Today, almost everyone has a phone, so I hope that you’re moving along with the times and have a mobile marketing plan in place. If you don’t, you’re going to be left behind by your soon-to-be past customers, who will move on to your competitors that do their marketing via mobile. Let’s change that well-known ad phrase of “Can you hear me now?” to “Can you text me now?” in honor of mobile marketing. Read on to find out why mobile marketing is so important and what you can do to make sure you’re marketing the right way.

Mobile vs. Desktop

With today’s trend toward mobile work, and salespeople and other professionals working more from their smartphones and tablets, the days of being tethered to a desktop computer seem a bit like the days of yore. This trend holds true in the comScore Mobile Metrix from August 2016, which showed that in the U.S. people spend 87 hours per month browsing on a smartphone compared with just 34 hours on a desktop. These staggering numbers indicate just how much traffic and customers you’re missing out on if you don’t have mobile marketing in your marketing plans for this year.

Text Me

As consumers, we’re used to getting B2C text messages from shops we frequent with discount coupons and messages about new products, but B2B marketers can also use the power of smartphones to send out text messages that go beyond just discount alerts. In the B2B arena, text messages can be used to contact customers and potential customers, who have opted in to receive text messages from your company, in the following ways:

·         Industry news alerts

·         Promotional discount offers

·         Offers of a free technology assessment, which can be pushed out using a location service to potential customers who are nearby your office(s)

·         Links to video promotions

·         Shipping notifications

·         New app announcements

Email Engagement

If you choose email along with text messages, how can you make sure that those emails you’re sending out are viewable on a smartphone and won’t just wind up as a big mess? The answer is responsive design. If you’re working with a drag-and-drop email template, the template should be automatically responsive. As long as it is, all you need to do is create the same marketing message across the potential channels and hit “send.” Then, the email will respond to the channel it’s opened in—be it on a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. With a responsive design template, the same message will go out to everyone no matter what device they’re using to view your message.

Is Your Website Ready?

When your customers receive those email promotions from you, they may want to go visit your site to find out more right that minute. What kind of user experience will they receive when they visit your website on their smartphone? Has your website been designed to be mobile-friendly? You don’t want customers to hit “unsubscribe” on your texts or email marketing simply because when they go to your website, they have to enlarge the page to view anything, or are just brought to a page with just your company’s name and nothing else. Make sure your website has a responsive design, just like the email templates mentioned above, which scales to all screen sizes, including for mobile, before you start sending out mobile marketing promotions.

Not ready to text your customers or don’t think they’d be comfortable giving up their cell numbers when they register on your site for fear of getting sales calls immediately? You can still reach out to customers through email with offers for complimentary assessments, which they can view on their desktop or  phone. If they’re using an email address that they have access to on their phone, the same benefit will apply there and your customers will be thrilled.

Do you need help thinking up ways to reach your customers through mobile marketing, or need fresh content to use in your marketing? PartnerDemand Services can help! Contact us to get started today.