On Wednesday, October 21st, we co-hosted our first-ever NHI + Google Digital Breakfast, and Google’s Sara Waters was on hand to discuss the latest insights from Google about how to capitalize on and capture the micro-moments that happen in mobile.
Weren’t able to join us? We’re got you covered! Below are the key mobile micro-moments takeaways from her presentation.
1. What is an micro-moment?
Google defines micro-moments as a moment in which we act on a specific intent and expect an immediate answer. Why should we care about micro-moments in mobile? Because these seemingly small moments are your new battleground for customers. Check out the video below for more insight.
2. We don’t go online. We live online.
Consumers are online an average of 5 hours a day, 40% of that time is spent on mobile devices, and they browse more than 10 sources before making a purchase. Two-thirds of the time, we see transactions start on a mobile device and finish on another.
What does this mean for marketers? These signals present a huge opportunity to reach customers with messages that are relevant, useful, and personalized when and where they are most likely to see them.
3. Micro-moments are changing mobile.
1. Increased Immediacy: mobile users can easily take action in the exact moment their needs arise. There are a million examples of this that come into play everyday — “Cathy” breaks her hairdryer as she’s getting ready for work, and reaches for phone to buy a new one within minutes; “Steve” notices he is booked in back-to-back meetings over lunch, and without pause uses his phone to order a sandwich from Jimmy John’s.
2. Higher Expectations: mobile users are expecting things to be immediately available and relevant to their context. Said another way, consumers want things right and right away.
3. Loyal to Needs: mobile users are more loyal to their own personal needs than they are to a specific brand. Translation? If you aren’t there when they need you, they have no problem finding someone else (most likely, one of your competitors) to help instead.
4. we’ve shifted from HOW (not Why) MObile.
Mobile is no longer a future state; it’s here now. Smartphone ownership continues to grow as more affordable devices and data plans become available. Since 2013, smartphone adoption in the US has grown from 31% to 61%. And tablet owners, usually with high disposable incomes, represent an growing mainstream demographic as manufacturers develop more economically-priced models.
There’s a lot we still need to learn about mobile, but one thing is certain — mobile and desktop are not the same, and it’s imperative you have a mobile-specific (or even a mobile-first) strategy to support it. John Caine, Chief Product Officer at Priceline, said it perfectly: “Why would we ever build a mobile product that caters to those same needs as the desktop user?”
5. The Local Mobile Consumer
When your consumers are literally around the corner, mobile can get them in your door.
In fact, one out of five searches — whether on Google.com, Google Maps, Google+, or Zagat — have local intent. What’s more is that 95% of smartphone users search for location information, and those local-mobile consumers are very likely to take action as a result of their searches:
51% visited a store
48% call a store
29% made a purchase in-store and did so quickly
80% of mobile-search triggered store visits happen within 5 hours of initial search
85% of mobile-search triggered calls to stores happen within 5 hours of initial search
6. Mobile-optimized websites
The stats don’t lie: 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site, and 40% have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.
The implication? If you have to decide between an app and a mobile site, you should focus on creating a mobile-optimized website — make your mobile site fits the needs of your mobile consumers; don’t take your desktop site content and make it fit a mobile screen. (Need some help? Check out Google’s tips on multi-screens here.)
Once you’re mobile-optimized, you can then launch a mobile app for your “power” users.
7. How to connect with multi-screen audience.
Simultaneous multi-screen usage is slowly becoming the norm, and one of the best examples of this probably happens in your own living room — on a daily basis, nearly 40% of smartphone users watch TV while browsing their smartphones.
In the context of a consumer journey, mobile is usually where it all starts, which makes sense as it’s the closest device to the consumer. This is especially true when it comes to eCommerce and shopping behavior: 65% of multi-screen consumers report that they began their shopping process from a smartphone, and 84% of all multi-screen shopping experiences included mobile either as the first or second interaction.
so, Where do I go from here?
As always, Google is here to help, and has already laid out an action plan for you in its Mobile Playbook:
1. Focus your value proposition so it meets true mobile-specific needs.
2. Create mobile-first, not desktop-lite, destinations.
3. Build mobile accountability into your organization.
4. Drive ROI with mobile marketing.
5. Integrate mobile into multi-screen marketing.
Sources:
Waters, Sara. “Nina Hale Digital Breakfast.” NHI + Google Digital Breakfast. Fifth Street Towers, 150 S. 5th Street, Minneapolis. October 21, 2015. Keynote Speech.
Google’s Mobile Playbook, 2nd Edition.
