Even companies that don’t rely on inbound marketing need to consider their mobile strategy. Here are five reasons you shouldn’t delay:
1. There are inexpensive and easy options for optimizing your mobile presence.
Not every mobile solution requires a huge budget and months of planning, and neither do those types of solutions make sense for everyone. You could instantly raise your profile by simply designing a presentation of your website that looks and functions beautifully on the smaller size of a smartphone screen. Browser-based solutions, or “mobile web”, can be done at a fraction of the cost of native apps.
2. Without question, your audience is using mobile.
Mobile is not a phase; its adoption is universal, as we’ve discussed definitively. Even if you do not sell products or services to the mass consumer public, you must understand that your staff and clients use their mobile devices to research, schedule, plan, shop, and play in their personal lives. Eventually, you will need to go where they go to retain relevance—and that day is rapidly approaching.
3. Mobile technology can help you increase productivity.
One of our Showcase clients recently reported that she saves about an hour each day by processing sales orders with her app, rather than entering them into a web system after her day on the road. That’s an extra five hours each week she can spend selling.
4. Mobile technology can cut costs.
Still paying for paper and the transmission it requires? Crazy. But beyond that, it’s important to regard the mobile device as a whole, and all the functionality it offers in addition to any mobile feature you develop.
By outfitting your staff with mobile devices, you provide them with one machine that does email, saves notes, researches the web, calculates, creates and shows presentations, takes credit card payments, captures images, makes phone calls, manages files, translates language, and on and on. Available work process apps include GoToMeeting, Cisco WebEx, ConstantContact, SalesForce, SAP Business One, Skype, DropBox, Vablet, Work, and millions more.
5. Development tools have evolved to reduce programming effort.
If you are interested in developing a mass consumer or internal enterprise app, it will be less expensive today than ever before. Tools like Appcelerator, PhoneGap, and Mobile Iron have streamlined cross-platform development and distribution.
With an experienced developer by your side (*ahem*), it’s easy to “go mobile”…and now is the time to get started.