Sell more beer are
the first three words in my Mobilized
Marketing book, serving as a lead-in to the story of Steve Mura and his
work as of director of digital marketing at MillerCoors.
Mura knows that for marketers, mobile has changed everything. And nothing.
The what remains the same: Move more product. Mura told me that his goal is the same as it was for his predecessor 155 years ago. Sell more bottles and cans.
It’s the how that has changed. With more mobile devices on the planet than there are toilets, and more people consuming via wireless, there are more ways than ever for brands and marketers to reach consumers.
Megabrands like MillerCoors aren’t the only ones who know that their marketing efforts must lead to more business.
In a new survey by Inc. http://images.inc.com/vocus/dmsmb/guide/vocus_inc_the_state_of_digital_marketing_for_smbs.pdf, it was shown that SMBs are approaching digital marketing pragmatically: the number one objective for companies in this space is to drive sales. This goal receives an average importance rating of 4.48 (on a scale of 1 to 5) by firms with more than $1 million in annual sales and 4.45 by all firms in the Inc. survey.
Most SMBs participating have between one and five full-time employees currently working on their digital marketing efforts. A substantial portion of both million-dollar-plus and smaller SMBs devote an overwhelming share of their total marketing spend exclusively to digital.
More than 70 percent say their current digital marketing strategy is very (10.2 percent) or moderately (60.3 percent) effective at achieving the objectives they’ve identified as being most important to their business.
Satisfaction is even higher among the $1 million-plus group, with 11.7 percent rating their efforts very effective and 68.4 percent moderately so.
What’s most impressive about these numbers is that many of these SMBs have had to rethink how they market themselves. That has included learning new skills and/or hiring folks who could bring additional digital know-how to the business.
Look for more mobile use and marketing integration when this survey is done again in a year. That’s because more businesses as large as MillerCoors and as small as the Mom and Pop are realizing that they can sell more through the wireless device that is within four feet of their customers 24 hours a day.
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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program http://Goo.gl/t3fgW, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
