B2B companies are always looking for ways to sell more and better. This year, it looks as through B2B companies may be trying to tap into a marketing strategy that has so far been dominated by B2C: mobile.
Mobile in B2B
As early as last fall, marketing studies began finding that “B2B commerce is adopting B2C best practices in order to optimize the purchasing experience.” In terms of mobile, the study found that 75% of respondents planned to offer mobile sometime within the next 12 months.
The study suggested that the motivation for this stems directly from customer demand. This makes sense, as mobile devices become more and more a part of our lives, we increasingly want to be able to use them to learn about consumer products and services, whatever type they may be. In other words, whether we are looking for a new car or management consulting services, we want to be able to do both on our iPad while we are waiting to catch a plane or for our daughter to be done with soccer practice.
More recent data shows B2B companies are taking this demand seriously and investing to meet their customers’ needs. At last month’s Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, a study of 100 businesses was done that found:
“Mobile commerce was cited as a top investment area more often by companies involved with B2B e-commerce than by those in retail e-commerce . . . Among those [37] respondents that were solely B2B, 26 cited mobile as one of their top three investment areas, followed by 19 that cited web commerce, 19 social, 10 e-mail marketing, and nine search marketing.”
For more on B2B marketing trends in 2014, you can read this blog series.
