notbrady

Predicting 2014 #3 and 4

Marcia Kadanoff -

Second in a Series

Trend #3 – Responsive Design Becomes De Rigor

Responsive design is a technique where you take your website, landing pages, emailings, and campaign/microsites and code them up in such a way that one code base can deliver optimal experiences on smart phones, tablets, and traditional platforms like a laptop. Analysts estimate that as much as 40% of the US has already shifted to responsive design. Expect the rest of the world to follow suit, abandoning mobile specific websites in favor of a set of assets that have been built from the ground up to take advantage of responsive design.

Predictions:

  • The end of m.yourcompanyurl.com here. This type of website presence almost never makes any sense. If your customers need to do specific things on mobile, get them to an app for that. If your customers don’t, let them access your real site, but in a way optimized for mobile.
  • Two-stage optimization starts to make sense especially for landing pages. First we optimize for conversion. Then we take the optimized page and re-optimize it for mobile.

Trend #4 – Increased Focus on Sales Enablement

The dividing line between sales and marketing is starting to blur. This trend will only accelerate now that 60% of the buyer’s journey is accomplished before the buyer ever talks to a single sales person at your company.

If you think this makes it hard for the average sales rep to stay one step ahead of the prospect in turns of their knowledge, you’d be right. Look for marketing team leaders to “lean in” and start to realize that sales enablement is a fundamental part of their job, critical to keeping account executives one step of the customer and to arm the AE with the kinds of information they need to be seen as a subject matter expert.

Predictions:

  • Increased focus on understanding the buyer’s journey and translating it into provocative sales conversations, the kind of conversations that spark insights and challenge the status quo
  • Sales enablement starts to be looked at as more than just technology – but the place where people, processes, content, and technology come together