We commonly think that B2B customers don’t really need mobile. After all, most B2B sales are highly driven by actual sales people, with web sites supporting them through content like white papers, product information, etc. B2B customers are also thought to be desk-bound, mainly accessing your B2B content through traditional desktop browsers.
Recently, however, we see more and more evidence that B2B customers are equally likely to be mobile users. In an October 2017 research report by Boston Consulting Group and Google (How mobile is reshaping the B2B landscape for growth), they report 40% of B2B revenue is now being driven or influenced by mobile. They show that 50% of B2B searches originate on mobile devices and they expect that to grow to 70% by 2020.
Mobile influence on B2B. Source: BCG/Google
The main take away from this data is that B2B marketers need to pay attention to their mobile experiences. In fact, the study showed that 90% of buyers who had a superior mobile experience were likely to buy again, while of those who had a poor mobile experience, only 50% would likely buy again.
“B2B mobile leaders are generating higher levels of mobile engagement as measured by search queries, site traffic, lead generation, and actual transactions.”
Mobile First Approach
Leading companies should be taking a mobile first approach to their customer experiences. In the BCG/Google study, B2B leaders made sure their customer journeys included great mobile experiences and took advantage of mobile capabilities like location services and click-to-call capabilities.
Another interesting item reported by BCG/Google is that the B2B leaders were combining their own company data with third party data to provide better insights to their customers. Third party data included things like social media and business partner information. This 3rd party data augmented the information these leaders wanted their customers to know about their products and services.
Take a look at this post for other ways that mobile is impacting our businesses: 7 Ways Mobile is Impacting Digital Transformation.
