Nurture a B2B Customer Journey, One Micro-Moment at a Time

In the B2B space, a need to buy a product triggered solely by emotion cannot culminate in a purchase. But, a prolonged engagement, especially at the right moments, through thoughtful and sensitive content, can make a lot of difference.

The potential of good and relevant content is unputdownable and Google emphasized it, in its concept of zero-moment-of-truth. In other words how customers favour brands after doing researches online. Well, B2B marketers can now couple that with the search engine giant’s recent concept of micro-moments to loop in more customers.

Focusing on a Customer’s Micro-Moment

It’s exciting times for B2B marketers. Mobile devices, robust internet penetration and social media have made it possible to quantify and analyze some crucial moment of a customer’s journey. And, if B2B marketers can gently interweave their brand’s image into every such customer’s moment, it can make an organization’s brand image indelible.

Even if B2B customers do not engage in prompt purchase, today they are more inclined in seeking answers in the very moment they stumble on a query. Of-course it’s important to help customers foresee their challenges and loop them in early in a buying cycle, but now, it’s equally important to be right there when customers actually need you.

The value of brands will be soon determined by their ability to cater to a customer’s I-want-to-know moments and I-want-to-do moments. To put it in a marketers term, if an organization’s content does not appear in the first few scrolls on a search engine (that too in multiple screens), it’s most likely that particular organization will lose potential customers.

Although recent, the but the term micro-moment is gradually gaining significant amount of popularity in the B2B space. And why not? B2B executives never shut themselves down, they are always thinking about work. Every single micro-moment they go through can be a business opportunity in itself.

A CIO, while traveling on a train, might be looking for blogs that talk about better security practices. A CFO, when having supper might be reading articles on how to manage audit trails better. A CMO while an on holiday, will be still reading about products that enhances content engagement. But the question is will your brand’s content be available to them, in that very moment, when they are looking for answers online?

A recent survey named B2B Mobile Trends, by bnpsolutions.com, revealed that 43 percent of the respondents said they accessed industry information only through mobile devices. With regards to providing online content, that’s a massive opportunity for marketers.

Picture a Micro-Moment

Now, imagine this: Your organization sells security solutions that are built to fight growing DDoS threats.

As marketer of that security firm you assumed that stories about the hazardous impact of DDosS attacks on certain businesses will automatically motivate other organizations (your potential customers) to buy your solutions. Now, instead of spending time building personalized and sensitive content around DDoS, all your time got consumed just waiting for a customer to turn up.

Now what if a CSO, extremely concerned about DDoS threats, was actually searching online for some good and rational content? Unfortunately your brand hardly had any content to capitalize on the CSO’s micro-moment or the moment he was thoroughly doing a research before narrowing down on a particular security solution. That’s a loss of opportunity!

There are more reasons why B2B marketers should pursue a customer journey by focusing on micro-moments.

Why Millennials make Micro-Moments more Important

Only in a span of few years, there has been a dramatic shift in the way B2B customers research about products. This shift is being driven by millennials who are gradually occupying authoritative positions in enterprises.

According to a survey by Sacusas, 73 per cent of millennials are involved in product or service purchase decision-making at their companies. Even more interesting, almost  one third of the respondents said that they are the sole decision maker for their company.

So, where does micro-moments fit in here? Since millennials are extremely active on the internet, it broadens the scope of a brand’s content to be seen by a customer looking for answers. The same survey also revealed that 85 percent of millennials use online mediums to research products and services for their companies.

Marketers who are still not catering to the digitally savvy generation of decision makers, now would be a good time to start and get on top of their micro-moments.

As mobile devices become an integral part of B2B business, focusing more on a customer’s journey, will gradually become a decisive factor for an organization’s success. The question is will your organization walk that extra mile to connect the dots joining a customer’s micro-moment and zero-moment-of-truth?