Customer engagement is one of the fundamental must-haves within your marketing strategy. It’s not enough to merely say that you have a product or a service and to provide information about this in what you consider to be a meaningful way – you must strive for engagement. In today’s world of digital marketing, every digital marketing agency worth its salt is investing time and energy into tracking and managing engagement in real time. After all, a growing focus for businesses and users is that interactions and responses need to be immediate.
This is patently clear when we look at the growing market for instantaneous businesses like Netflix, UberEats, Deliveroo and other on-demand services. With this trend showing no signs of slowing, it’s imperative that businesses are engaging with customers on an on-demand level, and one way that businesses can do this is with moment planning. Moment planning takes place where a brand is able to ascertain the ‘moments’ where their message will be best received by consumers and tailoring the messaging to suit these moments. If a moment is something like the Super Bowl, for example, and the brand’s messaging is cheeky, irreverent, bold enough, it may just get news coverage which is a huge boon for any brand.
When moment marketing is done effectively, it is hugely advantageous, and in this piece we’ll be discussing what makes a moment, and how to identify what consumers want. We’ll also look at when a well timed moment message can make a difference, and how behaviour change can happen when moment planning is done well.
What makes a moment
A moment might be something as simple as riding public transport home and using Facebook to check updates, or it might be doing a spot of lunchtime desk shopping at work. When a brand understands when their users are likely to engage with them or to use their information, they can target specific times and places, and create a more meaningful message. When people are riding home on the train or bus, it’s possible that a brand can use this particular time to create a tailored message. A comment on the commute, or an on-location message can make users feel understood and heard and create greater familiarity with your brand. When you’re shopping at your desk, you might be seeking a certain feeling – a distraction, or a feeling of connection with the retailer, perhaps. A brand who can understand when their users will be engaging with them has a golden opportunity. Moment marketing can also be far more specific and once-off; take the NBL blackout for example, where Oreos swooped in with a clever and on-brand message. Or you could look at the recent Paris Agreement fuore, where countries and brands were using social media to communicate their support or disdain for President Trump’s actions, for example.
What your users want
When a user is interacting with a brand, there are several psychological urges taking place. When these psychological urges are being met by a brand, it’s possible to have a more meaningful interaction take place. And when moment marketing is leveraged to ensure that messages are received at the most open moment of a consumer’s psychological state, it’s possible to have a really impactful interaction. Using clever messages and up-to-the-minute messaging from an on-to-it marketing team helps a great deal here. The last thing you want is to be coming along at the right time, but saying something off-brand or off-message.
When moments make a difference
Part of understanding how to target a moment in a user’s research or planning stage of interacting with a brand, is knowing the stages of research or behaviour that take place when a user is considering a brand. The stages of buying are fairly fixed, and it’s during the stages of research and exploration that a brand is most likely to be able to make an impact on behaviour. When users are researching they often feel connection, progression and recognition, for example. So by creating a meaningful moment – perhaps with a social media advertisement primed for a particular time of the day, a blog article scheduled to appear at a key time, or an event – your users will feel catered to, recognised and understood. When you know the stages of user engagement with your brand you can reach out and create messages for particular moments.
How behaviour change can take place with moments
It’s absolutely possible to send out brand messages that are relevant and exciting by leveraging moment marketing, though you do need to understand your users very well in order to be able to do this. Understanding the psychology behind what makes us feel connected is important, and the key need drivers that build a moment’s connection are diversion (the need to have fun), recognition (to feel understood or respected), learning (to find something new) and connection (to feel like you belong). Say for example you want to create a change in a behaviour, you’d leverage a message that targets a moment, but that also offers a diversion or a connection element to have extra impact. When you understand the psychological drivers, it’s possible to make a difference to how the message is received.
When you have a deep understanding of how your users want to experience their online interactions, it’s possible to optimise consumer experiences based on the psychological needs. And from here, it’s further possible to reach out with moment marketing and messaging that delivers value. Your brand needs to have sculpted messages that are driven to be more effective at different times. Sometimes different social media platforms will be more useful, while other times a video or blog post will be the best choice. Work to deliver a richer experience for your users and you’ll find your messages making a whole lot more of an impact than ever before. When it comes to reaching out, just remember to actively contribute something of value, and consider your user experience at the heart of all you create.
