Con­sumers are con­stant­ly seek­ing infor­ma­tion with their mobile devices, which pro­vides ample oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands. But they, in turn, must be selec­tive and choose the right moments to cap­i­tal­ize upon. And, experts say, deliv­er­ing on those con­sumer needs at the right time is what will win in this new mobile world.

Get­ting the right mes­sage in front of the right con­sumer at the right time has long been vital in mar­ket­ing, but it’s even more impor­tant in the mobile world, which has frag­ment­ed the con­sumer jour­ney.

In fact, at ad:tech San Fran­cis­co, Srid­har Ramaswamy, senior vice pres­i­dent of ads and com­merce at Google, said con­sumers look at their phones upwards of 150 times per day, or more than ten times an hour. But mar­keters shouldn’t be there every sin­gle time.

“A lot of these [moments] are mun­dane tasks, like post­ing a pic­ture, check­ing texts or turn­ing off an alarm,” Ramaswamy says. “And in many of these moments, it’s impor­tant for brands not to be there and it might do more harm than good.”

At the same time, there are some moments that mat­ter quite a lot for brands.

“These are the moments when con­sumers are look­ing for answers and try­ing to dis­cov­er some­thing new or make a deci­sion,” Ramaswamy says. “They want to know, do or buy. We call them micro-moments.”

Life is lived in these moments, which Ramaswamy says are rich with intent and con­sti­tute what he calls the “bat­tle­ground for the hearts and minds of con­sumers.”

Digital Moments Mean Marketers Must Rethink Engagement

Fur­ther, he adds, “We believe our suc­cess as an indus­try lies in a deep under­stand­ing of these moments and con­sumers.”

These moments include small deci­sions like where to have din­ner, as well as big­ger ones like what car to buy or where to go on vaca­tion.

In addi­tion to in-store prod­uct research, mobile devices also enable con­sumers to break huge tasks like buy­ing a new home into bite-size chunks – such as research­ing inter­est rates, neigh­bor­hood price his­to­ry and school dis­tricts – dur­ing down time through­out the day.

“These micro-moments are full of intent where deci­sions are being made and pref­er­ences are being shaped and they are clear­ly crit­i­cal to con­sumers,” Ramaswamy adds. “But they are also huge­ly impor­tant for brands.”

Consumers and In-the-Moment Behavior

Fur­ther, mobile has dri­ven an explo­sion in loca­tion-ori­ent­ed inter­est – includ­ing a 34x increase in “near me” search­es – as well as a mas­sive change in video con­sump­tion, Ramaswamy says.

Con­sumers are not only turn­ing to how-to videos and/or prod­uct reviews on YouTube to learn how to per­form new tasks like tying a tie or fix­ing a dead bat­tery, but younger con­sumers in par­tic­u­lar see YouTube as a place to “explore inter­ests and catch up on the lat­est trends and con­sume con­tent from their favorite cre­ators.”

In fact, Ramaswamy says mobile YouTube has more view­ers 18 to 35 than any cable chan­nel and a poll of top celebri­ties among these con­sumers revealed YouTu­bers like KSI and PewDiePie are among their biggest stars.

The Implications of Micro-Moments

So what does this mean for mar­keters?

Accord­ing to Ramaswamy, “Those com­pa­nies that under­stand the intent behind micro-moments and meet the needs of con­sumers at the moments that mat­ter – they will win in the new world we live in.”

In addi­tion, he says “under­stand­ing intent is what has made Google Google,” and points to the exam­ple of buy­ing a car for his wife and the rea­sons he is lean­ing toward a com­pact SUV, sig­nal­ing his intent, as “more valu­able [infor­ma­tion to car brands] than [his] age or edu­ca­tion.”

Fur­ther, Chia Chen, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing direc­tor at Dig­i­tas, says 85 per­cent of the day, smart­phones are with­in con­sumers’ reach, which means mobile lit­er­al­ly makes life address­able.

“You’re get­ting sig­nals every sin­gle moment you’re awake and you’re also tak­ing these actions and being influ­enced by con­tent,” Chen adds.

And that means mar­keters have access to moments in con­sumers’ lives like they’ve nev­er had before.

“You can [not only] detect a sig­nal, you can do some­thing about it,” Chen adds.

And that means fig­ur­ing out where con­sumers are locat­ed and tar­get­ing them with appro­pri­ate length con­tent, for exam­ple.

Fur­ther, Chen even sees a shift toward what he calls a moments-based view of tar­get­ing in which adver­tis­ers actu­al­ly buy moments pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly based on loca­tion and intent sig­nals.

“The oth­er thing that is inter­est­ing to us is how do we use these sig­nals by devices as way to seg­ment the audi­ence,” Chen adds.

He uses the exam­ple of an air­line look­ing to tar­get con­sumers who fly fre­quent­ly, but are not fly­ing exclu­sive­ly with any giv­en air­line. So, he asks, how can a brand or agency use loca­tion to deter­mine that pas­sen­ger is at one brand’s ter­mi­nals, as well as oth­er brands’ ter­mi­nals and then retar­get them?

At the end of the day, Ramaswamy says there is a three-part recipe for brand suc­cess with micro-moments in the mobile world:

1. Iden­ti­fy the moments to win.

In order to do so, he sug­gests talk­ing to con­sumers via pan­els, sur­veys or watch­ing them inter­act with the prod­uct, as well as mak­ing sure dif­fer­ent depart­ments with­in the com­pa­ny talk to each oth­er to gain insight about a giv­en product’s pros and cons.

2. Fig­ure out how to deliv­er on the needs in the moment.

Per Ramaswamy, that can mean many dif­fer­ent things, some of which is search adver­tis­ing.

But he also uses the exam­ple of an argu­ment he had with his sons about the dif­fer­ence between deodor­ant and antiper­spi­rant. As a result, he sought infor­ma­tion with his mobile device. And, he says, some of these brands have an FAQ page where they are not try­ing to make a sale, but they are “sim­ply will­ing to be there and deliv­er the right infor­ma­tion for the con­sumer, which dri­ves brand loy­al­ty and estab­lish­es them as a trust­wor­thy source of infor­ma­tion.”

Ramaswamy adds, “You have to con­sid­er the entire spec­trum of needs in order to deliv­er on those needs.”

3. Mea­sure every moment that mat­ters.

“Gone are the days when bud­gets were siloed,” Ramaswamy says. “It’s real­ly impor­tant that you assem­ble a holis­tic pic­ture of where your spend is and the return you’re get­ting and the indus­try has to build a new gen­er­a­tion of tools for mar­keters to be able to track and mea­sure the val­ue of the spend we are putting in day after day.”

In oth­er words: Under­stand­ing the intent between count­less micro-moments and deliv­er­ing to needs of con­sumers at that time is what will real­ly win in this new world, Ramaswamy adds.

How do you think mobile mar­keters can bet­ter tar­get con­sumers in the moment?