How many times do you touch your phone each day? Probably too many to count, right? Or did you pull out your phone to look up the answer (which, according to a recent study, is about 2,617 times a day)? Smartphones are changing the way we make decisions about our purchases. According to the Think with Google report, 82% of smartphone users consult their devices before making in-store purchases. A whopping 90% of smartphone users turn to their phones for ideas in the middle of a task. Each of these short sessions of smartphone activity is known as a micro-moment.
Micro-moments are “critical touch points within today’s consumer journey”. These touch points added together ultimately determine how that journey ends. Micro-moments provide marketers with the perfect opportunity to engage and help consumers in their decision-making process. The Think with Google report notes four key micro-moments:
- I Want to Know.
- I Want to Go.
- I Want to Do.
- I Want to Buy.
In a previous blog post, we discussed context marketing, a strategy in which marketers provide targeted ads based on real-time user information. Micro-moment marketing follows the same suit. Because most consumers carry their phones with them at all times, your brand can reach them 24/7, no matter where they are. Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean you should interact with them all hours of the day and night, but that’s where taking advantage of micro-moments comes into play. The key with micro-moment marketing is to offer consumers something of value while they begin to make decisions. This can be anything from a coupon or sale to a free trial or even just some simple information about comparisons to other brands.
If you can offer your prospects something that helps them during one of the four micro-moments listed above, you are much more likely to engage them and lead them to choose from your company’s offerings. At the same time, you also want to avoid being too pushy – otherwise they’ll just click away to something else. Make these interactions short, clear and valuable to your consumer.
Why does micro-moment marketing matter? For starters, many consumers aren’t brand committed. In fact, 90% of smartphone users are not absolutely certain of the specific brand they want to buy when they begin looking for information online. This allows you to easily do two things:
- Steal customers from your competition.
1 in 3 smartphone users claims that they’ve purchased from a company or brand other than the one they intended to as a direct result of finding the information provided from the competitor in the moment they needed it. - Increase brand awareness.
51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphones.
By anticipating these four micro-moments, your company can offer value-based exchanges to engage consumers throughout their decision-making journey, ultimately leading them to your brand. The individual nanoseconds of time that consumers spend on their smartphones may not seem like much, but together they add up to a lot of opportunities.
