Marketing in industrial sector, engineers as the target customer, latest buzz around mobile marketing and how to combine all of the above is an area of my interest. One of the articles in industrial marketing blog by Achinta Mitra, which caught my attention was devoted specifically to mobile marketing. The author briefly explored the viability of mobile marketing in industrial applications, gave some tips in understanding whether the mobile marketing makes sense for a concrete company and suggested to make a decision on implementing the mobile marketing strategy as soon as possible.
Having the previous working experience in industrial marketing I am always curious in ways of applying marketing tools in B2B and industrial sector and, to be more specific, in applications for manufacturing companies targeting the professionals, such as engineers and technicians. The examples and the strategies that are easily accessible and described in details are usually about the consumer products. What I usually read and hear is success stories and smart solutions that target consumer goods wisely interweaving with their everyday routine and lifestyles. Hardly ever I hear about B2B sector; hardly ever I read about excellent marketing campaigns targeted, for instance, at the maintenance engineers.
I devoted some time searching for industrial marketing blogs and articles; and more specifically I was curious to learn about social media and mobile marketing strategies in the industrial marketing. One of the blogs that I came across is called Industrial Marketing Today by Achinta Mitra. The author shares his knowledge in B2B and industrial marketing and offers the consulting services in this area. The reason the blog caught my attention, however, was the article “Is Mobile Marketing Right for Industrial Companies” posted by the author on May, 2011.
http://industrialmarketingtoday.com/is-mobile-marketing-right-for-industrial-companies/
The topic of the article talks for itself. The author explores the viability of mobile marketing in industrial applications, gives some tips in understanding whether the mobile marketing is right for a specific company and suggests to speed up with a decision on implementing the mobile marketing strategy.
The good idea was to give the statistics applicable for mobile marketing at the beginning of the post in order to emphasize the growing importance of the trend. Mr. Mitra states that global mobile workforce will constitute 30% of entire workforce worldwide; the smartphones will overtake the PCs by 2013, and over 80% executives use smartphones already. I completely agree that impressive statistics can serve a good role to emphasize the point. However, I imagined myself for a minute in my previous role as a Marketing Communication coordinator at my company, a global company manufacturing test tools for electrical engineers. And I also imagined that I am at the point of making decision whether to proceed with development of mobile marketing strategy or not. I thought was how impressive the article could have been and how much more credibility the author would have got from my side, if the article provided more specific statistics. (For example, some data on usage of smartphones and apps by the workforce and not only by executives; and more ideally – segmented by occupations in industries: i.e. engineers).
Then author gives some tips on how to understand the target customer better from the mobile phone usage perspective through Google Analytics tool. Basically, the company can learn about the type of devices the customer uses, location, source, etc. I found this advice helpful, especially for the manufacturing companies that are often slow in adapting the latest technologies which are not directly related with the manufactured product.
And if exploring Google Analytics reveal that a target customer uses mobile to access the website, mobile marketing strategy might make sense. Here I had some doubts and questions: assuming my company has mobile-unfriendly website, there is no way the customers enjoy accessing it using smartphone as they need scroll down all the time. So, I thought that Google Analytics report would not be a point where I make decision to “go mobile” or not. And even though looking at Google Analytics is a good starting point, more information and advice on learning how the industrial customer uses the smartphone, and, furthermore, how to educate the customer to use smartphone to benefit even further from the company products would have been far more useful.
Smartly, the article reminds the reader that the mobile marketing is not a goal and it’s just the means to optimize the marketing strategy and maximize interaction with the customer. And as any marketing strategy, the mobile marketing strategy should also contain tracking and measurement tool in order to evaluate the efficiency of the strategy.
Overall I was a bit disappointed with only a few specific pieces of advice given in the post. And what I would also hope to see in this type of post is a success story and an example of mobile marketing strategy in industrial companies.
However, I was very glad to find the blog specifically devoted to the industrial marketing and now I can always follow it if I continue pursuing the career in B2B or industrial marketing.