There’s no denying it. For most businesses, the use of mobile devices to keep executives and key staff up to the minute with schedules, email, and other vital information has become standard. In fact, back in August 2006, a study conducted by Korn/Ferry International noted that “81% of global executives say they are connected to work through mobile devices all of the time.” Today, that number is probably closer to 100%.

Interestingly, however, most executives use their mobile device primarily to “get” information, rather than to “give” it. Sure we answer email and that can entail giving information, but is your company maximizing the opportunities to better sell themselves using hand-held mobile tools?

The video screens on today’s hand-held devices are not large enough to share with a group, but they can turn a plane flight, elevator ride, golf game, chance meeting on the street, or any other 1:1 or discussion into an opportunity. The iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, and many other emerging mobile devices provide the perfect platform for presenting your Elevator Pitch on an impromptu basis with a decidedly drool-worthy visual edge.

In business it is always difficult to know where to put your time, energy and resources in order to get the greatest return. Companies have a multitude of options to share and interact with the marketplace, and selecting the right vehicle can be a challenge. However, a recent study published by Nielsen might have some insight to a strong choice.

According to Nielsen, “Mobile internet extends the audience reach of leading website categories by an average of 13% over home PC traffic alone – and for some categories, such as weather and entertainment, the extended reach is significantly greater.”¹ Mobile internet typically implies a mobile version of your website, but as hand-held devices continue to evolve there are other mobile opportunities for businesses such as mobile applications and widgets.

To determine what is appropriate for your business you can start with a few basic questions:

Who is my target demographic? Are they likely to be mobile internet adopters?

According to Nielsen, “87 million US mobile users subscribe to mobile internet services, and more than one in ten mobile subscribers (13.7%) actively uses mobile internet each month.”² Look at your audience. Are they likely to fall in this 87 million? If so then reaching them via their mobile device is probably an eventuality if not a priority, and merits looking at the next question.

What does your customer want or need from you?

If your customers need information from you on the fly, such as account balances or reference information such as retail or service locations and product pricing, then a mobile version of your website should be seriously considered.

“The data demonstrates that mobile internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a website, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” said Jeff Herrmann, VP of Mobile Media, Nielsen Mobile. “Publishers can now monetize their total cross-platform audience, and advertisers will better understand the efficiency and incremental value of mobile web traffic.”

Make it as easy as possible for customers to find what they need, when they need it, so you stay top of mind wherever they go.
In order to know whether a mobile application is a worthwhile investment, you need to go a step further.

What do you have to offer in a mobile application that will make your audience’s lives better, easier, or more fun?

Applications on mobile devices take up valuable visual and storage “real estate” on the phone, and will quickly be discarded or ignored if they do not provide incremental benefit to your audience. The magic in the mix is determining what relevant benefit you have to offer via mobile. Relevant content is that which benefits portable accessibility such as Yelp’s mobile dining application that helps you find user-rated restaurants based on your location, or Shazam’s instant song identification and purchase tool. Gaming applications provide mobile entertainment to make waiting in line or enduring a long ride more fun.

In some cases, a relevant benefit might not directly relate to what you offer, but can promote what you offer. For example, a small brewing company produced a game where the object was to slide a virtual beer glass along a curved bar counter without dropping it off the edge using the iPhones 3-dimensional sensitivity control. The brewery isn’t a gaming company, but the game had lots of brand ID placement to serve as a visual commercial every time it was played.

Mobile applications are where savvy businesses can start to think out of the box. For example, a contemporary furniture company might not organically have much to offer in a mobile application. However, if they create a useful tool for people who are redecorating, such as a room measuring tool, they can get related advertising mind share and customer good will brand support. Mobile applications are an incredible opportunity to set yourself apart from your competitors and capture significant market reach.

Source: ^1-2 MarketingCharts.com, “Mobile Internet Significantly Extends Reach of Some Leading Websites”, May 2008

In todays challenging business environment, pressure to create and maintain a successful strategy is more crucial than ever before. Businesses across all sectors are struggling to keep pace with performance expectations. Beneath this, businesses are also struggling to stay connected and valuable to their customers.

