Toys are fun things to have. And surely (or hopefully), you got to play with them as a kid. If not, you can always budget for some now, given the newfound freedoms and insights of adulthood…

OK, therapy session’s over. Let’s talk about mobile marketing and why, for any serious company, it ought to be far from child’s play.

The entire world is going mobile, and fast. A report from comScore reveals that 4 out of 5 consumers now shop via their smartphones. And time spent on digital media in the U.S. has officially overtaken desktop usage, 51 to 42 percent. So any company that continues to “toy around” with mobile, getting excited about style but neglecting substance, will end up playing all by itself. How sad.

But for you, it can be different. By using mobile strategically, you can stay relevant with your customers. That’s how your company progresses from being an infant to a big kid in your market.

Strategic Positioning, for the Win

Put yourself in the right place, at the right time. That’s the first step to winning over prospects.

Whether your branding leaps through a smartphone screen or stares down your ideal customer from a billboard, your would-be buyers should encounter your brand naturally, as part of their everyday experience. Obvious, right? Not to those marketers who throw together an app “just because,” or make their corporate website “mobile friendly” with the hope that new leads will flock to it.

You need to go the extra mile. That means:

Using market segmentation to determine relevant mobile features.

Do your buyers tend to watch instructional videos or consume case studies? Are they typically solo decision-makers or hierarchy-agnostic team members? Assess such things and, with the support of targeted advertising, commission apps or create personalized mobile content journeys that appeal to your major segments.

Investing in presence.

Whether it means more time, money, or human resources, you need to “walk the walk” and be consistently present where your prospects are. Is it a certain industry forum that’s commonly accessed via a mobile app? Be there. A LinkedIn Group (the mobile implementation of which is quite engaging now, thanks to an intuitive redesign and a new iOS app)? Make sure you’re active.

Tracking results of mobile involvement.

By looking at the platforms your mobile visitors are using, and determining which behaviors lead directly to greater conversions and ROI, you’ll see where your presence matters most.

When your prospects pick up their mobile devices, you should be a familiar face in their hangouts of choice, with awesome content just waiting for their consumption. And that can be the beginning of an exciting, personal tour through your brand story.

Your audience is using mobile to learn new things, and 70% of mobile searches lead to website actions within one hour. So give them what they’re looking for.

Be Useful, and Be Used

And how? By innovating solutions, as part of your mobile marketing efforts, that make things easier for the people who tune into you – that’s how you can be useful and used.

With more than 225,000 app downloads forecasted worldwide for 2016 and consumers spending 85% of the time on smartphones inside apps, there are a million things waiting to distract your mobile audience. To be useful, put on your thinking cap and consider what it’ll really take to become indispensable to them. Solve a pressing problem, and you’re in.

Just to give you an idea, depending on the nature of your product, you might make it easy for customers to order and re-order your products, using shopping carts or QR code-scanning functionality. Or, with the aid of push notifications, you might alert users to fresh industry knowledge and regular business-building tips that they can share with the tap of an on-screen button.

What do your prospects need in their lives? And what are you doing, right now, to meet that need?

Mobile: A Means to Multiple Ends

Mobile is an effective conduit for intuitive, targeted messaging, and it can support as much or as little of the customer lifecycle as you need it to. But sometimes mobile isn’t all about mobile.

It can just as well be about getting your customers from point A to point B, whatever that looks like, within the personalized journey you’re building for them.

Especially in a B2B context involving complex products and buying cycles, staying relevant with mobile marketing means going beyond mobile and extending your presence and usefulness to all media. The critical questions are:

• Does your mobile experience seamlessly extend to the desktop, where users can quickly pick up where they left off (for example, via user profiles linked to social accounts)?
• Does your mobile strategy support, rather than interrupt, a fluid and responsive flow of content?
• Does the tone of your users’ mobile experiences extend to other touchpoints, such as a sales call or interactive content at a deeper point in your sales funnel?

If you can answer those questions with a definite “yes”—that is, if the mobile adventure transitions smoothly to other platforms and true-to-life buying scenarios, and if it supports a truly personal experience with your brand – then your mobile strategy isn’t based on falsehood. It’s grounded in reality.

Which is the way it should be.

So, how’s your mobile marketing going?

Are you producing measurable results and staying relevant by being present, useful, and extensible via mobile? Has your approach to mobile grown out of wide-eyed adolescence into maturity, with customer-focused touchpoints and seamless engagements?

Whether it’s a yes, no, or maybe, let’s chat in the comments.