Mobile Strategy for B2B Marketing

Submitted By

Chandan G

10ESPHH010014

Contents

What is B2B Marketing?.............................................................................................................3

Difference between B2B and B2C Marketing.............................................................................3

Why go Mobile?.........................................................................................................................4

How can the Convergence help?................................................................................................6

How can Mobile Strategy help in your environment?................................................................7

Statistics of Mobile Usage in B2B Marketing............................................................................11

How to kick-start your mobile strategy in B2B Marketing?......................................................12

Conclusion................................................................................................................................13

References............................................................................................................................... 14

Mobile Strategy for B2B Marketing

What is B2B Marketing?B2B Marketing is the practice of individuals, or organizations, including commercial businesses, governments and institutions, facilitating the sale of their products or services to other companies or organizations that in turn resell them, use them as components in products or services they offer, or use them to support their operations. (Also referred as Business Marketing/Industrial Marketing)

Difference between B2B and B2C MarketingAlthough B2B and B2C marketing seem similar on the surface, there are subtle differences which play vital role in effective market strategy. B2B Marketing generally contains of shorter and more direct channels of distribution.

While B2C Marketing is aimed at a large group, the process between the buyer and the seller is more personal in B2B Marketing. B2B Marketing invests only a small part in promotional budgeting to advertise, while B2C heavily relies on it. Although the advertising in B2B is limited, it often helps indirectly in converting sales and building a brand reputation.

B2B Marketing is focused on making profit as opposed to B2C Marketing which is a focused on an individual.

With the differences there are also a set of commonalities a marketer has to consider in both B2C and B2B marketing arenas:

successfully match the product or service strengths with the needs of a definable target market;

position and price to align the product or service with its market, often an intricate balance; and

communicate and sell it in the fashion that demonstrates its value effectively to the target market

Why go Mobile?The mobile market currently stands at 3.3 Billion Handsets worldwide. On the other hand only 1 Billion PC’s with Internet access. This statistic gives a good picture of the potential in the mobile market with a 300% larger base.

The SMS messages typically have a higher response rate at a very impressive 15-20% when compared to standard banner ad response rates. The reasons could be many, but the most obvious reason is that a message on the mobile device is more personal and is typically not avoided by the recipient.

The Mobile technology is always improving at a rapid speed creating more and more possibilities to present content. With the increase in mobile usage, fall in usage prices, increase in reliability and the advent of high speed networks as 3G and so on, the marketer has more and more options to be unrestrictedly creative.

With these advantages in the mobile industry, the mobile market has to be wielded with a most appropriate strategy to make most of the opportunity.

How can the Convergence help?The convergence is referred to the synergistic application of Mobile Strategy in B2B Marketing or Communication of the Firm. While the penetration of smart phones in the general population is lingering around 20 percent, the Forbes survey found that Executives were way above that curve with 82% responding they used a smart phone. As well, a majority of those executives under 50 years of age considered it to be their primary business communication device.

With the promise from Forrester research and comfort in proven numbers, let us see how the Convergence can help your B2B Marketing strategy.

Are you struggling to get new customers, or to get more business from existing customers, in today’s difficult economic environment

Would you like to be able to notify customers about new inventory of the 'hot' products everyone is looking for?

Would you like to be able to send appointment confirmations or reminders to your customers?

How about 'preferred customer' offers or special sale days to drive repeat customers visits?

Would you like to be able to send weekly offers to existing customers at no extra cost? Ever wonder what your customers think about your company, product or service? Now

you can ask them with a quick, easy-to-use mobile survey! Do you often think you can’t afford to advertise to get more customers? Would like to

find a way to get your message opened by 97% of the people that receive it? Does your corporate staff have a difficult time getting field staff to read important

emails or updates on the company Intranet?

How can Mobile Strategy help in your environment?

With the advent of new technologies in bandwidths and software, the potential of mobile market is ever increasing. The arrival of 3G phones will increase the bandwidth speeds to next level (almost as much as the computer broadband speeds). Software improvements from a basic operating system to much faster and much efficient operating systems like the androids and the new symbians. The new operating systems open avenues to applications which can be extremely useful. The Android smart phone has the capability to run more than 300,000 applications.

Areas where mobiles can help in your environment:

News/Updates: Important and time-sensitive customer updates can be sent directly to your opted-in clients using SMS (text) messaging. Further, people like being ahead of the crowd and being among “the first” to know something; send your customers updates about product launches, product updates or upcoming events. Consider a news text like a micro-newsletter with bite-size updates.

Emergency Notification: SMS (text) messaging is a great way to notify your employees or customers during an emergency. Send critical updates during natural disasters, last-minute event location changes or just before your company’s important meetings.

Special Promotions: Communicate with your distributors or franchises via SMS with the details about special promotions they can offer to customers.

Employee Assignments: Dispatch employees to their next customer location via text messaging; provide them with location info (and a link to a map), provide customer details, and work-order information.

Presentations: Communicate with your audience during in-person or webinar presentations, conduct polling. Send out a question and ask for responses from attendees who have pre-

registered their phones. Or, used another way, ask the question verbally and have them respond via text messaging to a specific short-code.

Customer Service: Many companies offer customer support and problem resolution via text. Customers are also able to check order status, confirm appointments or reservations, change reservations, track packages and receive back-order notification alerts.