Companies across the board are finding that traditional approaches to understanding customer behavior are no longer enough to remain competitive. The need for further insight has become critical in the struggle to keep pace with performance expectations. A growing number of companies pressed to increase sales are reaching beyond standard research data into the perceptions and feelings of customers to gain behavioral insight and create more effective strategies.

In this context, common assumptions are made each day that marginalize success. In some, if not many cases, they can prove fatal to the business. One is that we know our customers. Particularly in B2B marketplace, it is not uncommon for management to assume that no one knows their customers better than they do. Based on this assumption, research is often reduced to a minimum if not eliminated entirely. Secondly, when they do reach out to gather market information, it is often done so with archaic, statistical methodologies. Both of these lead to disappointing results.

Consultants Michelle Helin and Linda Goodman, with extensive experience as strategists to leading international corporations (and associates of Transparency) are expanding this area of market research and giving business leaders solid, actionable intelligence toward increasing sales. Their approach is based upon the careful discovery and clarification of the emotional factors within customers that effect their business decisions.

What makes customers do what they do? What really motivates them? The fact is that most businesses today justify their strategic plans and business decisions without taking the time or making the effort to really listen and understand their customers. Really understanding the underlying emotion that drives a customer would give the business the unique opportunity to meet that need and build critical value in the relationship.

Helin and Goodman hold that traditional quantitative research, inherently designed to measure and verify, overlooks the crucial role of emotion in purchase behavior. Their answer is a process they refer to as Emotional Trigger Research, a methodology for obtaining true and meaningful insight to customer buying decisions. Using open-ended questions, intuitive listening, and deep, objective conversation, the goal is to peel back the automated response layers and discover deeper motivations. The approach is carefully designed to reveal the emotional triggers that would not be revealed through traditional forms of research yet radically affect business decisions.

In their practice, this use of conversational exploration has consistently produced a depth of insight that has created a significant market advantage for client businesses struggling with shifting dynamics in both their customers and their employees.

In a recent interview, Michelle Helin related the story of a leading global manufacturer of precision tools who suddenly saw plummeting acceptance rates among elite employee candidates. Emotional-trigger research was conducted to discover the root cause. The process revealed that the benefits that appealed to previous generations were no longer attractive to current recruits. Existing recruitment packages had been designed to appeal to a candidate’s desire for high wages and global travel, but today’s candidates, who felt the pain of growing up in “all-work-and-no-play” households, desired more balanced life incentives with personal choice options instead of structured career paths and requirements. When these changes were implemented, they doubled their acceptance rates within 18 months.

With current mergers, bankruptcies and buyouts on the rise, Helin shared another poignant example of a company in the global offshore industry that acquired two smaller companies in order to create an attractive alternative to the sole competition that dominated the marketplace. Although the new company had entered the market with quality products, strong field support and a positive reputation, customers shied away. Emotional trigger research found that the new company had focused so intently on the logistics of their mergers that they had created a communication void in their market. This lack of public communication allowed their competitor to control the message on the street and create fears in the minds of their potential customers. The process provided insight into these fears and enabled the new company to tailor new messaging to directly alleviate these fears. The new messaging helped them win over large numbers of perspective new customers.

Successful companies do not really begin to excel until they can actually deliver what the customer really wants. Each of these examples support the assertion that emotionally driven customers will actually hand us the keys to their loyalty if we embrace new processes for information discovery and learn how to listen at a deeper level. The reality is this needs to be a continual, cyclical process. It is the only way to create and maintain relationships that are based on a concrete need.

While good business theory teaches us to manage information to strategic advantage we also know that not all information is clear and tangible. Customers are people, and people are not always logical. Intangible factors, buried in the experience of our customers can, in fact, make or break our businesses. While there is a place for traditional market research in business management, innovative expanded processes like emotional trigger research are giving businesses today the critical knowledge and perspective necessary to move ahead effectively in a challenging environment.

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Michelle Helin and Linda Goodman are the authors of Why Customers Really Buy: Uncovering the Emotional Triggers that Drive Sales – available on Amazon.com at:

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Customers-Really-Buy-Uncovering/dp/1601630417