Making mobile work for B2B

I was speak­ing at a B2B mar­ket­ing event the other day about mobile. For many of us it’s a very hot topic. What amazed me at the event, how­ever, was how few peo­ple in the room are actively con­sid­er­ing mobile mar­ket­ing for their organ­i­sa­tions. And, more impor­tantly, how mobile could form an inte­gral part of their cus­tomer engage­ment strat­egy. For me the biggest prob­lem seems to be a per­cep­tion gap between what mar­keters think and the actual mobile usage amongst their B2B tar­get audiences.

The real­ity is that mobile is fast becom­ing the pri­mary screen and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tool for busi­ness peo­ple. But many mar­keters are under the false impres­sion that their prospects won’t be recep­tive to busi­ness mes­sages when they’re in a mobile frame of mind. They think they’re more inter­ested in catch­ing up with the news, con­sum­ing enter­tain­ment and updat­ing their sta­tus on mul­ti­ple social net­works. This means there’s no oppor­tu­nity for com­mer­cial mes­sages and that nobody wants a rela­tion­ship with a com­pany through their most per­sonal of devices. Or, do they?

Well the answer is a resound­ing “YES”. Mobile is all-pervasive and the de facto way peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate, do tasks, socialise and con­duct busi­ness. So it is the obvi­ous chan­nel to reach the peo­ple that mat­ter. But before you run head­long into devel­op­ing a shiny new mobile app, here are are few point­ers to ensure you don’t fall at the first hurdle:

1. Don’t treat mobile like tra­di­tional online com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Dri­ving your prospects to down­load­ing a whitepa­per just isn’t going to work. So, con­sider the screen real estate that you have to work with and the way peo­ple con­sume con­tent. Atten­tion spans aren’t what they used to be, so a series of 5 minute pod­casts will prob­a­bly work bet­ter than a 50 page For­rester report.
2. If you thought pri­vacy was impor­tant on the desk­top, with mobile you ain’t seen noth­ing yet. It’s as per­sonal as the com­puter is ever going to get. So push­ing out unin­vited mar­ket­ing mes­sages and SMS just won’t work. Ensure you use a phased approach to engage with the prospects at an intrin­sic level – appeal to their intel­lec­tual side, their need for rela­tion­ship and pro­vide enter­tain­ment. Only once you’ve estab­lished this can you mix in a layer of com­mer­cial promotion.
3. Think about how you’re going to get them engag­ing via their mobiles. So con­sider how you’ll con­vert from email to mobile, off the printed page with QR codes and through social net­works. After all, you can build a clever app but it doesn’t mean that peo­ple will use it (most apps are only used once).
4. If you can’t make doing busi­ness with your com­pany over mobile devices bet­ter, faster and eas­ier, don’t even bother. Don’t try to squeeze your com­pany web­site onto a mobile device. Instead think what peo­ple need from you when they’re on the move and pri­ori­tise that con­tent and func­tion­al­ity. So, stuff that’s loca­tion spe­cific, sup­port ori­ented and socially share­able should come to the fore.

The above are just a few point­ers. If you’d like to dis­cuss how mobile can be used to enhance your media strate­gies or extend your mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, drop me a line at wrigley@gmail.com