The proliferation of mobile devices has changed the customer journey to consist of more micro-moments that happen throughout the day. Reaching consumers then leads to more conversions.
Google recently released a study about the customer journey, and how it has evolved in a multi-device and mobile connected world. The head of AdWords, Jerry Dischler, said "the idea of a linear customer journey is long gone" and that micro-moments have taken its place. This concept is easy to understand in a direct-to-consumer business, but many B2B marketers are having a hard time understanding how this applies to them.
The general thought in B2B is that their customers do research on their work computers and they couldn't be more wrong. We are all connected to our work throughout the day: commuting to work, waiting for coffee, in meetings, during meals, or in the lavatory. We are consuming information from email, text messages, social media, publishers and Google searches. Not all of this information is relevant to a specific customer journey, but there are micro-moments where this may apply to your business.
A customer journey of micro-moments is best explained through an example. John is a sales director for a manufacturing company. His company utilizes a CRM tool that isn't fulfilling his need to understand the demands of his customers and accurately predict their needs. John's journey began with trying to better understand the current CRM software and determine if there were advanced features that would fulfill his need.
During this process, John spent his available time researching their software and because he is so busy, most of that time was when he was commuting to work on the train. During John's research, he stumbled across information about a different CRM product, and how it differs from his current software and provides the (Read more...) he needs.
If you are in charge of marketing for a sophisticated CRM software that fits what John needs, you missed an opportunity during that micro-moment if your competition created the content that John found. Did John head down a journey that culminated in determining that your competition fulfilled his need and convinced his C-Levels to make the switch? Maybe not. But by not having content on your website that matched the intent of John's search query, your company missed an opportunity to enter into his customer journey. These types of micro-moments are what B2B marketers need to anticipate in order to attract customers at higher levels of the customer journey.
Creating content to intercept customers in these micro-moments requires a thoughtful strategy. In the above example, your website should contain content around certain topics such as:
- What is CRM?
- How is Enterprise CRM Software Different than Medium and Small Business Software?
- CRM Data Integration and What That Means for an Enterprise
The topics should satisfy the intent of customers at different points of the decision-making journey. Where B2B companies commonly fail is not producing the basic content that provides education on the solution they are providing. Companies typically gear their content to customers that already know what they want, and position their products with brand names and incomprehensible jargon.
This content doesn't properly educate the consumer and reach them when they are still impressionable. The sooner you put your brand in front of a prospect in their micro-moments, the better chance you have to convert them at the end of their journey. How can your business take advantage of micro-moments?
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