How to Begin Building Your Mobile Strategy

How could mobile increase customer satisfaction?

For many small and midmarket organizations, mobile can be a giant killer. So how do you leverage technology to get the results you are looking for with mobile?  Since this is the first Mobile Monday, I thought it might be helpful to share with you how mobile can help you with your marketing efforts.  Since every organization is unique, I will share several marketing ideas to get you started and then later this week, share a strategy framework you can use to begin leveraging technology in your overall business development strategies.

Many organizations use mobile technologies to increase market share.  For your mobile marketing to work, it is critical that you have a strong business strategy. Mobile marketing is going to provide you an opportunity to become a market leader.  I also believe that using mobile effectively is a matter of choice for the organization. For many smaller organizations, mobile can help them develop a stronger brand with their key customers and communities.   Mobile is a powerful branding tool for many Fortune 500 organizations. I’m not going to focus on these efforts today but try to share ideas that are relevant to small to midmarket organizations.  Mobile has tremendous reach potential but for many of my growing clients, it has to be scalable to be effective.

You can use mobile to increase brand awareness in you markets.  Most of us don’t have the budget or the reach of a Pepsi or Coca Cola but still can impact our best customers with a well-targeted marketing campaign. As you start thinking about mobile, you must think about who your best clients and potential customers are. What do they expect form a mobile application and how does it compare to what others in your market are doing leveraging technology.

 If you approach your mobile investment the way you approach any other marketing investment you will get the results you expect.  Don’t be drawn in by the large numbers of smart phones being sold as an indicator there are opportunities in your markets. When thinking about mobile I might look at it as another communication channel at the beginning.  It has many good qualities but may not provide the same results you get from more traditional marketing media. This isn’t because anything you are doing wrong but where your current market is. For many B2B marketers, social media has not given them the results they expected for their resources invested.   In many cases, large parts of their customer base have yet to begin using a social business model.  Knowing what platforms are working in your market helps you avoid wasting your money on ineffective marketing.

Taking time to understand where your market is and how it’s evolving allows you to develop the right strategy for your first efforts in mobile. One of my technology partners spends several weeks with clients to understand the client’s business strategy before ever talking about the technologies capabilities.  If your market is still early in the adoption phase for mobile, we might be better off building a multi-phase approach to our mobile applications

Mobile can offer an opportunity to expand your current business by sharing new products and additional service offerings.  Introducing a customer service portal allows you to build stronger connections into your current customer base.  By automating ordering and a wide range of customer service functions you can help clients get what they need when they need it.

These portals allow for customer service 24/7 and just in time training for customers or new employees who are using your products or services for the first time.  Automated customer service processes can contact the customer on a regular basis to make sure customers are having a good experience with their new products and services.  A proactive approach to customer service assures higher levels of customer satisfaction while also insuring people who have problems get helped before the situation becomes out of control.

On Wednesday this week, we begin talking about how mobile technology can change the game for your organization by creating alignment between sales and marketing to increase sales results and market share.  See you then.