B2B Marketers: Time For Mobilegeddon

B2B Marketers: Time For Mobilegeddon

I get it. You’re at a B2B company and you run marketing. Your budget’s tight, the CRM campaign is producing leads, the VP of sales trusts the pipeline, so why rock the boat and add mobile?  According to the numbers, you’re not alone if mobile has been closer to the bottom of your list than the top. Almost 80% of us aren’t creating content readable on a mobile device. But the fact is, if you don’t mobile-ize, you’re leaving traffic and leads on the table, and Google is about to start ignoring you. Here’s why–   1. As of April 21, Google is using the mobile-friendliness of your website as a ranking signal. That’s what Mobilegeddon is, and it will impact the traffic on your site. Google even created a mobile-friendly test tool (our site passed the test!) so you can gauge your site’s status for yourself. 46% of Fortune 500 companies have failed to make their websites mobile-friendly as of Q1 2015 (insert jaw-drop emoticon here). If you’re not mobile-friendly and your competitor is, they’re now appearing higher on smartphone search engine results pages (SERPs) than you are– and getting more traffic.  2. Customers are increasingly coming to your site via mobile. According to Merkle RKG, mobile devices now account for 45% of organic search traffic, up from 34% in Q1 2014. EmailMonday, in their magnum opus review of CRM stats,  In this brief case study from PwC, a construction products company increased its “where to buy” queries by 23% simply by re-engineering their website to a responsive design.  3. You can probably get a competitive edge by acting now. According to digital...
When A Good Exit Feels Like a Big Entrance

When A Good Exit Feels Like a Big Entrance

We did it. A successful exit. During a long career in digital marketing for several leading tech companies, I saw a lot of M&A action. A couple of deals turned out great. Most of them failed miserably. I’ve actually seen, firsthand, a deal that evaporated more than a billion dollars’ worth of market share in the 12 months following an acquisition. There’s a life experience worth keeping. For our part, we’re a boutique executive search company, and we found a lot of success working with people in a space we really enjoy – data-driven marketing and advertising tools. We most often work with companies who are building new solutions for the modern world of advertising and marketing – AdTech, MarTech, programmatic, real-time bidding, data science, content marketing, CRM, and other layers in today’s marketing software stack. Like many other companies in our space, as we found traction, we had several larger companies approach us. Some were serious in their approach, looking to bring our expertise and connections on board in a mutually beneficial relationship. Others were just looking for a few new employees for their current business – and we’re a bit too visionary for that. However, we did establish a relationship with a larger firm that, ultimately, won the day. On 21 April, we announced our acquisition by The Newport Group. This would not be the billion-dollar roll-of-the-dice I just mentioned, but it was still a big deal for us – and for them. We weren’t giving up our independence unless we thought it would make a positive difference. Thankfully, our experience with Newport says that we made...