google promote Marketplace to customers?

Inside our product (Admin dashboard)

On our product site

In customer emails and webinars – focused on customer success stories

Using Adwords – run an add that drives traffic to a category in the Markteplace

Blog posts/tweets/YouTube channel

On the home page of the Marketplace site we have the latest two customer success stories

In the press

Amit- CEO of Manymoon

Manymoon is a social productivity tool – sharing things like tasks, projects, docs, and has social capabilities

Launched on the Apps Marketplace because it’s a huge marketplace and is fast growing and it’s a qualified audience

Sped up time to market – quickened release cycles and allowed them to iterate based on customer feedback

Demo

Contextual Gmail gadget allows the user to create a project within their email.

In the Manymoon app, the user can assign a task, enter a contact name (automatically finds name from contact list), brings up a list of Google Docs to select and attach, assign a due date. Uses the DocList API to automatically share the document.

Tips learned along the way

-The thumbnail they use shows what the app can do

-Broke up the listing into benefits first, then features (more technical — Google Apps-specific integration details), then customer examples.

-Case studies validate your app

Talked to their customers to understand benefits of using their app with Google Apps

-Have a good pipeline of customers to help you with case studies, lead-time can be long

-Use Google’s format for case studies

-Select one key metric for your app and your customers’ businesses for your app (for example, how many emails you’re saving them per week/month/etc)

-Publish the case studies on Marketplace (and the listing)

Chuck – SlideRocket

Focused on reinventing presentations

Putting together presentations is laborious – putting them together, collaborating, distributing, etc.

Demo in the SlideRocket editor

Searched in the Slide Library for slides to add to the presentation

Partnered with Google because of shared customer base, SlideRocket is an extension of Google Apps.

Initial integration focused on four areas:

1. Single sign on

2. Import presentations from Google or PowerPoint

3. Create dynamic slides with data from Google spreadsheets

4. Send presentations to Google Contacts

Summary:

1. Build it quickly (took 2 of their developers 1 weekend to build what they showed in the presentation)

2. Make your app more compelling – increase the scope and features of your application

3. Apps Marketplace marketing

4. Co-opetition is good — don’t let a little bit of overlap discourage you from participating

Jay from Atlassian

Atlassian focuses on collaboration and developer tools

Jira Studio integrated with Google Apps products

Demo

Logged in to Gmail as a tech lead, cleaning out the inbox.

Gadget showing issues assigned to the tech lead in Jira.

Selected Jira Studio to move to the app dashboard

Gadgets from Jira Studio can be added to things like Google Calendar, etc. and Google gadgets can be added to Jira Studio

Jira Studio is integrated with Google Docs – can collaborate on and attach documents

Tips:

1. Think about the landing page on your website and the handoff on the listing page and the broader webpage that describes the feature set of your product. They include a button to add it to your Google domain on their website.

2. Reviews – how to engage developers, as well as admins. After 10 hours of usage, they have a popup to ask users if they would like to review the app.

Q&A (questions from Moderator and audience)

1. Does Google secure the company’s data they same way they secure their own data?

Being on Marketplace lets you take advantage of Google’s security practices

2. Can you provide the service for free for a trial period?

The business can use whatever model they want.

How does the payment work?

In the future, when the payment APIs are available, you’ll be able to control the events and determine when payment occurs. Today, payment is made to you directly.

Is there a possibility for opening up the interfaces of the Google Apps products themselves for tighter integration (menus, etc.)

Google is very interested in hearing this type of feedback and suggestions. You can do this in spreadsheets using Apps Script today.

How do we vet the listings coming in, especially on security

We have a lightweight listing process. We try to make it transparent to the buyer before and during the process to let them know which services are being accessed. You can’t get access to things you haven’t explicitly told the user about.

If you’re a non-admin, how do you let your administrator know?

This is on our list of things we’d like to make easier.

Do you support usage-based pricing?

We plan to accomodate that.