Do Micro-Moments Change How We Should Plan Campaigns?

What does it take to deliver breakthrough customer experiences?

When I think back to the days we studied “The Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant” in grad school, it seemed logical that in the cluttered world we live, we needed to find new ways to make our products and services seem less like commodities. Little did we know that within a few years the advancement of smartphones and social media would empower customers to circumnavigate the messages we wanted them to receive. Or, that what they expected of our campaigns was going to become much deeper.

We know now that differentiation of our products and services is still necessary but the importance of truly understanding customers is a key to delivering effective campaigns that can capture audiences in micro-moments. Over the last year you’ve probably read many blogs and articles which assert that how we use demographics in marketing has largely changed: we’re marketing to an audience of one.

For seasoned marketers that truly unravels a lot about the way we think of target audiences and segments. Traditionally a key element to building a campaign is to define the audience. Perhaps this is still easier in B2B but in the B2C market the shift is now definitely on providing the information essential to the micro-moment. Now we need to think deeper and more empathetically about the whys and ways consumers will use our products. We also have to deliver the information in ways that work for them. And all around us we see that businesses that are losing out because they feail to do so, we’re sure of this because we experience it ourselves.

You can’t keep assuming you know how people are buying.

Building Campaigns for Micro-Moments

In the last few years marketers focused on building integrated campaigns that used the right channels. Looking through some articles like this one from CIO.com we can see there was no real thought about micro-moments. The truth is the delivery of campaigns hasn’t changed much – but how people expect to interact with you at any touchpoint, has! Once you capture interest people want to interact. For your campaign to be effective, you need them to be able to keep learning about whatever it is that drove them to take notice.

Have you seen the Samsung SUHD Nano Crystal TV campaign? It’s funny and clever (possibly I’m amused too easily). After watching the ad I looked it up on my mobile. What’s so special about these TVs that you’d want to replace the one you have?

I scrolled down the first page of Google results first wondering if I would ever spend that much on a TV, and then saw a Facebook page.

Once on the Facebook page I found that the first post was the ad! All looks impressive: over 10 million people have liked the page. The ‘SUHD’ didn’t register when I was watching the ad as I was focused on the story. So on a link about these models I decided to look at the 17 comments and immediately my sentiment shifted:

Clearly Samsung isn’t interested in engaging with customers as there are no replies – during a campaign. The message that was sticking was “These TVs are for rich people.” And put my mobile down and continued on without further interest.

I’m a cosmetics buyer.

Like many woman, I have a favorite mascara. In fact I have a few: one for the day, one with a more dramatic effect for the evening and a couple I bought and then decided I didn’t like but you know one day I might run out and need a back-up.

I saw this video (ad) for mascara.

Now for the guys who aren’t in the know let me explain there are  more kinds of mascara with extraordinary claims than one can imagine. Bigger. Curly. Long-lasting. Waterproof. Longer. Healthier. Non-clumping.  When I watched the ad it made me laugh and I paid attention to the birthday girl’s false lashes. I don’t think you could pay me to wear them, the effect is like putting peanut butter on the roof of a dog’s mouth: uncomfortable, annoying and completely distracting.

But I pretty much only a mascara from Clinique. But I was curious about this because Benefit Cosmetics (in my opinion) comes out with some brilliant products from time to time. I Google-d “they’re real! Mascara” and immediately Shop On Google gave me an idea on price, I continued down the page and saw a shop (which I would soon be physically passing) with hundreds of reviews and a pretty good score.

But when I started scrolling through the comments it was clear that the relationship was one of Love or Hate.

I noticed that a few reviews referred to application. Now here’s the thing, why hasn’t anyone from either Benefit or Boots commented?

I returned to Google and went to Benefit’s website and watched the video on the product page which it turns out, demonstrates application. Later on I passed a Boots and found there was a Pop-up display for this mascara and decided to give it a whirl. Since I’d read reviews that mentioned application I went to YouTube to figure out more about what made the difference.

If we think in terms of these ads and my ensuing micro-moments we can see that the campaign’s success in converting me was largely based on my ability to find relevant information quickly and the influence of others (particularly over the last year I’ve found that UGC videos often rank higher on YouTube than BRAND videos). When you’re planning campaigns you need to the brainstorm all the different questions customers might want to have and make it easy for them to find their way to their content. And surely you can see how your marketing tools within your CMS could help you learn about me and how you could further engage me. None of the sites I connected with tried to build a relationship with me in any way or did any further marketing to me. Should they have?