Mobile devices have become one of the most important and necessary modes of business communication: from small businesses to corporate giants, from executives to entrepreneurs and from teachers to students.
Mobile devices in business and marketing
Business usage of mobile devices is up: “29 percent of business professionals use their mobile devices at least once an hour” and “73 percent of small business owners work remotely on their mobile devices while on vacation.” It’s not surprising then that almost a third check their mobile devices even before brushing their teeth in the morning.
Smartphones were formerly just a critical business tool for staying on top of phone calls and email, but they are now on the cusp of becoming the primary device interface for corporate contacts, applications, databases and workflow processes. Business-to-employee (B2E) apps have the potential to deliver sweeping transformational change to many organizations.
Smartphones are also transforming marketing, especially in the consumer marketplace. Mobile can be a powerful marketing channel to truly build one-on-one relationships through targeted messages that deliver the right offer to the right customer at the right place and time.
These words aren’t just platitudes. I really mean the right offer (through precise analytics) to the right customer (through laser targeting) at the right place and time (through WiFi or GPS location tracking). Reach customers when they walk past your business, when they make an online mobile search query or even when they scan a product—in one of your competitors’ stores!
It’s exciting to see the growth of mobile as a vital tool not only for communication, information and entertainment, but for commerce transactions as well. Smartphone growth is having a significant impact on commerce transactions across several industries.
For example, the travel industry has already experienced a significant impact from mobile usage. More than half of smartphone owners access travel content on their devices, and almost 20 percent already use their devices to book air travel and hotel reservations. Forty percent of Walgreens’ online prescription refills are now coming from mobile devices. In banking, one‑third of retail banks’ digital budgets are now devoted to mobile. As a result of astonishing mobile growth, over two‑thirds of small business owners now see mobile marketing as crucial.
The attainment of measurable business results
Leveraging mobile social media strategies can be a powerful way to deliver business results. But a recent study proclaims that 73 percent of CEOs feel that marketers lack business credibility and are not able to demonstrate their ability to generate measurable top‑line growth or to achieve other business and marketing objectives. It’s important that marketers not rush onto the mobile social media bandwagon before taking a holistic view of what is possible, prioritizing based on business objectives and then executing tactics that demonstrate clear, measurable results.
It’s interesting to note that “91 percent of senior corporate marketers believe that successful brands use customer data to drive marketing decisions. Yet, 39 percent say their own company’s data is collected too infrequently or not real-time enough.” Furthermore, fewer than one in five firms are collecting any mobile data at all. Analytics is key to understanding customer behaviors and analyzing the return on investment (ROI) of various marketing tactics.
It’s time for marketers to leverage the power of mobile social media to thrive—delivering successful marketing and commerce tactics, as well as inspiring entirely new business model innovations.
Businesses and government organizations are recognizing the power of utilizing mobile devices as a key means of communications with customers and citizens. Watch this series of IBM MobileFirst videos to generate ideas about how you can transform your organization using mobile.
And let’s connect on Twitter (@TomVassos) to discuss the mobile transformation of business and marketing.
* This blog post is adapted from my book, Destination Innovation: Creative Mobile Marketing and Commerce Strategies.
The post The mobile transformation of business and marketing appeared first on IBM Mobile.