In two previous posts – Millennials are making B2B buying decisions. Are you ready to communicate with them?, and More on Millennials as B2B Buyers. Are you engaged with them? – I suggested the Millennial cohort is moving into B2B management positions and gaining buying power. New research from the The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project sheds more light on how their tech-savvy, always-on nature may inform the B2B purchase decisions they are increasingly a part of.

The Pew study identifies the development of a new culture of real-time information seekers and problem solvers. Mobile devices -- especially smartphones that give the owner immediate access to the information needed to solve a problem or inform a decision -- are the enabling technology.

The Pew study asked mobile device owners about how often they used their devices to conduct real-time queries regarding the following during the last 30 days:

• Coordinate a meeting or get-together
• Solve an unexpected problem that they or someone else had encountered
• Decide whether to visit a business
• Find information to help settle an argument they were having
• Look up a score of a sporting event
• Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere
• Get help in an emergency situation 

The result was that 86 percent of smartphone owners used their devices to perform at least one of those activities. And when sorted by age group, the Millennials lead all other age groups in their use of their mobile devices to accomplish one of these tasks.

Knowing from past experience that the Millennial cohort will quickly translate their personal life behaviors to their work life, you can begin to see the implications for business marketers.

Consider these scenarios:

The Millennial plant engineer is faced with an out-of-commission pump. His smartphone becomes his source to find a replacement.

The Millennial property manager needs to deal with a flooded office. She turns to her smartphone to find a disaster recovery contractor.

And perhaps an even more common scenario, during a routine B2B buying process, the Millennial members of the team use their smartphones to check out the conversation on social networks and forums about the product and company under consideration.

For the business marketer, it comes down to the basics of contemporary B2B marketing. B2B marketers must have readily available search-optimized, relevant content on paid, earned and owned media that is easily viewable on multiple platforms – full screen, tablet and smartphone.