Right now, potential customers are online looking for your business. And you might be missing them.
Scary thought, isn’t it?
Let’s face it, there’s a ton of content out there. It can be hard to find what you’re searching for – and if the content you’re producing isn’t providing what the people in your target audience need when they need it, then they’re likely to end up with one of your competitors.
The answer? Understand the moments when customers pick up their phones to look for your business and craft content that gives it to them.
One way is to use what Google has coined Micro Moments, I.E. “the Customer Journey.” What are they and how can you use them to find new customers? Here’s what you need to know.
What is a Micro Moment?
Google coined the term Micro Moment to respond to what they saw as a growing trend. You already know that most consumers in the US are tethered to their smartphones 24 hours a day. But they’re more intensely engaged at some moments than at others.
A Micro Moment is a moment when a consumer is intent on finding something. They want a quick answer or solution. Google identifies them as:
There are some interesting statistics to back up the importance of Micro Moments. For example:
- 91% of smart phone users look up information on their phones while they’re in the middle of a task
- 82% of consumers consult their phones while they’re in a store – and of those, 20% buy something other than what they originally intended to buy
- 69% of online consumers say that the quality, relevance, and timing of the content they find affects their opinion of a brand (and their purchase habits)
What You Need for Micro Moment Marketing
Gathering information about customers is important for every business. You might have a small business with only one location, but you still need to understand who your customers are and how to use the data you collect to your advantage.
Some of the data to collect includes:
- How your customers find your business and why they decided to buy from you
- Where and how they prefer to make purchases
- How they prefer to pay for their purchases
- What things matter the most to them when making online purchases
For example, 53% of visitors will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than three seconds to load. That’s not much time – and if your site is slow, then you could be losing customers without realizing it.
You also need to understand how customers typically approach buying a product like yours. What information do they need? Where are they likely to go to get it? And – most importantly – how can you capitalize on their habits to draw them in?
Micro Moment Best Practices
There are some simple things you can do to engage your target audience in any one of more than 100 Micro Moments they experience each day.
Let’s start with Google’s definition of a Micro Moment. During a Micro Moment, customers want to know something, do something, go somewhere, or buy something. What that means is, in order to capture their attention, your business must:
- Be there, meaning that you must have content that’s easily accessible and directly related to the information the people in your target audience want during a Micro Moment
- Be useful, meaning that your Micro Moment content must provide a relevant digital experience that provides a potential customer with the information they want – and the means to act on it
- Be accountable, meaning that you must provide a seamless customer experience that makes it easy for customers to buy from you across all channels
Identify crucial points in your sales funnel, so you can capitalize on them. Here, I’m talking about the moment when a customer realizes that they need what you’re selling or that they have a problem that your product or service can solve.
Craft content that responds directly to those crucial points, providing customers with compelling content that’s both relevant and actionable.
Include in every piece of content a clear call to action that will direct your customer to your business or provide them with a phone number or a link to your website. (The key is to provide them with a way to take immediate action!)
Create your Micro Moment content and refine it until it’s giving you the return on investment that you need.