How Micro Moments Can Help You Attract New Customers

Right now, potential customers are online looking for your business. And you might be missing them.

Scary thought, isn’t it?

Let’s face it, there’s a ton of content out there. It can be hard to find what you’re searching for – and if the content you’re producing isn’t providing what the people in your target audience need when they need it, then they’re likely to end up with one of your competitors.

The answer? Understand the moments when customers pick up their phones to look for your business and craft content that gives it to them.

One way is to use what Google has coined Micro Moments, I.E. “the Customer Journey.” What are they and how can you use them to find new customers? Here’s what you need to know.

What is a Micro Moment?

Google coined the term Micro Moment to respond to what they saw as a growing trend. You already know that most consumers in the US are tethered to their smart phones 24 hours a day. But they’re more intensely engaged at some moments than at others.

A Micro Moment is a moment when a consumer is intent on finding something. They want a quick answer or solution. Google identifies them as:

In other words, a Micro Moment is a moment when a consumer is ripe to learn, experience, and buy things. It’s the ideal time to capture a new customer because they’re already in the right mindset to engage with your content.

There are some interesting statistics to back up the importance of Micro Moments. For example:

91% of smart phone users look up information on their phones while they’re in the middle of a task
82% of consumers consult their phones while they’re in a store – and of those, 20% buy something other than what they originally intended to buy
69% of online consumers say that the quality, relevance, and timing of the content they find affects their opinion of a brand (and their purchase habits)

It’s clear that there’s a benefit to Micro Moment marketing. It’s about capturing the attention of people in your area who are seeking the products or services you’re selling. The trick, of course, is knowing how and when to capture your audience’s attention at those key moments.

What You Need for Micro Moment Marketing

Gathering information about its customers is important for every business. You might have a small business with only one location, but you still need to understand who your customers are and how to use the data you collect to your advantage.

Some of the data to collect includes:

How your customers find your business and why they decided to buy from you
Where and how they prefer to make purchases
How they prefer to pay for their purchases
What things matter the most to them when making online purchases

For example, 53% of visitors will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than three seconds to load. That’s not much time – and if your site is slow, then you could be losing customers without realizing it.

You also need to understand how customers typically approach buying a product like yours. What information do they need? Where are they likely to go to get it? And – most importantly – how can you capitalize on their habits to draw them in?

Micro Moment Best Practices

There are some simple things you can do to engage your target audience in one of the more than 100 Micro Moments they experience each day.

Let’s start with Google’s definition of a Micro Moment. During a Micro Moment, customers want to know something, do something, go somewhere, or buy something. That means that, in order to capture their attention, your business must:

Be there, meaning that you must have content that’s easily accessible and directly related to the information the people in your target audience want during a Micro Moment
Be useful, meaning that your Micro Moment content must provide a relevant digital experience that provides a potential customer with the information they want – and the means to act on it
Be accountable, meaning that you must provide a seamless customer experience that makes it easy for customers to buy from you across all channels

How to do all three? Well, here are some suggestions:

Conduct a customer survey using email or social media to get a better idea of the kind of content your customers need to buy from you
Identify crucial points in your sales funnel, so you can capitalize on them. Here, I’m talking about the moment when a customer realizes that they need what you’re selling or that they have a problem that your product or service can solve.
Craft content that responds directly to those crucial points, providing customers with compelling content that’s both relevant and actionable.
Include in every piece of content a clear call to action that will direct your customer to your business or provide them with a phone number or a link to your website. (The key is to provide them with a way to take immediate action!)
Text your Micro Moment content and refine it until it’s giving you the return on investment that you need.

The most essential part of this process is knowing when your customers are likely to experience a Micro Moment. It might be when they’re making dinner plans or trying to get their kids ready to go back to school. The more information you have, the better able you will be to capture their attention and convert those Micro Moments into sales.

Micro Moments Are Fleeting

The human attention span might be shrinking, but that just means that you have new opportunities to engage with your customers in the way that’s most useful to them – and most profitable to you. Taking the time to understand Micro Moments can help you attract new customers at the point when they are most ready to buy from you.