Leveraging Micro Moments To Multiply Marketing And Business Impact
It happened while you blinked – the days of the predictable, linear, clear-cut path of the customer journey are well and truly over. Customers today are chomping their way through a more evolved, complex and instantaneous web of tiny, smartphone-enabled clicks towards the ‘buy now’ button in a matter of seconds. The micro-moments, as Google defined them a few years ago, have irrevocably transformed marketing as we knew it. Today, an average individual makes three to four Google searches a day. That adds up to 8.5 billion searches on a daily basis. More than half of all online traffic comes from mobile devices, such as phones, tablets, and e-readers. Whatever you’re looking for and or whoever you want to connect with – it's all at your fingertips. So is the competition. Though there are several implications of micro moments for marketers, one of the most crucial ones is: if your brand is not present or not providing value to a customer at their moment of need, you have missed a significant opportunity to meaningfully engage with the customer. Worse, if your page isn’t loading fast enough, or if your information isn’t clear enough or if your competitor stepped up instead, you may never get another chance.
Knowledge is Power
No one knows your brand, your value proposition and what you’re offering better than you. Success means putting your brand out there in the most engaging, helpful and accessible manner in order to get noticed by potential customers.
To achieve this, marketers need to constantly build and update their strategies around triggering micro-moments using different channels. Keep in mind that millennials and especially Gen Z are all about apps, social media, and mobile devices. They thrive on videos, visuals, and other shorter, snappier forms of content. The popularity of Tik Tok and Instagram over Facebook is a case in point.
However as micro-moments happen all across the customer journey, it's challenging to predict when exactly one will happen. The trick is to always be prepared. Determine the times, locations, and methods that consumers use to look for goods and brands similar to yours. You must understand when they are at the "want to buy" stage. Online information can be obtained through a variety of campaign analytics, and focus groups and surveys. A thorough SEO research will also aid a clear understanding of consumer intent.
Do the research. Know yourself AND your customer.
Optimize Everything
Micro-moments also require content that gets to the point at once. Be as clear as possible and sound more human, less bot. What else might you improve? Users need to be able to find their way around your website quickly and intuitively, especially on mobile devices. So optimizing the loading speed of your website/mobile site is a good start. Also check the loading times of your ads. If they are slow, customers have the option of shopping around.
Data matters
Today, not only are brands digging deep into their customers, but customers in turn are also constantly looking at reviews and conversations their brands are involved in. Does Brand A offer better deals? Do you have more repeat customers? Did people have a good experience with your brand? Consumers today are aware of and care a lot more about a brand’s reputation than ever before.
Thankfully, data is a two-way street. While your customer could potentially discover you in a micro-moment, you too have gained access to a customer’s preferences in that micro-moment. You know the channels they found you on, the content they connected with, the offers they responded to and perhaps even gained insight into what their peers are like. If you use the right martech tools, and optimize this data, you can further set up your channels for maximum success. For example, personalize your next communication with your customer.
Martech matters more
Micro-moments offer brands a slew of opportunities to boost reach, increase engagement, and drive conversions. However, while these moments may be incessant, they’re also momentary. Agility is mandatory to capture audience attention in order to fully leverage micro-moments and this is where your martech stack becomes crucial. For example, marketing automation could help with collection of data, managing campaigns, sending out promotions and offers. Landing pages that speak to your customer’s needs are also essential here.
Perhaps consider a chatbot to help new customers get answers quickly? Or a CMS to create, track and distribute content that engages a customer and moves them further along the path to purchase?
Brands should also consider customer data platforms to help them gather data not just from external sources but also organization-wide internal data from sales, customer service, and other functions. Connecting the dots from data from CRMs, DMPs and other platforms can further help in improving segmentation, targeting, analytics and personalisation of your overall marketing strategy.
A Major Win
Marketing for micro-moments has an all-important underlying benefit – it automatically leads to better results in lead generation. Additionally, you can gather accurate data that will affect the next layer of marketing decisions as well as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of your efforts. It’s a game changer that no marketer in the age of smartphones can afford to ignore.
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