Image Source: Pexels

Image Source: Pexels

Marketing has changed significantly over the last couple of decades. Just as our technological age has evolved to include tools to keep us all connected, so too have the ways companies deliver messaging changed in tandem. With each new leap in technology and online consumer behavior, the business world has had to develop fresh marketing strategies to best capitalize on them.

Whether you’re a small business owner or leading a marketing team, it can sometimes feel as though just as you’re starting to master a digital marketing method, there’s a need to learn a new one. At the moment, alongside your social media and search engine optimization (SEO) expertise, one of the most important skills you need to develop is using micro-moments. 

Let’s take a closer look at what micro-moments are and how you can best go about utilizing them in your campaigns.

Understand the Concept

As with any aspect of digital marketing, it’s important to gain a solid understanding of micro-moments before you start building them into your strategy. Many current methods are based on the intricacies of how technology, software, and the back-end structures of the internet infrastructure itself work. However, micro-moments are more focused on contemporary consumers’ relationships with their devices and how this affects their behavior. Specifically, it is about people’s reliance on turning to their devices to quickly and efficiently satisfy a need.  

Micro-moments are a form of consumer reflex and using these in your marketing strategy revolves around being able to give your target demographic the most relevant and speedy solutions. These moments are varied but tend to fall into a few categories. These include moments to gain information, moments for finding amenities in the local area, moments to make purchases, and moments for finding out how to perform a task. When consumers reach for their smartphone or tablet to perform a quick action, these are usually the types of moments they’re looking to achieve.  

Part of understanding how this approach can fit into your marketing campaign is understanding which of these moments are most relevant and able to be served by your business. A good place to begin is mind mapping within these categories of micro-moment. What questions can your business answer for consumers with some expertise? What reflexive buying needs could your products meet? Are there things you have to teach your demographic? This allows you to start optimizing your methods to meet the intentions and needs of your demographic. 

Establish Relevant Elements

Once you’ve established what aspects of your business can be used to serve micro-moments, you need to focus on optimizing your methods. It may seem you have the elements to succeed already in place, but you still have to put some effort into making certain your consumers are directed toward you for the solutions. As such, you need to make adjustments that help you meet them in the middle. 

These include:

  • Mobile Optimization

This is probably the most important factor. As we previously touched on, micro-moments are based on consumers’ growing preference to utilize their smartphones and tablet devices as part of their reactive behavior. A large percentage of online consumers prefer to use their smartphones to shop, with one report finding that 55% research competitor prices online even when in-store — creating a potential micro-moment in itself. If you fail to optimize your content, website, and buying platforms for mobile interactions you are likely to miss out on micro-moments with your target customers.   

  • Search Engine Ranking

If you are providing solutions for your consumers’ micro-moments, they still need to be directed to your options rather than those of your competitors. As such, part of your optimization process has to be raising your search engine rankings for your business and the answers you’re providing. Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing techniques can be vital here, as they can be designed to raise your profile in relevant areas. Believe it or not, even the choices you make about your website domain name can impact your search results. Alongside relevance to your brand, it may be worth considering domains that are descriptive of your service, perhaps those with a local geographical focus, and even ensuring a .com suffix to make sure yours is with businesses. 

Incorporate Into Your Campaign

While it’s true micro-moments are having something of a moment of their own right now, you should understand they’re not a magic wand. Indeed, just like most of your marketing tactics, they’re unlikely to be at their most effective when treated as an individual project. One of the best ways to capitalize on this technique is to incorporate it as a tool to serve larger marketing campaigns. 

When strategizing your campaigns, think about how you can utilize micro-moments to serve the goals for the specific project. Can your other tools — your emails and your social media posts — help spark a micro-moment with your consumers? This is essentially finding a place for micro-moments in your customer journey for each campaign. It provides more options and touchpoints that get your consumer to the conversion point or to engage with your brand on a more meaningful level. 

It may even be useful to consider building a campaign around capitalizing on micro-moments. This can be particularly effective if your business is offering multiple products and various types of solutions to problems. However, it’s just as important to remember that the internet is constantly changing, with new data, information, and competition being introduced every day. If you’re going to commit to utilizing micro-moments, this will also take regular assessment and updating. Wherever possible, use agile methods to capture your consumers’ attention that makes it easy for you to pivot when needed.

Conclusion

Micro-moments are a reflection of consumers’ reactive, mobile-centric online behavior. Capitalizing on these in your marketing can help you gain attention. However, it’s important to understand the underlying principles and optimize in relevant areas to capture consumers effectively. Wherever possible, make it a tactic in a larger marketing campaign to get the most value out of its use.

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