People are making quicker decisions, and they expect to be able to follow up on those choices right away. They want the immediate result for what they are looking for. Every day we come across different ads, emails, push notifications and other forms of content. Now we have reached a point where we cannot process any more information. Marketers are facing a really hard time attracting their audience. Now, this is where Micro-Moments comes into the picture.

Google's content marketing team recently discussed different types of micro-moments that consumers encounter on average 150 times a day. These “I want-to-know”, “I want-to-do”, “I want-to-go”, and “I want-to-buy” moments are what Google calls “micro-moments”.

What is a Micro-Moment?

Google defines Micro-Moment as an intent rich moment when a person turns to a device to act on a need-to-know, go, do or buy.

To put it in even simpler terms Micro-Moments are those when your target consumer is looking for something with an intention to learn, to discover, to buy. These are the moments when preferences and decisions are made quickly.

Let’s check the video for better understanding

How does Micro-Moment Work?

Micro-Moments are a new type of consumer behavior where they make instant decisions on what to buy, where to go, what to watch. Micro-Moments work because they provide consumers with the right information exactly when they need it.

What Marketers have to do?

Marketers have only a few seconds to catch consumer’s attention. So marketers have to shift their marketing approach by being there when these moments occur.

Google says:

Be there: Predict the micro-moments for your target audience and commit to being there to help when those moments occur.

Be useful: Provide a digital experience that's relevant to consumer’s needs at the moment and quickly connect people to the answers they’re looking for.

Be accountable: Create a seamless customer experience across all screens and channels and measure the collective impact across them too.

How to develop Micro-Moment strategy?

To develop a micro-moment strategy, marketers must understand and offer what their audience is looking for in their micro-moment interactions. Search for your company, products or services for the most searched topics. This is a great topic, to begin with.

Use the Existing Data

Google Analytics helps you find out where the general public spends most of their time on your website.

Google's search console tells you which keywords drive the site with the highest quality.

After going through these parameters, you can use third-party tools like Answer the Public to give you insights into the relevant questions your audience might have.

What exactly was the question that prompted them to pick up and search for their smartphone? If you can detect these micro-moments, you can use different design elements to answer these questions.

Respond with Relevancy

Views of family, friends, and colleagues are very important in consumer’s minds. The more of them turn the web to make their purchases, it means being open to other opinions online, which can be expressed more conveniently from the website of a company, the blog of an influencer or the social media.

Wherever these words of wisdom come from, it is important that research by Google is taken into account. With so many consumers now obsessed with the idea that they have the best and can get it in a pinch, your website must be the answer to this question. But this is the tricky part and it's not that simple, according to Google.

You must be ready to respond to the most important questions your users have about your product or service through your design and content.

With content, you will be able to answer many of the questions relating to the brand, such as information pages about services and products. White papers, ebooks, case studies, reports and other long-form content that provide strong answers to related issues. Blog posts, vlogs, podcasts and other shorter content that can be more attractive to consumer ’s emotions.Tutorials and guides that answer direct questions asked by consumers. With regard to the design, it is your responsibility to highlight these pages so that visitors do not have to dig through different parts or layers of the site (such as the footer or the secondary navigation).

Respond Immediately

Although we have heard a lot about customer loyalty to brands in the past, it is interesting to get help from Google in this matter. With the help of micro-moments, even loyal consumer’s attention can be grabbed. Do this enough times your brand and website can truly win this customer as long as you are there every time you search to fill that need. One way to do this is by providing immediate solutions to users. Is your company open now? Will your restaurant has an open table tonight? Answer immediately and you can see a dramatic increase in conversions.

Respond with Geotargeting

Users no longer use qualifiers "near me”. This is because many consumers now assume that such information is already tracked by search engines, websites and mobile apps. They expect that if you search for something like " shoes, " Google will automatically provide you with the most relevant results, including the proximity of your location. In Google’s recent research, 66 percent of mobile consumers are more likely to purchase something from an app or a website if the information is geographically customized. There are many ways to communicate this friendliness to visitors— by means of a copy, various design elements, and even photos.

Google offers automatically populated search recommendations to its users.

These results are based on the geography, behavior, history of the users and the knowledge of Google about the query itself. Of course, you must first have access to the geographical data of visitors before you can provide them with such intelligent and geographically relevant results. This can be done by requiring them to sign in and fill out a profile with these details.

Once you have access to a visitor’s current location, however, you can start providing them with information that helps them with the “I want to go”, “I want to do”, and the “I want to buy” micro-moments that caused them to reach for the phone in the first place.

Respond with Convenience

Every day, people rely more on their smartphones to help make purchases last minute or to stimulate decisions at the moment. In fact, smartphone users are 50% more likely to buy something immediately than they did a year ago when they use their smartphone. Expectations of consumers must be fulfilled if you intend to convert them there itself like

Providing convenience in obtaining the information they want.

The speed of reaching and checking out.

The last piece is to handle their contact and payment information safely.

The web is changing so fast and consumers are becoming more confident about their devices. Now, nearly after two years, Google started recommending that we design micro-moments, which really paid off.

Designing micro-moments gives us the opportunity to reach more consumers effectively in their time of need.

Consequently, this means reaching consumers who are more interested in buying than those who browse the web casually. If you are able to use your data and design to reach consumers actively increase your conversion rate in the years to come.