Last week in Miami, at the Mobile Media Summit, attendees quickly learned how integral it is for B2B to adopt mobile innovation, whether in-house or via applications to better sell their services.
“The reason that B2B needs to prioritize mobile is that it’s the medium that their target audiences are relying on the most. It’s a lifeline to their livelihoods,” said digital innovation expert and speaker Christina “CK” Kerley, who is also author of a series of well-received e-books on the topic including “The Mobile Revolution and B2B”.
CEO and founder of the Mobile Media Summits, Paran Johar, agrees: “More and more businesspeople are using mobile as their primary access point to the internet, explains Johar, (so)…any B2B marketers who don’t have a mobile strategy are not only missing the boat, but also doing themselves a disservice and hurting their brands.”
If B2Bs want to remain competitive, it’s not enough to just “get mobile,” either. Today, even a short span of attention is highly coveted, so in order to maximize the chance of the content to get viewed and shared it requires a top-notch level of creativity. Although many B2Bs or businesses in general still may not yet be “giving creative a seat at the business table,” then it seems from the recent Mobile Minds at Art Basel event put on by Mobile Media Summit that organizations who see the possibilities (read: the MONEY) in mobile are at least starting to get savvy enough to try to increasingly involve the creative team in business-minded conversations and internal communications.
One of the business challenges of that strategy relates to with reaction time. During the “How Tech is Changing the Agency of the Future” panel, MEC mobile head Rachel Pasqua (@RachelPasqua) made the point that although there is an immense amount of data now available in realtime, “the creative process isn’t that nimble in realtime yet.”
Nimble yet or not, strong creative can translate into business. One of the Mobile Minds attendees, Andrea Hurtado, a Digital Media Manager for AdServices, Inc., points out that in today’s tech-savvy world that when it comes to mobile and digital: “Creative must be powerful, impactful, and targeted precisely for conversions to occur….having powerful creative that stands out is essential for a business to brand itself and to achieve a conversion.”
With mobile set to receive increased budget dollars in 2015, Paran Johar also explained why his vision for Mobile Minds Miami included creative energy not always bundled in with a business conference program: “We incorporated a great deal of social and creative time to the conference to encourage discussion and creative thinking…Mobile is still evolving in terms of measurement and creative standards…(but) CMOs are just now finally taking it seriously and beginning to allocate real budgets.”
With more money being earmarked for mobile for business, the next challenge is seamless communication and collaboration. One of the ways to bridge the gap between creative and business was suggested during the Mobile Minds “Moving the Mobile Gap” panel, as panelists were in agreement that there is now a need for a “mobile glossary” of sorts so that it more easily facilitates synergy between the different parts of an organization or agency. B2B industry executives can take note that some of the items targeted for such a “mobile glossary” were items ranging from better identification and description of KPIs (key performance indicators) into measurable goals and outcomes understandable and accessible across a variety of staff roles and departments.
If you’re a B2B firm looking to dip a toe in the mobile pool for the first time, a smart first priority, according to Christina Kerley, is working to make the content you already have more mobile-friendly. She recommends that one of the most important steps towards getting mobile-savvy is for B2Bs new to mobile is to get “optimized for the mobile environment” as soon as possible. “Not having mobile-optimized content in 2014 is like not having a website in 2000,” she adds.
Photo via Stephanie Grayson
