Reaching Engineers in a Mobile World

Almost 20% of engineering visits are on mobile devices

You’ve heard how fast mobile Internet traffic is growing.  But maybe you can ignore it a while longer.  After all, engineers aren’t using tablets and smartphones to do vendor research or product design.  Right?

Maybe. Consider the following data points:

• Autodesk’s new ForceEffect engineering software products are mobile only
• Last October, Facebook reported that 49% of their traffic was mobile
• Smartphones are becoming more functional as the screens get bigger.  The new Samsung S5 is 5.2”, up from a measly 4” for my old iPhone 4S.
• Visits to ENGINEERING.com from mobile devices are up more than 7X in the past 24 months.

This chart above sets out the number of visits to ENGINEERING.com in each of the last 3 Mays.  This is visits, not page views, as reported to us by Google.  It shows that last month almost 100,000 engineers visited ENGINEERING.com using mobile devices.  While that’s less than 15% of total visits, the growth curve demonstrates that engineers will soon be looking for your content from their mobile devices if they aren’t already.

How can marketers leverage mobile?

1. Use stories to engage your audience.  They are more effective on mobile than banners and emails. Facebook, Twitter and ENGINEERING.com all offer sponsored posts.  These appear like organic content right in the editorial stream.  Here’s an example from my Facebook feed.
2. Distribute your content where engineers use their tablets and smartphones mobile, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and (of course) ENGINEERING.com.  Business Insider says that native advertising will make up 40% of all social media ad spending by 2017.
3. Responsive design.  It’s time to launch a project to present your web site differently depending on the size of the screen that is viewing it.  This means that certain navigation and content elements are rearranged or even disappear when viewed on a mobile device.
4. Ask mobile users for fewer fields on your landing pages.  They are less likely to fill out their company name, phone number, email address, etc. because the form factor makes it difficult.  

Mobile Internet usage is predicted to reach 25% of all Internet traffic by the end of 2014.  If your marketing team learns how to develop an audience on mobile before your competitors, you’ll have a huge advantage in the months to come.

You can learn more about ENGINEERING.com’s sponsored post program by downloading this media guide.

John