Why Your B2B Team Is Investing Too Much in Mobile

Last year, Adobe ran a story on CMO.com titled, “The Moment Is Now: Brands Must Embrace A Mobile-First World.” Think With Google wants to show us “How to Drive Growth in a Mobile-First World.” And a few months ago, Entrepreneur declared that “The Dominance of Mobile Marketing Is Complete.” At first glance, the narrative makes sense. Mobile ad spending has surpassed $58 billion this year, accounting for 70 percent of all digital spend, per eMarketer. So if you don’t invest in mobile, you risk getting left behind. Mobile optimization and investment may be necessary for a lot of brands, but for B2B companies, its importance has been wildly overstated. Sure, everyone owns a smartphone, but that doesn’t mean everyone uses it for business purposes. Forrester found that only 20 percent of B2B web traffic originated from mobile devices, per the Internet Retailer Q2 2016 B2B Sell-Side Online Survey. On Search Engine Journal, writer Clark Boyd dug deeper into this topic by looking at the Consumer Barometer, a survey tool. According to the research, more than twice as many people in the U.S. rely on computers over smartphones for product information. For personal email, however, 59 percent of people primarily use smartphones, compared to just 35 percent of people who use desktops or laptops. So if you work in B2B, think twice the next time you see a headline or an article touting the rise of mobile.