In recent years, companies have been effectively mobilizing clients and colleagues to participate in the marketing conversation. Through this kind of ambassadorship, businesses are more effectively spreading B2B brand messages via various peer-to-peer (P2P) techniques.
Because of this trend, as mobile continues to explode, it has been reinvigorating B2B efforts, with more of these brand-carrying employees working off of their own laptops, smartphones, and tablets thanks to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement. With BYOD practices, employees are allowed or even encouraged to bring personally-owned mobile devices to the workplace and use them to access privileged company information. Aside from some risks related to data security, BYOD has been lauded for making workers comfortable with the devices they are spending the most time with, translating to happier and more productive employees.
As devices continue to become more capable and more readily available, members of the workforce are better connected than ever before. Now, B2B marketers are finding ways to make this new level of mobility even smarter.
BYOD is one of many results of the consumerization of IT, in which consumer preferences are driving the adoption of new technologies instead of corporate interests. International advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather reported that executives perform more mobile searches from personal devices today than they did from company computers a year ago. The same report suggested that the BYOD movement has enabled B2B mobile in-app advertising to engage its audience as well as the highest profile B2C advertising categories, like retail or automotive. These preferences and user behaviors are precisely the activity that B2B marketers have been after in the years since employees emerged as more powerful brand assets; getting through to a brand’s people is vital, and it is becoming easier to build those connections.
BYOD has become prominent enough that entire mobile strategies have been redesigned to fit the requirements of having more personalized technology in the hands of workers. Messages and applications must be tailored appropriately. By delivering dynamic, interactive content to prospects, the experience shifts from ‘presenting the information’ to having a real conversation. The individuals, not the enterprise, have become the final decision makers.