The Impact of Micro-Moments on the Consumer Journey
A hot marketing trend that we’ve begun hearing more and more about is micro-moments. Micro-moments are currently influencing buyer behaviors and expectations, changing how consumers shop across industries.
Micro-Moments
But what exactly are micro-moments? In what ways are they shaping the consumer journey?
It’s essential to understand how new the idea of micro-moments is in digital marketing. Think with Google leads the charge on researching how smartphone technology revolutionizes digital marketing.
Do a cursory Google search on micro-moments, and you’ll find that they occur when people reflexively:
Turn to a device – increasingly a smartphone – to act on a need to learn something, watch something, or buy something. They are intent-rich moments when decisions are made and preferences are shaped.
Now that we know what micro-moments are, how do marketers capitalize on this ubiquitous cell phone searching and scrolling? What types of micro-moments should we be paying attention to? As Douglas Karr mentioned before, there are four types of micro-moments:
- I want to know moments
- I want to go moments
- I want to do moments
- I want to buy moments
Keeping these micro-moment archetypes in mind when engaging with consumers allows savvy businesses to distinguish themselves through personalized experiences that offer relevant information.
Let’s expand on things every business needs to know to understand how to use micro-moments to their advantage.
Consumers Want to Find Information Quickly and Accurately.
Consumers have all the information in the world right at their fingertips. When they turn to their devices to learn, watch, or buy, they don’t want to take the time to dig around to find what they are looking for or have to question the validity of the source.
Don’t believe me?
Let’s use some of our employees at PERQ as examples. Our company is chock-full of competitive, active people who love to stay healthy through fitness and exercise. I have become more involved with weightlifting.
One day at the gym, looking at the weight-lifters around me, I realized that to increase my performance on overhead lifts, I’d probably do well to buy some wrist wraps. I took out my phone right then and there and started searching for the best types of wrist wraps for beginners. Many were simply advertisements for a certain brand or a certain type of fitness program, so I skipped those sites for more nuanced ratings and reviews by industry professionals.
It just goes to show that consumers want accurate information immediately. Your website’s content and SEO are going to be deciding factors of whether or not your website provides relevant results during a consumer’s micro-moment, and whether or not consumers will maintain prolonged engagement. It’s imperative to make sure the information you’re giving is accurate.
Businesses Need to be Present for Consumers when Micro-moments Occur
New behaviors and expectations are reshaping the consumer journey. This culminates in the need for new micro-optimized touchpoints and digital marketing to connect with people on their terms when, where, and how they’re going through their journey.
Another of our employees is an avid boxer and was in the market for a new trainer last year. Let’s say he searched boxing trainer, Indianapolis, and the results pulled up dozens of potential trainers. Given his hectic schedule, he won’t wait to find a quiet moment to call every trainer on that list. People need the ability to filter the results. In this case, they’re filtering down to only coaches within a five-mile radius and only coaches available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Once he finds suitable coaches, he may want the ability to take a personality-matching quiz to see what instructors he would work best with, or he may wish to fill out contact forms with specific times he can be reached.
See how necessary it is for businesses to provide an intuitive user experience for consumers in micro-moments? Past facts, figures, and statistics regarding micro-moments are out the window. Consumer behavior in these moments is unpredictable and solely driven by their needs at that given point in time.
For a business to capitalize on these unique needs, website experiences must be engaging, intuitive, and quickly found. Our friends at CBT News summed it up best when they urged their audience to create a website with clearly labeled pages, easy-to-find deals, special offers, and high-quality pictures of products with in-depth descriptions.
Static forms and live chat must allow consumers to ask specific questions and receive timely answers. Even then, static forms rarely enable consumers to have a 2-way conversation with brands.
In a nutshell, businesses need to be able to fully engage with consumers to provide consumers with everything they need to make an informed purchasing decision.
Engagement Thrives When Your Brand Can Tell Its Story
Micro-moments don’t always mean that the consumer wants to buy something. More often than not, consumers are simply looking for information.
When that’s the case, businesses and brands must recognize this as an opportunity to provide information and simultaneously showcase who they are and what their business stands for. They need to tell their brand’s story because storytelling is the most powerful way for a consumer to connect with a brand.
HubSpot frequently advocates the importance of storytelling for brands to connect with their consumers. Showcasing why a business does what it does through storytelling is playing to human nature’s innate need to look for stories in whatever it sees and does. A brand that showcases its story well provides an instant touchpoint for a consumer to connect with them and keep connecting with them through each stage in their buying journey.
By infusing their personality into the consumer’s experience with them, brands can make themselves stand out in the consumer’s mind. Making a good impression could ultimately lead the consumer back to their site when they purchase.
Storytelling increases the transparency and openness about a business or a brand. By getting their story right, brands build goodwill in their micro-moments.
Remember: Micro-moments are Actionable
If you give consumers an excellent experience in their micro-moment, they may be swayed to make a purchase immediately. Speed with efficiency is the order of the day.
Here’s a good example: My co-worker Felicia was at the gym one day when she realized that to maximize her workouts, she needed a boost in her nutrition. She went online to a vitamin store while walking out of the locker room and hit purchase on a canister of supplement powder.
Micro-moments like that happen billions of times daily, and businesses and brands need to stay relevant to capitalize on them. Because they are action-driven, micro-moments allow companies to use different experiences to indicate where consumers are in their journey. See how micro-moments are shaping the traditional consumer’s journey?
They demand that businesses fully assess their digital footprint at all stages of the buying process to respond to the consumer’s needs in real time.
Micro-moments mean that businesses must be agile and proactive about the types of content and experiences that they put on their website and that the content and experiences can forge meaningful connections between businesses and consumers.