Events: Implement a text messaging marketing strategy to promote weekly meet-ups or networking events for members, or remind employees about upcoming meetings. Send out key logistic information like changes of venue or detailed parking instructions. You can even take event registration information via text!

Customer Payments: Use mobile technology to allow your field-service reps to take customer payments via mobile; get immediate payment, protect customers’ credit card information, and manage payments risk-free!

Lead Generation: Offer something of value in exchange for signing up to your ‘opt-in’ list; provide potential customers a link to a white-paper, a special discount, a video, or other standard B2B strategic tools in exchange for adding themselves to your prospect list via Mobile opt-in. Use Mobile to gather additional info about them as part of the ‘opt-in’ process so you can effectively target customers during future Mobile campaigns.

Trade Shows: Use Mobile at trade shows to exchange information with prospects; allow them to enter contests, request and receive company information, or see a video about your product or service. Send text alerts to attendees about your next presentation so they’ll have time to get there before it starts!

Statistics of Mobile Usage in B2B MarketingSMS is typically read by 97% of subscribers within an average of 15 minutes after receipt, and responded to within 60 minutes.

While 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS (texting) is spam.

Mobile has a 97% open rate, as opposed to email which typically maxes out at 20%.

Studies indicate that 84% of mobile subscribers are never more than 10 feet from their mobile device

A Nielsen study indicates more than half of mobile data subscribers (51%) who saw a mobile ad responded to it by sending a text-message, clicking on it, or calling a specific number.

88% of all mobile subscribers have a text enabled phone. 51% have received SMS marketing messages, and 25% have opted in to marketing messaging from a brand.

200+ million Americans carry mobile phones - over half of the country's population

Business-to-business mobile marketing spending will quadruple over the next five years, rising from $26 million in 2009 to $106 million in 2014, according to Forrester Research.

How to kick-start your mobile strategy in B2B Marketing?B2B firms can get started with a monthly service subscription for as little as $25 per month** for SMS messaging; No contract required

Easy-to-use SMS system, no technical knowledge required!

Service includes training to build your 'opt-in' list, consulting to help you develop the most effective mobile messaging campaigns, and technical assistance as needed - at no additional charge.

Use Mobile Marketing services to communicate with your customers at your convenience

Mobile websites also available at cost-effective rates; let your customers communicate directly with you at their convenience

Many other mobile marketing options also available to increase your firm's direct interaction with clients / potential clients

Encourage B2B customers to send their sales reps photos of their unique environment/circumstance/prickly problem so that the reps can better understand the situation and propose an insightful solution.

Videos can be gathered of customer best-practice tips to illustrate how our products perform in the real-world and how they are being used to solve real problems in an efficient manner.

Enable prospects to easily connect with the people and information they need to make a decision to buy providing tools to connect the prospect with other similar past customer references, testimonials, case studies or a knowledgeable sales associate.

Mobile codes can be utilized to promote offers for handling more and more businesses in the network.

ConclusionThe growth of internet, mobile technology, mobile internet and the simultaneous increase in the consumer base, provides avenue for communication channel. This channel has to be utilized. The content along with the presentation and functionality has to be leveraged to get the most out of the mobile environment.

There are more than 10 billion applications which are currently running on different mobile platforms. The technology capability has to be leveraged for a customized or generic solution most appropriate across the industry. In just 2 years, there are already 4.5 billion mobile app downloads across all phone platforms. Many industry insiders are watching the development of Android’s more open platform with 50,000 apps available vs Apple’s platform of 200,000 apps available. The iPad, released on April 3, 2010 was the fastest device to reach 1 Million units sold (28 days) excluding only the Nintendo Wii and DS which were released during the holiday period.

The evolution of device functionality has shifted from content creation (inputs) to communication (outputs) to sharing (community). With global village and the boundaries between countries reducing, the travelling marketer has to be up to date with the information. Because we all know in Marketing all the time, “Information is power”!

References1. Marketing Management - Phlip Kotler2. Forrester Analytics - Forrester3. http://b2bmarketingconfidential.blogspot.com/2009/01/mobile-codes-and-b2b.html 4. http://marketingwithnewtechnology.wordpress.com/2009/04/11/examples-of-mobile-

marketing-by-major-brands/5. http://www.strategicgrowthconcepts.com/marketing/mobile-marketing/mobile-

marketing-for-b2b-firms.html6. http://marketingwithnewtechnology.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/top-10-b2b-uses-for-

mobile-marketing/7. http://blog.selligent.com/blogs/yes/en-mobile-finds-its-way-cross-channel-b2b-

marketing-mix8. http://www.socialcustomer.com/2009/07/convergence-in-b2b-and-b2c-mobile-

marketing.html9. http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/5589.html 10. http://www.slideshare.net/ckEpiphany/b2b-mobile-marketing-10step-starter-guide-

288287311. http://www.b2bmarketinginsider.com/mobile/10-reasons-why-mobile-is-hot 12. http://lyrishq.lyris.com/index.php/Email-Marketing/B2B-Mobile-Marketing-Yes-You-

Can.html13. http://ask.enquiro.com/2009/b2b-marketing-and-the-mobile-internet/ 14. http://www.komarketingassociates.com/industry-news/new-opportunities-arise-for-

mobile-b2b-marketing$660.htm15. http://jontusmedia.com/online-content-marketing-b2b-mobile-users/ 16. http://socialmediatoday.com/pauldunay/250079/11-b2b-marketing-predictions-2011