Michael Kempner is one of the smartest men I know. His company, MWW Group, is also one of the smartest big time PR firms in the world. The reason I’m telling you what you may already know is so you heed the advice I’m about to offer your business. Heck, he advises world leaders, surely your business can’t lose listening at least, now can it?
Tech companies now bill their smart devices as “life companions” – courtesy SamsungTomorrow
This morning, I finally snatched the time to read a study by MWW PR entitled Go Mobile Or Go Home (below). Some more conclusive facts you will see below, provide a lever for your business on the one hand, and a caution on the other depending on where you are marketing wise. Here’s the lowdown from Kempner’s company’s concise lowdown on mobile, plus a heap of supportive evidence to rescue you.
Go Mobile Or Go Home puts pretty pictures with the theoretical and higher thought concepts we’ve discussed here before, and for some time. While experts on “convergence theory” such as my friends Brian Solis or Chris Brogan have done their groundbreaking work into “explaining” business shifts, somehow their preaching still falls on deaf ears. Blame adaptation and learning curves, whatever resistance excuse you will, Go Mobile Or Go Home is an indelible work for convincing. Let me show you.
Conspicuous Consumption Of – News for Instance
The image below from the MWW PR Group study offers as convincing a metric as I can imagine for YOUR business finding out about converging into the mobile space. Let me put this as simply as possible. For the future of your business, it is more important that you adapt to mobile channels than any other, even if you have to drop every other marketing effort! The way news is consumed across devices and time, is one clear way of understanding opportunities in mobile.
MWW Whitepaper:Go Mobile Or Go Home
Now that Kempner’s company has helped you envisioned (hopefully) your clientele discovering your products and services on the morning commute, or at the lunch table, let’s further cement the need to devote resources toward mobile integrated business. I mentioned Brian Solis up there, but right here let me quote you something on the “why” social media and mobile conduits are CRUCIAL to your success. Speaking about teens (you know, the future) and how important the new mobile counter culture is becoming, Solis makes this plea:
“My advice to you is to study it.right.now. Don’t try to make sense oft it? Don’t question it. Don’t try to make it fit into your world. Simply try to understand it. Doing so opens the door to meaningful insights. And, this allows you to make decisions about the future without letting your predispositions or assumptions lead you in fallacious directions.”
Ditto Brian. And please understand something Mr. and Mrs. businessperson out there, things are moving far too fast for you to make complete sense of this trend. And NO, that’s not some PR speak intended to win you over to my business either. The fact is, even those of us totally immersed in digital have trouble keeping up. The bottom line for your business? I’ll conclude with that, but first more evidence trends.
Experiencing Life – It Moves – It’s Mobile
When you imagine doing anything, is there motion in your dream? I doubt very seriously that even the most sedentary computer addict out there drifts off to sleep and conjures up imagery of sitting listlessly in front of a desktop monitor. In a very real way, my friends, conjuring up logic to argue against carrying our “connecteness” around with us is, ludicrous. Turning to another friend and digital wizard of mine, Chris Brogan approaches “teaching” convergence on the same level of Solis, but in his individual way. Case in point, a recent article by him entitled, “The New Cities of the Web.” Just as Solis evangelizes “user experience” as the only real truth of future business, so too Brogan emphasizes both individual and shared life experiences. And if you think about it, wasn’t this where we were headed all along?
To break Brogan’s expertness down here, let me quote him on the “where” of where your business needs to be, will be:
“Build your connections. Make them personal and personable. Make there be a reason why people will recommend you, and why you’re the first person they think of when someone asks where to go, what to do, where to stay, what to eat, what to buy to handle this or that. To me, there’s no hotel in Boston besides the Colonnade. There’s no place to eat besides Legal Seafood. In Milwaukee, you have to go to AJ Bombers and so on.”
Did you catch it? Or did the message fly past too quickly? Whether Facebook and Twitter kick the bucket next week or not, we will never go back to being disconnected. The “where” of your business’ future is within the context of the social digital sphere. And that community is rapidly going full mobile. Was that too complex a statement? You can no longer market solely to the masses. The individual, the singular experience, empowers this whole social media mechanism. Hilton Hotels is no more powerful than Brogan’s Colonnade there, and far less powerful if the trend I am speaking of is not observed. This leads us to HOW your business is going to “convert” a clientele in the future. Right here, the most important video you could ever see to help your business, is ironically (and appropriately) from Google.
Do you look at the whole picture of marketing for your business? Was that PR campaign you griped was “ineffective” bear further scrutiny? Now do you see why so many businesses talk about Twitter? Are you “known” on your customers’ Twitter or other social platforms? Do you interact with them or broadcast to them? Are you REALLY REAL on these networks, or do you have some inane presence powered by a minimum wage transient through your business? Do these questions sting?
Who Knew? Google, Who Else?
The chart below from a Google customer journey study shows graphically where social is with regard to any business. If you visit the link Google has provided flexibility so you can see related metrics. For our purposes here though, seeing social blue, in the middle of the decision to buy matrix, tells us all we need to know.
With an assisting/final buy ration of in this position, social plays a the only real dual role among channels.
If I wanted to, felt comfortable with, showing you empirical data from companies we have advised on all this, you’d be summarily convinced. Heck, anyone reading this who is in business, would probably be ringing my iPhone into pieces. But you already know what my business associates know, not one of your reading this has fully utilized these channels Google speaks of. What’s more, and the reason for Michael Kempner’s or Richard Edelman’s, or Fleishman Hillard’s, or any entities expert entities study simply may not ever convince everyone. Businesses go broke every day over just such. Here, look at the ones in retail since 2010 alone from The Center for Retail Research (in the UK alone).
What’s my advice for rescuing your business from some horrible “dead pool” legacy? First off, read Analyzing Channel Contribution at Google. Then either call somebody or get busy discovering these new tools and channels yourself. To be perfectly frank here, you haven’t the time or resources really, to start climbing a Mt. Everest of social and mobile channel mastery. Call Michael Kempner, call my friend Ronn Torossian, Tweet Brian Solis or Altimeter Group, heck, send me an email, I’ll introduce you. But do something to help your business cope, grow, and be more profitable.