Gartner Inc. predicts that in less than two years mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common device used to access the Web. This means that the first time prospects visit your website could very well be from their mobile phone or a tablet device (think iPad).

Mobile marketing efforts are often focused on optimizing a website so that it can be viewed from a mobile device. But what about your software demo or any other lead gen tool you use on your website? Is it optimized for mobile devices?

There is a lot more to mobile marketing than making your website mobile-friendly. More and more of your prospects are getting their first glimpse of your product from their phone. You see it all around you, people searching online while waiting to board a flight, standing in line at Starbucks, or wherever else they have time to browse from their iPhone, Blackberry or whatever Android device they keep within an arms-length at all times.

If you want to make sure your lead generation efforts are doing their job, don’t make prospects wait until they are in front of their PC to view your demo. It's crucial that it can play on mobile devices, and not just smartphones, but iPads too.

Here are a few questions to consider when building your demo for a mobile environment:

• Is it built in Flash? If so, iPhone and iPad users won't be able to access it.
• How does it look on a Blackberry versus an Android-based phone? Just because it looks good on one device doesn't mean it will look the same on an alternative mobile operating system.
• What about the audio or any on-screen text? Is it worth refining certain details to retain the integrity of the demo?
• Can it easily be shared via social media networks or email?

Consider formatting your software demo so that it can be viewed as a video file. You may want to include built-in iPad detection so that your demo is savvy enough to recognize the device being used and play the appropriate version.

You want your prospects to focus on your product, not the technology used to deliver the demo. Can your demo be posted on Facebook? Do you have a YouTube channel where you can upload your demos for everyone to see? When you build a demo, how many devices do you try it out on before posting it to your mobile-friendly site?

Attention spans are short and the pool for software products is as deep as it is wide. The more accessible your demo is the greater its opportunity for maximum exposure.

Putting your software demo in front of the pack distinguishes your solution by offering prospects something your competitors don’t have—lead gen tools built to be viewed on mobile devices.  

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