Revolutionize Digital Marketing — One Micro Moment At a Time

The BBC, in 2017, states that the average attention span of an individual is eight seconds — less than that of a goldfish. Businesses have seconds to reach their target audience and drive home the marketing message in a language that converts them into loyal patrons. Micro-moments are the ideal solution to this predicament. Micro-moments can be effectively harnessed to generate engaging content that provides unique value, delivering the required information to act on customer impulses to buy, learn, take action, or go somewhere.

• Transformative brand building

Steps to Effectively Build Your Brand

In the 21st century, consumers are spoiled for choice and product or service differentiation is table stakes. Micro-moment marketing goes a long way in raising brand awareness, aiding your company in staying up front-and-center in “I-want-to-know” and “I-want-to-buy” moments. Content generation is critical and a sure-shot method of success is publishing blogs that answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) for users researching your product, service, or even industry as a whole. You could even spread the word across social media by highlighting company accomplishments through paid ads or posts.

• Sustains first-mover advantage

Micro-moment marketing turns this idiom into reality. Companies that invest in micro-moment marketing fulfill customer expectations by providing the latter information needed to visit a retail store, make an online purchase, or call a business. Micro-moments are here to stay and should become commonplace in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Thus, companies that take a proactive approach may well race ahead of their rivals.

Can Automating Personalisation for Micro Moments Benefit Digital Marketing?

Let’s face it — nobody likes mass marketing emails that serve no purpose. A compelling workaround is the automation of personalization. To hit the personalization nail on the head, we need to focus on three aspects -

1. Audience
2. Content Channelization
3. Timing

Audience

As your business expands, the customer base becomes exponentially more diverse. Individual customers rarely seek identical products/services/experiences and it’s essential for your message to be customized to their requirements.

Content Channelization

Always identify the preferred channel of customer communication. Is your company able to personalize the content delivered in the channel of communication deployed? If not, there is a high possibility that your micro-moments marketing does more harm than good.

Timing

The most important aspect of micro-moment personalization is getting the timing right. Numerous studies have indicated that the primary reason for deleting a mobile app or unsubscribing from emails was ‘too many notifications’. Conversely, notifications synced with peak user engagement patterns have yielded impressive results.

While it isn’t possible to manually personalize each piece of content, channel, and timing, marketing automation tools for personalization go a long way in streamlining your efforts.

Six Steps to Incorporate Micro-moments and Reap Long-term Rewards

A few ways in which you can tap into micro-moments to unlock the full potential of your business are -

• Access the micro-moment knowledge center relevant to your organization. Numerous industries have their own repositories with infographics, blogs, articles, and case studies.
• Assess your data and analytics to understand how users are finding you, their search devices, and the type of conversions. A small bit of number crunching will trace behavioral patterns. For example — is the mobile percentage of intent rich purchase more than 70%? Can falling desktop conversions be mitigated?
• Formulate a micro-moments strategy to be present when it matters the most by taking the necessary steps to be displayed prominently in mobile searches.
• Improve your page mobile friendliness. Scrolling rate and page speed can dramatically impact your mobile Search Engine Results Page (SERP) positioning.
• Make your content visible at every stage of the funnel from “I want to” till purchase. AMP markups can boost your mobile content and grab customers from your competitors.
• Engage your audience with Progressive Web Applications (PWA) that enable instant brand interactions by contextual activation. PWA’s offer greater convenience and functionality as compared to mobile apps, while simultaneously allowing customers to be fully immersed in the “big picture” experience.
• Constantly revise your micro-moments marketing strategy to meet the ever-changing needs of your customers.

To summarize, customer expectations are sky-high and their patience is lower than ever. Therefore, the relevance and quality of marketing is vital. To get the maximum benefit from micro-moments, your brand must -

• Identify micro-moments

In the era where “shopping never sleeps”, brands must always be ready to cater to their customers. Consumers seek instant responses for queries and brands should hone their social listening and keyword research skills to gauge shifts in customer sentiment, enabling product or service optimization on a real-time basis.

• Be there when it matters

Prepare a comprehensive omnichannel strategy to attract customers and foster loyalty. The trick is the “ARS” mantra — availability, responsiveness, and supportiveness at the crucial micro-moments.

• Deliver relevant content

An online presence alone hardly suffices: it is essential to create content that provides the right answer at the right time. Keep the content conversational as customers prefer engagement. Digital marketers can exploit technology platforms that integrate marketing functions such as campaign deployment, platform analytics, and data integration to overcome any obstacles.

• Simplify customer experience

Aim to shorten the purchase process to the minimum possible clicks through automation. This reduces the probability of customers bouncing off the page. It is also imperative to regain those customers who have dropped off — through personalized advertisements or retargeting efforts. Brands must remember that the micro-moments customer journey does not conclude at the purchase stage but is an ongoing process.