Smartphones combined with intelligent search engines has revolutionised the way marketers touch base with their customers on the digital front. What was once a very static consumer buying process has now become a serviceable journey with hundreds of touch points dubbed ‘micro moments’.
How has mobile changed us?
Smart phones have made the entirety of the world’s information available right at our fingertips and have changed the way we shop. As a result, our needs revolving around information have gone into overdrive. We now demand immediacy in the answers to our questions, relevancy in the information we’re presented with; and we reward brands that satisfy these needs with loyalty.
‘82% of consumers turn to their phone to influence purchase decision in-store’ (Google, 2015)
This has made the idea of servicing your customers at every possible touch point along the buying process more important than ever. It provides you with more opportunities to shape prospects’ behaviours and preferences, allowing you to turn them into loyal customers.
What are micro moments?
‘Life isn’t lived in years or days, or even hours. It’s lived in moments’. This quote by Google illustrates the point that brands need to be there for their customers (and prospects) at every possible touch point. At various stages of their lives, customers will have micro moments where a need for information will surface, and they will turn to their mobile phones and search engines for answers.
A moment can be anything from a family friend providing financial advice, leading your prospect to search for a top-of-the-funnel question such as: ‘what is a self-managed superfund?’ to a prospect further along the buying process deciding to eat out for dinner and searching for: ‘local pizza restaurants near me’.
How can I be there for my customers in these moments?
The first thing marketers need to do is analyse their touch points. This involves mapping out the customer buying process into its various stages: awareness, consideration, preference, purchase and retention (for example) and identifying every single possible touch point within each stage. Look at what kind of questions customers may have for each stage, what information they need, and what pain points they might have.
Next, consider how well you answer those questions and how well you manage their needs at every touch point you identified. This is where the strategic side of digital marketing comes into play. Think about asking yourself the following questions:
- Have you created content that targets customers at various stages of the buying process? This is important as it’s a common mistake to only publish content that focuses on the purchase stage but omits the stages earlier on in the funnel.
- Have you written a blog post for every possible (and appropriate) question a customer might ask? This is usually an easy win because the competitiveness of ranking number one in search results is typically low due to the long-tail nature of the question or search query. Additionally, these queries generally have more behavioural intent driving them.
- Have you created a Google Places listing so your brand can appear as a knowledge graph for local search engine optimisation purposes?
- Have you optimised your website pages for local search terms allowing you to come up for local and geographic based search queries?
- Have you implemented content remarketing measures to recapture lost leads? Serving content to those who have interacted with your brand before will help build your brand’s authority, educate your customers, move them further along the buying process and subconsciously set your brand in their consideration set.
Predicting, acknowledging and servicing every possible micro moment your customer will have should be a crucial task every marketer should undertake. Failing to nurture your customers through their moments provides competitors with opportunities to steal your customers.
Find out how you can target customers at each step of their buying process with marketing from Assemblo. Contact us to find out more about a strategy suited to your brand.