I know one of the biggest challenges for manufacturers that we represent is getting to the young entrants in the trades. They know how to get to the old guys, they’ve been doing it for years and know that traditional things like trade ads and direct mail programs are effective tools to reach them.

But when you talk to these folks on how they plan on reaching the future generations of tradesmen, they are definitely puzzled as they know the traditional methods are probably not the best way to connect with them. They think of social media as one possible avenue to connect with these young people, but often neglect the mobile devices.

While that may not be surprising that young people are active in mobile devices, what might surprise you is that the baby boomers are also active in mobile, but just a different kind. Consider this: 91 million U.S. consumers use the internet through mobile devices at least once a month and that number continues to rise (Affinity reports that more than 24 million millennials plan on purchasing smart phones in the next 6 months).

So the question is:

• Do you have a mobile strategy in place to reach your young targeted audiences?
• Do you have a mobile friendly website?
• Are you planning smart phone apps?
• What’s your plan to start collecting e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers for future marketing programs?

Mobile will play an important part in communicating with the younger tradesmen. What’s your plan?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Marketing Trends, Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.