Why Engaging in Micro Moments Is Vital for Customer Engagement

Why Engaging in Micro-Moments Is Vital for Customer Engagement

By Jennifer Choo

KEY TAKEAWAY

In this new pandemic landscape, home–bound consumers are scrolling, clicking, and tapping more than ever before and the relevance of micro-moments in terms of customer engagement is clear. Marketing teams need to connect fragmented customer journeys to ROI and growth while ensuring customer engagement and loyalty, and micro-moments are a sure–fire way to do so.

Connecting the fragmented consumer journey is a struggle all brands are facing. As the primary connection between brands and consumers transitions to a primarily and ever–cluttered virtual one, leveraging micro-moments via the utilization of omnichannel marketing to engage customers is critical.

The concept of micro-moments is not new to the marketing industry. Introduced by Google in 2015 as “an intent-rich moment when a person turns to a device to acton on a need – to know, go, do or buy,” the micro-moment has only gained in popularity as the agile marketer’s need to increase customer engagement has grown and evolved. Essentially, micro-moments are the various small interactions between brands and consumers across a variety of channels — the touchpoints that drive engagement, if you will.

In this new pandemic landscape, home–bound consumers are scrolling, clicking, and tapping more than ever before and the relevance of micro-moments in terms of customer engagement is clear. Marketing teams need to connect fragmented customer journeys to ROI and growth while ensuring customer engagement and loyalty, and micro-moments are a sure fire way to do so.

It’s All About Omnichannel

The key to mastering micro-moment marketing is being available whenever and whereever your customer base is looking for the products and/or services you provide. It’s a simple concept in theory but a tall order in practice. That is where omnichannel marketing becomes critical to the success of the modern marketing strategy.

The basic premise of micro-moment marketing hinges on the consumer’s need to do four simple things:

“I want to go” – when a consumer wants to look for a place, whether it be a website or physical store.

“I want to know” – when a consumer wants more information about a specific product, service, or thing.

“ I want to do” – when the consumer wants to do something new or complete a new task.

“I want to buy” – when the consumer wants to locate and purchase the actual product, service or thing.

“In these moments, consumers want what they want, when they want it—and they’re drawn to brands that deliver on their needs.”

-The Basics of Micro-Moments

Keeping this in mind when strategizing and creating omnichannel marketing content is critical to the success of capturing the engagement of users within these micro-moments. This is especially relevant in the modern marketplace, where consumers are spending an ever-increasing amount of time researching products and services pre-purchase, as well as completing those purchases via digital mediums in the largest numbers in history. This is a direct result of both the pandemic and the infusion of digital devices within our everyday lives.

Variety Is Key

In addition to marketing across a multitude of channels to reach customers, it is just as important to create variety in your messaging and content types. To put it simply, you cannot create the same messaging and blast it across 50 marketing channels if you want success. We all know different types of marketing channels require various mediums of messaging, such as email copy, ad copy, ad images, and video. The less obvious differential that seasoned marketers know well is the need for variation in messaging nuance and delivery within these different channels and mediums.

To keep up with the ever–growing demands micro-marketing methods place on creative and marketing teams, most are turning to creative automation tools like Trello for workflow streamlining and creative dynamic optimization (DCO) for messaging and design variant optimization. Leveraging these types of tools allows marketing and design teams to create a variety of messaging in a multitude of mediums, from emails and ads to video and live streams, ensuring they are reaching their ideal audience bases when and where the consumer needs them.

Understand the Consumer

Another critical component to micro-moments is understanding the modern consumer mind and purchasing thought process. Customer purchasing processes have vastly evolved as the accessibility of information via handheld devices has become an everyday part of our lives. Long gone are the days of convincing the customer to buy products and services through standard sales pitches. The current customer wants to seek information when and where they choose, and it is the modern marketer’s job to provide that information at the right time and in the right place.

To do this, marketers need to craft marketing strategies and messaging across various channels and mediums that provide that information to consumers in the places they will look to find it or frequent and stumble upon it.

The FIS Global 2020 US Consumer Behavior Report found 85% of Gen Z respondents follow brands on social media, with nearly half making purchases via social media platforms. Among those Gen Z respondents who have made purchases via social media, more than a third (34%) do so every day.

The homebody economy that was 2020 shifted the when and where of micro-moment marketing, with the rise in popularity of channels like TikTok and Instagram Reels and the consumer need to easily access goods and services from home. The fact of the matter is that shift is here to stay, and marketing teams must embrace and adapt to succeed.

In Summary

Modern consumers thrive off the ability to shop when and where the mood strikes them. While this is is not a new trend, the events of the last 18 months have had a substantial impact on consumer buying behavior that seem to be here to stay as we enter the newly coined endemic era.

What this means for today’s marketing teams is a modernization of their marketing strategies to ensure customer engagement and loyalty through micro-moments and omnichannel marketing methodologies. Understanding the needs of current buyers from their purchasing cycles, search–thought processes, and the way in which they want to consume information is the key to creating a successful micro-moment marketing strategy. It’s not about sending consumers information imploring them to buy, it’s about engaging customers when and where they want with the information they need.

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