The cus­tomer jour­ney is com­prised of a thou­sand moments. Brands can have an impact on all these dif­fer­ent moments that mat­ter. Here’s how brands such as Coca-Cola, Nord­stroms, Delta, and Papa John’s have done it.

Brands that can iden­ti­fy and cap­i­tal­ize on untapped moments in the lives of con­sumers and make them mat­ter are the brands that will dis­tance them­selves from the com­pe­ti­tion.

Speak­ing at SMX East in New York City, Jef­frey K. Rohrs, VP, Mar­ket­ing Insights, Exact­Tar­get, dis­cussed how the fun­nel is “kind of explod­ing” due to an abun­dance of chan­nels and devices in con­sumers’ lives. And we know peo­ple want to inter­act with brands.

How can cre­ativ­i­ty, con­nec­tiv­i­ty, and tech­nol­o­gy trans­form your busi­ness?

Moments Create Awareness

From cre­at­ing aware­ness, to con­sid­er­a­tion, to pur­chase, to reten­tion, and to advo­ca­cy, ulti­mate­ly you want to build your audi­ence and turn cus­tomers into “fanat­i­cal walk­ing bill­boards,” said the author of “Audi­ence: Mar­ket­ing in the Age of Sub­scribers, Fans, and Fol­low­ers”. Smart brands know that you need to stream­line the pur­chase process to make it as fric­tion­less as pos­si­ble, he said.

Ever heard of under­wa­ter dogs? Nei­ther did any­one else until Seth Castell had the idea to take pic­tures of dogs (and pup­pies) under water.

After post­ing the images online, he told a few peo­ple via email and Face­book. Now he’s pub­lished books and cal­en­dars fea­tur­ing his images.

“He made a career and cot­tage indus­try from a moment every­one over­looked,” Rohrs said. “What are your under­wa­ter dogs?”

Optimize Known Moments

Rohrs high­light­ed sev­er­al brands that are mak­ing the most of moments:

Nordstroms

By adding a sim­ple “Pop­u­lar on Pin­ter­est” tag to an image of a purse, Nord­stroms taps into a desire peo­ple have to buy pop­u­lar things, which boosts sales, makes peo­ple aware that they’re on Pin­ter­est, and tells them they may like some oth­er items there.

Coca-Cola

The Share a Coke cam­paign, in which Coca-Cola put people’s names on their bot­tles and cans, trans­formed those bot­tles into media peo­ple want­ed to share (such as the above nativ­i­ty scene).

Academy Sports + Outdoors

This busi­ness found a moment that yield­ed 15,000 new email sub­scribers per week at a val­ue of $450,000 per week. They added a light box telling site vis­i­tors to sign up to receive hot deals, price dis­counts, and more via email.

MGM

This Las Vegas hotel and casi­no urges arriv­ing guests to send a text to receive exclu­sive deals and updates. This increas­es the odds that those guests won’t go out the front door to find restau­rants or enter­tain­ment else­where, and increase share of wal­let.

Uncover Hidden Moments

How are brands find­ing untapped moments?

Esurance

This insur­ance brand found a moment that trans­formed pas­sive view­ers into active ampli­fiers in 30 sec­onds. Their ad, which aired right after the Super Bowl, fea­tured a $1.5 mil­lion give­away that result­ed in 200,000 entries in 60 sec­onds, 5.4 mil­lion hash­tag uses, 2.6 bil­lion Twit­ter impres­sions, 211,000 new Twit­ter fol­low­ers, and 12x more traf­fic to their web­site.

Papa John’s

This piz­za brand found an over­looked moment, but one that was watched by mil­lions of peo­ple: the open­ing coin toss of the Super Bowl. By spon­sor­ing the coin toss, they man­aged to dri­ve thou­sands of new peo­ple to their site to sign up for rewards, and gen­er­at­ed lots of piz­za sales.

Delta

To sell busi­ness class seats, Delta launched its Inno­va­tion Class, which gives con­sumers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sit next to an influ­encer on a flight. Appli­cants apply using their LinkedIn pro­file. Delta found moments in the air to net­work, increase reach, and build an audi­ence of their tar­get audi­ence: busi­ness trav­el­ers.

Create New Moments

Rohrs high­light­ed a few brands that have suc­cess­ful­ly cre­at­ed new moments that have made a big impact for brands.

Meat Pack

This Guatemala shoe store found a moment to hijack sales from com­peti­tors locat­ed with­in the same mall and increase cus­tomer loy­al­ty. Using its mobile app, which makes use of GPS track­ing, cus­tomers would be alert­ed of a dis­count pro­mo­tion that starts at 99 per­cent and decreas­es by the sec­ond until they reach their store.

American Express

With Small Busi­ness Sat­ur­day, Amer­i­can Express found not just a moment, but an entire day that mat­ters, so much so that 41 states declared it an offi­cial day last year. Amer­i­can Express found a way to build loy­al­ty and good will, and have a $5.7 bil­lion eco­nom­ic impact.

New England Bio Labs

By upgrad­ing its freez­ers with tech­nol­o­gy and hook­ing it up with its Sales­force account, this com­pa­ny found a moment to pro­vide real-time inven­to­ry (by know­ing when items have been tak­en out and by whom), increase sales (via auto-ship­ment or replen­ish­ment), boost cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and find new prod­uct oppor­tu­ni­ties (i.e., pack­ag­ing prod­ucts based on usage data).

Creating Those Walking Billboards

One restau­rant chain in Ohio, Melt Bar and Grilled, has man­aged to get more than 500 peo­ple to tat­too their logo on their body and become walk­ing adver­tise­ments. As they explain on their web­site:

How can you enter into a very elite group of slight­ly warped indi­vid­u­als? You must use one of our three Melt Bar and Grilled logos and get it tat­tooed some­where on your body! We encour­age you to take aspects of one of our logos, cus­tomize it and design a tat­too that is per­son­al to you.

For per­ma­nent­ly tat­too­ing their logo, cus­tomers get 25 per­cent off for life. Talk about brand loy­al­ty!

How are you mak­ing the most of moments to build your audi­ence, make the sale, and increase brand loy­al­ty? Share with us in the com­ments.