Why (and How) Mobile Will Matter to B2B

The smartphone is the first truly personal computer, one that easily crosses over between home and work. This is why mobile will become an important part of our marketing, whether we like it or not.

Of course you know that the iPhone and iPad are popular because of the way they look. The smooth contours and the shimmering black glass bezels make the devices look more like something out of a Swarovski store than a Best Buy. They bring out our primitive attraction to the bright and shiny.

They also bring out another primal drive. When you look at the iPhone or iPad screen, you see beautiful little jewel-like icons beaming at you from beneath the glass. The iPhone and iPad aren’t just jewels; they are jewel cases for our collection app jewels. And these jewels bring out our hunter-gatherer instincts just like any other collectable, from Beanie Babies to giant balls of string.

We Are All Collectors

The real breakthrough here isn’t the device itself, but the model for collecting the apps that we keep inside it. The iTunes model (which BlackBerry and Google’s Android have already copied, so don’t think we’re just talking about Apple here) lets us do everything that feels good about collecting:

• It’s social. We show off our apps to our friends and share our reviews in the app store.
• It’s low risk. Apps are cheap so we don’t worry much about buying them—or the possibility of losing them. Better yet, the apps update themselves without crashing our systems.
• It’s fun. The app store is structured simply and clearly so that browsing is easy.

The popularity of the App Store model means that marketers considering creating mobile device apps have a difficult battle ahead to penetrate our target audience’s app collections. There’s just so much great stuff out there competing for business users’ attention. For example, there’s a free app that gives you voice directions to your destination. Another free app lets you convert your spoken words into written emails. These are tough acts to follow.

Mobile Apps Must Connect to Something Larger

While it may be possible to build an outstanding standalone app that wows your audience, the chances are similar to an individual seed’s chances of surviving to become a mature oak—really slim.

We have to think about how mobile can be like the tender shoot that sprouts from the well-established tree if we’re going to compete effectively.

But first we need to establish the reason for going mobile. We can’t simply create an application that links to static website content, for example. Mobile doesn’t magically make static content exciting.

There has to be a purpose behind adding mobile. At ITSMA, we see four main reasons for doing it:

• Help. The classic B2B mobile applications have been internally focused, giving maintenance people access to service information while they are out in the field. Is there a reason for you to offer whatever help you give to customers through mobile? Could your salespeople benefit from mobile access to a sales enablement application that gives them advice in the field for helping customers?
• Location. The addition of GPS chips to smartphones makes it possible to use people’s location as a driving force behind the mobile application. Right now foursquare is the Twitter of location. People like it, but they’re not quite sure what to do with it or how it can be used for marketing (and making money). One possibility is to use location at your events so that attendees can find each other or share schedules and information. But Twitter and foursquare already do that, so again, you need something more within the app than just the location feature.
• Continuity. Do you have situations in which customers and prospects feel they might miss something by being disconnected from you even for a short while? An example of this is user groups. I can see techies catching up on technical issues while they have some down time at an airport.
• Notification. Is there any aspect of what you do that customers would want to be alerted about the moment it happens?

Mobile Marketing Case Studies

The mobile screen’s small size makes mobile a natural for visual content. But even as the iPad relaxes those size constraints, the craving for immediacy won’t change. Inevitably, it will drive us back to our roots as visual storytellers. And that is important for marketers. Increasingly, we will have to deliver our messages in a multimedia mix that communicates that we are a part of the community.

Two of our recent case studies show examples of how B2B marketers have used mobile as shoots from a tree. Xerox Global Services (XGS) built a mobile application as part of Competipedia, its internal sales tool. It’s a wiki-based tool that salespeople can use to find and share competitive intelligence. The mobile app that hooks into Competipedia is justified because XGS’ salespeople often need information while on the road (help) and can use competitive information as soon as it is available (timeliness).

Meanwhile, IT services and consulting firm CSC built a tree trunk called WikonnecT that is a B2B online community for the insurance industry. CSC added a mobile shoot to WikonnecT because its community is so vibrant. CSC has been building the complex software that runs the processes of big insurance companies for decades, a kind of enterprise resource planning (ERP) for insurance. CSC is making its software development processes transparent within WikonnecT; for example, people can argue about and lobby for new features at any time and CSC responds within the community. As a result, there is a vitality to the conversation that satisfies the continuity and notification requirements for mobile.

As you can see, Competipedia’s and WikonnecT’s success in mobile depends on having the center of gravity for the applications be outside the mobile apps themselves.

We expect that this is one way that mobile will play out in B2B. Companies will use it as a lever to improve and extend collaboration in their communities.

How have you used mobile in your marketing so far?

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as Avaya, BT, Cisco, Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.