How can inbound marketing be used to adapt the Moments of Truth for optimal new customer acquisition?

Adi Kumar

Sep 28, 2020

6 min read

If the influx of the internet has revolutionized the modern era then you can’t deny the fact that Google products have also played a significant role in changing the world in various ways. More than 1 billion people use Gmail every month and there are around 98.5 million Android users from all around the world. But, the one product that has made the most important contribution is the Google search engine. In the year 2011, Google published a research paper that stated the fact that the modern-day search engine has modified people’s behaviour. This change in the behaviour of customers has modified the way businesses market their products to the customers and has led to a trickle-down effect on all the customers. This research has been named as a completely new marketing strategy that is being called ‘Moment of Truth’ or MoT. Moment of Truth is basically a marketing lingo that is used to address the opportunity a potential customer or customer has to form any type of impression regarding a brand, company, product, or service. In the modern era, Moment of Truth is being used by marketers for building customer-centric and positive outcomes.

Why MOT matters so much for marketers?

In the year 2005, the First Moment of Truth was introduced by A.G. Lafley, Chairman, President, and CEO of Procter & Gamble, and then the second and third Moment of Truth was introduced in the year 2005 and 2006 respectively. Wondering how these Moments of Truth are related to current marketing? Stimulus- First Moment of Truth- Second Moment of Truth The first stage is the stimulus and at this stage, the customers simply become aware of the product through ads delivered on the offline platforms. It is the stimulus that makes a customer realize that they need a certain kind of product and this can be as straightforward as buying a soap because the customer has run out of it. Then begins the First Moment of Truth and it is the stage where the customer is confronted with a service or product in a particular store. At the same stage, a brand realizes the level of customer penetration it has and its non-monetary ROI. The Second Moment of Truth is the review or simply a feedback given by a consumer regarding a product. A customer can turn out to be a brand advocate at this stage by sharing the product, company, or brand details on social media platforms. And finally, there is Zero Moment of Truth where a user conducts online research regarding a product or service before buying it and as a marketer, you must have understood how important this stage is for the company. Since all the customers have moved online, they can easily get a wide array of information in the form of reviews, ratings, product features, and group discussions regarding a product. If a marketer succeeds in creating a positive impact on the customer during this moment then it will act as a magic wand for the company.

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Source-Unsplash

The rise of a new step in the sales funnel

The Zero Moment of Truth has introduced a new step in the sales funnel and it lies between advertising and in-store app purchase. People from all over the world now use Google for researching a product before making a buying decision. Before buying anything, people would be searching ‘Which will be the best soap for sensitive skin? Which laptop has the best RAM?. In addition to this new step, there was a sudden rise in the number of sources people were using for gathering information regarding a product. In the year 2010, people were only using 5 sources for analyzing a product’s performance but in the year 2011, people started using around 10 sources for the same purpose. This is why MoT matters more to companies now more than ever since the customers can gather loads of information about your product with just a few clicks.

How does Marketing Automation support the Moments of Truth?

There are different types of strategies that you will need to use under marketing automation for winning the new Moments of Truth. If you really want to make your firm successful then you just can’t ignore this new step in the sales funnel. Here are some of the top marketing automation strategies that you can use in order to win MOT.

Understanding what customers search for and then delivering it

When any type of stimulus or any type of information regarding the product appears, the customer will start researching the product. You need to understand the psyche behind a customer’s searches in a search engine. This simply means that you will have to find the keywords, especially long-tail keywords in order to understand what the customer will type in the search box. Following are some of the tools that you can use for keyword research:

Since your keywords can easily evolve, you will need to keep tabs on them and one of the best ways to know what customers are searching for is to go through different forums and Q&A platforms like Quora. In addition to this, you just can’t ignore YouTube because when people research your product or company through YouTube, you need to provide them with relevant information.

Advanced contact analysis

If you start using advanced analytical tools, you will be able to understand your customers in a much better way and you will also be easily able to identify:

The main source of website visits of customers
Which marketing actions triggered the customer to take an action like subscribing to your newsletter?
Which type of content is generating leads?

With the help of analytical tools, you can identify ZMoT and that will help you to streamline your marketing efforts. By analyzing the behaviour of your customer, you can easily build a buyer’s journey model and analyze the diversity in a detailed manner. You can also optimize your content on the basis of what the customers actually need and then answer all their important questions. In addition to this, analytics will also aid you in identifying lead leaks because this is the point where you have maximum chances of losing ZMoT. If you focus on your customer preferences, you will be able to discover the things customers are looking for and what is it that you need to improve upon.

Recommendation engines

Many times, people will reach your website unintentionally during their research. After visiting your website the customer might feel overwhelmed with the wide array of products you offer and this will make it difficult for the customer to navigate through the website to collect relevant information. This is why you will need to properly customize your content. You can begin by suggesting a completely different set of content for the freshman and use different types of predictive engines in order to suggest the most suitable product to the customer. If you really want to win the race of ZMoT then you will have to make sure that you are fast and you will need to master the art of adapting to changes on a frequent basis. In the world of ZMoT, speed will always beat perfection and this is why you should never be afraid of failures. By using proper marketing automation strategies, winning over this new step in the sales funnel will become a lot easier for you. The type of approach that you will use for every marketing automation technique mentioned in this blog post will vary since it will be different for different companies. Connect with us and allow their seasoned experts to tap into the actual behaviour of the customers and make them succumb to your product while they research about it on the online platform.