B2B Mobile Marketing

It’s happening more and more. Whenever a group of business professionals get together, whether at an event or even a weekend gathering, there always comes a point when everyone pulls out their smartphones and begins comparing. The comments always seem to go along these lines – “I love my iPhone, check out this new app,” or “I live with my Blackberry, I don’t know how I ever got along without it” or “Is that the new Google Android, let me take a look,” or even something like “Check out this great picture I took of my dog.”

Here’s the real point. Business professionals are looking at and working on their smartphones virtually 24/7. They are more likely to see a message there than on their computer screens. So given the potential, can you effectively leverage this medium to deliver key marketing messages? With some natural reluctance, just like there was with social media, companies are now beginning to do just that.

How do you go about making mobile marketing an effective part of your marketing mix? The following points will give you some ideas.

• Mobile Strategy
  To assess where it would fit best, you need to ask how mobile marketing can enhance your current marketing mix. And, you need to map the needs of your audience to the best mobile opportunities. Decide how you can provide a unique value - something that will help them perform business tasks better or faster. Keep in mind that this is a very personal communication channel, so you need to design content accordingly.

• Events
  For your company, one of the best ways to begin adding mobile marketing to your mix might be through a tradeshow or “in-venue” event. Text messaging solutions available from companies such as Club Texting or ConnectMedia Ventures for conventions, trade shows or meetings allow you to alert attendees of upcoming show announcements both before and during the show for up-to-the-minute messages. You can even build excitement and awareness with interactive contests and polls. Event managers can send last-minute announcements directly from their phones. This mobile marketing and texting software allows multiple Bluetooth devices to connect, so everyone’s smartphone should be enabled.
  
  Include the opt-in availability of this service in all of your pre-event marketing, building a list of subscribers in the weeks leading up to the show. Invite attendees to text in your keyword to join your SMS alert list and continue the promotions on-site using signage and printed materials.

• Apps
  Am I talking about the 125,000 apps you can get from the Apple store and download to your iPhone? Yes, but find one that is set up for your B2B customer base. Our clients, Oracle & Cisco, take full advantage of this, making multiple iPhone apps available for downloading.
  
  For example, the Cisco Class Locator is an iPhone business application that integrates all courses and course locations offered by Fast Lane, a leading high-end IT training provider. With this application, Fast Lane customers are able to search all Cisco courses offered worldwide. With Oracle Business Indicators, you can access secure, real-time financial, HR, supply chain, and CRM analytics.
  
  Apple provides a developer center, which will take you through putting together an app along with all the interactive features that can be included.

• Mobile Web Sites
  During a recent B2B seminar, Arlene Villanueva, Global Media Director at Intel, made only one point when asked about mobile marketing. “Make sure you have a mobile enabled web site, especially in the Asia-Pac and EMEA markets.” A web site can be created that is specialized for the small screens of mobile phones. When requests are made to a company’s main URL from the users’ mobile device, it includes the type of browser used, so the site can redirect requests from the mobile browsers to the mobile web site. Keep in mind that for mobile web sites a large amount of content must be eliminated to accommodate the smaller screens of mobile devices, but it delivers a much better experience for the user.

• SMS Text Alerts & Campaigns
  You can experiment with mobile marketing by offering an opt-in to a basic message feed. You can boil down a 20-page white paper to a single page readable on a smartphone, or offer a two minute video case study.
  
  B2B magazine recently featured an example of a B2B marketer experimenting with mobile marketing. Truck manufacturer and parts company, PACCAR, initiated a small program using mobile marketing in a pure B2B environment—communicating with its distributor network.
  
  A few times each month, PACCAR sends text messages to distributors highlighting, for example, promotions on parts. The people who receive these messages have opted in; most were informed of the text messaging program because they were already receiving an e-newsletter from PACCAR.
  
  PACCAR stated that the mobile marketing program has been well received with little to no opt-out.

In short, sales should love you no matter which one of these ideas you try. Everyone who opts in to whatever program you choose can be dumped right in to the company CRM database.

For more case studies and other information go to the Mobile Marketing Association web site at mmaglobal.com.

Vince DeCarolis