The Road to Effective Engagement and Selling: Seize the I-Want Moment
Every customer journey, as complex and convoluted as it may be today, starts the same:
“I want.”
The I-want moment is the most important moment for brands and retailers. It’s when a shopper is looking to buy that next something. They’re in an extremely engaged state of mind; they’re interested; they’re almost ready to buy if you can give them a good reason to.
Read how T-Mobile seized the I-want moment and drove up engagement and conversions by 500%.
When such moments occur, the playing field is level and shoppers are largely brand-agnostic and open minded. If you want to influence a shopper’s decision-making journey and eventually win that sale, you have to go to square one and be the one who solves the I-want moment for them. So seize the moment.
But how?
It’s essential for brands to meet consumers in their moments of need. But how you meet them is equally important. If a brand’s message isn’t useful or relevant, people will simply move on to another brand.
When it comes to shopping, it’s not a business, it’s personal!
In the I-want moment, consumers will start the process of discovery and look for immediate, personalized information that is relevant to them and helps guide their journey.
However, there’s a growing gap between what consumers need in the I-want moment and what marketers are serving them. This mismatch leads to potential customers being discouraged by irrelevant, confusing, and overwhelming options.
And the consequences of not being useful are serious too. Without utility, consumers will not only leave, they might actually never come back.
So, if you want to seize the moment, you have to ensure that shoppers can access useful, contextually relevant information that helps them make decisions and move from I-want to I-want-to-buy.
Ok, so how do you do that?
- Understand context, intent, and customer needs: The work starts by understanding what consumers seek, need, and value. For example, why do they need a new insurance? What do they want to do with a new camera? Which skin concerns do they want to solve with a new face cream?
- Engage in the right way: Ask questions. Listen to behavioral, contextual signals to support and assist them in the right way. Stop marketing at them and instead understand and guide them. By engaging with shoppers, your brand has the chance to address their needs in the moment, help move them along their decision journey, and deepen their loyalty.
- Be human: Connected consumers need human engagement and humans need technology to deliver engagement at scale. Ironically enough, technology such as AI digital assistants and chatbots can help marketers make digital engagement more human, personal, relevant, and useful. It helps you reach the right user in the right moment on the right device with the right level of assistance.
The endgame is that if you aren’t there to solve the I-want moment for shoppers, your competitors will be.
But if you are present with just the right type of engagement and assistance at the right time, you could be walking away with one more happy customer who would have not considered you otherwise. And you’ll earn more personal and valuable relationships based on trust, utility, and reciprocity.
Now that you know what the I-want moment is, don’t miss it. Seize it.
This article has been originally published at Guided-selling.org.
