Though marketers can see that there can be an opportunity waiting for them where mobile technology and social marketing meet, the majority of them have yet to determine precisely how to go about getting started.
The use of mobile devices has skyrocketed and is continuing to do so. For this reason, B2B marketers are scrambling to identify the best ways to access that rapidly growing audience through the use of mobile optimized sites, display ads, and applications.
According to the director of mobile strategy, Prat Vemana, from the Staples Inc. office supply giant, “Mobile and social go together.” Vemana’s company is already taking part in its own aggressive social and mobile strategy to reach buyers from small businesses.
Vemana went on to say that if something is deployed on a regular website designed for laptop or desktop computers, it can take days for feedback to become available. However, when that same message is deployed using a mobile application “you hear about it that night. It’s a highly engaging medium.”
The new mobile apps from Staples are, according to Vemana, function with both tablets and smartphones and included sharing buttons embedded along with the typical rating system, and also allows users to write and read reviews. On mobile sites, this is not a typical feature.
For B2B, however, mobile marketing can present some additional challenges. According to the president and chief search artist at Be Found Online, Dan Golden, many of the important actions of that audience are not performed online. Therefore, it takes greater care to understand the position of the mobile channel among a marketing strategy as a whole, so that it can be properly optimized for the actions they make, such as click-to-call.
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