In 2017, approximately 197 billion mobile apps were downloaded from app stores. This type of app store competition, integrated with faster technology development in the industry, makes new customer acquisition more complicated for app advertisers.
Earlier this year, PayPal’s Director of Mobile Commerce, Rob Harper, told the audience at a retail conference that choosing not to make mobile strategy a top priority was a choice to 'ignore’ customer needs. Rob had hit the nail on the head.
Explaining the dichotomy a modern-day retailer faced, Rob claimed that despite high mobile traffic, many retailers were still struggling to convert leads into paying customers.
Rob’s advic" that enterprise'sprise’s number one stwasn't wasn’t mobile, it must be prepared to ignore cu"tomers” comes at a time when the world over, everyone, from B2C and even B2B businesses, serious about selling online, is still trying to understand how to use smartphones (or mobile computing devices) for lead generation, when by now, they should have been selling to those leads.
Mobile has revolutionized the way we shop, yet despite its rapid proliferation, enterprises continue to operate in a desktop mindset when it comes to lead generation.
In 2014, about one-fourth of people worldwide used smartphones. By 2017, that figure was expected to jump to one-third, according to eMarketer. By the end of 2015, for example, at least 75% the USA’s population owned a phone, most of them smart ones, while their counterparts in the United Kingdom were found to be checking their devices about 150 times. That’s the kind of influence mobiles have started wielding on our day-to-day lives.
Millennials (those born after 1980) were expected to constitute 76% of the global workforce by 2025. Not to mention Gen Z (those born post-1995), who number about 30 million worldwide, "these “digitally" native” generations are becoming digital converts, thanks to mobile computing devices.
And the message’s still not got through to you. Here are some more stats from a recent Forrester report:
- Three-quarters of US smartphone owners spend 2 hours a day on their phones
- For Millennials, that number goes up to 2 1/2 hours of mobile screen time a day
- US smartphone owners today use 26 apps every month
- US smartphone owners visit over 50 mobile sites every month
Clearly, the statistics above show that mobile websites and smartphone apps offer businesses a direct way to engage with potential customers. Not only that, these devices, because of their pocket size, ease of use, and near-global connectivity, have become touchpoints throughout the customer cycle – from discovering your product or service to buying it to using it, thereby engaging with your brand.
B2B business marketing and sales teams, constantly on the lookout for newer ways to generate leads, can no longer let the potential of mobile go untapped. As an enterprise, your business needs to start paying attention to the influence mobile devices are having on lead generation.
“All in all, the use of mobile lead generation has really changed the face of marketing and in lead generation campaigns,” says Belinda Summers, a business development consultant for Callbox, in a blog post for the National Association of Sales Professionals. Here's
Here’s a heads-up for marketers:
- Include mobile in your marketing channels. (In fact, make it the centerpiece.) You will be surprised to learn how it doesn’t even today.
- Measure engagement to understand how many of your potential customers use mobile devices to view your messages. Apply the standard measurement indices for your mobile'app –'‘o'ens’, ‘i'stalls', and ‘session d'ration’.
- Geo-fencing technol"gy is “a gift from tech"heaven” for marketers on mIt'se. It’s the practice of using GPS or radio frequency identification to define a geographic boundary. Using it, a marketer can set up triggers and then send a text message or app notification to the lead or customer whenever a mobile device enters or exits" this “virtual "barrier”.
- Deliver a personalized mobile experience by sending timely, location-relevant messages to your customers using geofencing technology. This can even be used if your potential customer is browsing the aisles in a store.
- Segmentize your mobile leads/customers, and even your mobile campaigns, by measures such as device type, data connectivity, and operating system. Segmentation allows marketers to unlock insights about subsets of users and their behavior.
Some surveys have shown that as much as one-fourth of online searches take place on mobile devices. Ask Google. It recently launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a dedicated platform for mobile-centric search. Google’s VP of Americas Marketing, Lisa Gevelber, in a blog post on ‘How To Build Your Mobile Search Strategy’, said it was important for businesses to lay out a mobile-centric search strategy designed to capture customers when they conduct a specific type of mobile-centric search. The latter are those search words inputted over 75% of the time on a mobile device.
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Lisa rounded off her post by saying: "… can’t just be a shrunken version of existing online ads and desktop content." It really calls for us to think more broadly about consumers’ context and intent so that we can cater to mobile-specific situations.
The key is to provide enough value in your mobile site or app to attract potential customers and encourage them to call or email you or fill out that lead-generation form. Marketers can use analytics for mobile apps to measure the full value of your app – from discovery to download to conversions. They can track user engagement and goal conversions, and the results can be used to tailor the app to build a solid app strategy. In short, analytics for mobile apps provides a single-window view of your customer.
Concerns
Watch out. There are issues with leads generated via mobile devices. An industry thumb rule is: mobiles generate high volume but low-quality leads. The problem of spam is central to this issue. Then, of course, you have to deal with other problems like fat fingers (accidental clicking on links), writing mobile-friendly content, and making device-friendly forms.
