Introduction
Our Life with Mobile That device in your pocket or sitting next to you on the desk: how would you describe its role in your life?
“I pretty much call my phone my lifeline. I use it all day, every day. If I ever leave home without it, I feel naked.” —Mary Kathryn L.,
When we asked people this question recently, they used
phrases like “attached to my hip,” “butler,” and “lifeline.”
Let’s face it: those are not things we say about
our toasters.
Over two-thirds of smartphone users
68% say they check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning.
30%
are willing to admit that they actually get “anxious” when they don’t have their phone on them.
Millennials? They’re really attached.
87% always have their smartphone at their side, day, and night.
That little device by our sides is transforming our
lives, whether we actively notice it or not. It’s enabling
new ways of doing and learning things. It’s helping
us discover new ideas and new businesses. It’s helping
us manage our to-dos, tackle our problems, and inspire
our plans.
Mobile search behavior is a good reflection of our
growing reliance: in many countries, including the U.S.,
more searches take place on mobile devices than on
computers.
4
Mobile is quickly becoming our go-to.
When we want or need something, we tune in via
convenient, self-initiated bursts of digital activity.
Take the oft-quoted stat that
we check our phones 150 times a day.
5
Pair it with another that says we spend 177 minutes on
our phones per day,
6
and you get a pretty fascinating
reality: mobile sessions that average a mere 1 minute
and 10 seconds long, dozens and dozens of times per
day. It’s like we’re speed dating with our phones
The Moments That Really Matter:
Micro-Moments
Behind these mobile bursts are countless interactions,
like texting a spouse with a carpool update, dropping
a quick work email while waiting in the ATM line, or
posting a Bermuda vacation photo to make friends
jealous. These types of moments are a common part
of life, but they’re not moments when we’re necessarily
looking to engage with brands. And if a brand tries to
butt in with a distracting or irrelevant message? Swipe.
But in other moments, we’re very open to the influence
of brands. These are the moments when we want
help informing our choices or making decisions.
For marketers, these moments are an open invitation
to engage. And they’re the moments you have to be
ready for.
At Google, we call these micro-moments. They’re the moments when we turn to a device—often a smartphone—to take action on whatever we need or want right now. These I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-buy, and I-want-to-do moments are loaded with intent, context, and immediacy. Consider that
82% of smartphone users say they consult their phones on purchases they’re about to make in a store.
91% of them turn to their phones for ideas in the middle of a task
These micro-moments are critical touchpoints within today’s consumer journey, and when added together, they ultimately determine how that journey ends.
The New Consumer Decision Journey: From Sessions to Spurts
That consumer journey looks a lot different than it did when your predecessor sat at your desk. And it’s not just a story of more mobile usage. Since we can take action on any need or curiosity at any time, the consumer decision journey has been fractured into hundreds of tiny decision-making moments at every stage of the “funnel”—from inspiring vacation plans to buying a new blender to learning how to install that new shelf. In the past year alone, websites in the United States have seen:
20 %
increase in mobile’s share of online sessions.
18% decrease in time spent per visit.
An increase in mobile sessions and a decrease in time
spent might lead you to conclude that consumers
aren’t fnding what they want on mobile. But actually,
mobile conversion rates have shot up by 29% in the
last year alone.
Think about it. We don’t just rely on long sit-down
sessions at our keyboards to make purchases anymore.
We reach for our devices and make informed decisions
faster than ever before. And though mobile is driving this
change, this phenomenon has implications far beyond
mobile. It affects the entire consumer journey across
screens, devices, and channels.
Consider what’s going on with retail stores today. Foot
traffc has declined, yet consumers are spending more
when they do visit—because they’ve done their research
and made decisions before ever walking in. A similar
thing is happening when consumers visit websites
using a desktop or laptop. They typically spend less time
per visit but convert more often. In many ways, micromoments
have become the footsteps that lead people to
your store or desktop site.
So how do you win micro-moments?
Succeeding in a
Micro-Moment World
Today, you have to earn the customer’s consideration and action, moment after moment. Why? Because people are more loyal to their need in the moment than to any particular brand. Case in point:
65% of smartphone users agree that when conducting a search on their smartphones, they look for the most relevant information regardless of the company providing the information
That makes micro-moments the new battleground for brands.
Here are three essential strategies that can help you
win micro-moments:
Be There. You’ve got to anticipate the micro-moments
for users in your industry, and then commit to being
there to help when those moments occur.
Be Useful. You’ve got to be relevant to consumers’
needs in the moment and connect people to the
answers they’re looking for.
Be Quick. They’re called micro-moments for a reason.
Mobile users want to know, go, and buy swiftly. Your
mobile experience has to be fast and frictionless.
Red Roof Inn mastered all three strategies in one
simple campaign. When the company realized that
flight cancellations were leaving 90,000 passengers
stranded every day, its marketing team developed
a way to track flight delays in real time and trigger
targeted search ads for the Red Roof Inns
near airports.
Ads that said, in essence, “Stranded at the airport?
Come stay with us!” They committed to those “I-needa-hotel-ASAP”
moments and delivered with relevance
on what people needed. The result: a remarkable
60% increase in bookings across non-branded 60% search campaigns.
The stakes have never been higher. Recent research
that Google commissioned with Forrester Consulting
found that companies that take steps toward
becoming moments-ready reap higher ROIs in both
mobile and overall marketing investment. The promise
of that upside is driving change: they found that mobile
has urged 70% of companies to begin transforming
their businesses and experiences.
To get started building your own micro-moment
strategy, this executive guide offers what you need
to know to be there, be useful, and be quick—and
then to rethink your measurement and organizational
strategies to know how to connect the dots
Be There
You’ve got to anticipate the micro-moments for users in your industry and then commit to being there to help when those moments occur.
Be Useful
You’ve got to be relevant to consumers’ needs in the moment and connect people to the answers they’re looking for.
Be Quick
They’re called micro-moments for a reason. Mobile users want to know, go, and buy swiftly. Your mobile experience has to be fast and frictionless.
Be there
Marketers obsess over “being there” for their consumers.
Whether it’s share at the store shelf or share of voice on
TV, these are metrics used to judge how present a brand
actually is. But what about on mobile, where there are
billions of micro-moments happening every day? Are you
devoting the same amount of thought to your mobile
marketing strategy and being there whenever consumer
needs arise?
When someone picks up their mobile device, chances
are they want to learn, do, fnd, or buy something right
now. Whether in the form of searches, app interactions,
mobile site visits, or even YouTube video views, these
micro-moments happen constantly. You need to be there
for them.
Why it Matters
Being there on mobile can drive big results and build a
competitive edge for your brand. Here’s why:
Many consumers aren’t brand committed
90% of smartphone users are not absolutely certain of the specifc brand they want to buy when they begin looking for information online.
You get a shot at your competitor’s customers
Ultimately, showing up gets your brand in the game to be chosen, not just seen.
By being there, your brand has the chance to address consumer needs in the moment, help move someone along their decision journey and deepen their loyalty. That’s how brands earn their stripes with mobile.
Know and Grow
Your Share of Intent
Unfortunately, many brands are still falling short when it comes to being there for consumers. Take the examples below from two categories (education and auto insurance), which illustrate a broader, cross-industry pattern. In each case, there are lots of category-relevant micro-moments happening in search at any given time, but brands are missing opportunities to engage because they’re not showing up. The charts illustrate what we might call “share of intent”—or how many times a brand was there as a fraction of all category-relevant searches.
It’s worth noting that this missed opportunity—this low
share of intent—is happening across devices, but it’s
especially true on mobile. And as consumers continue
to lean on mobile, it’s even more imperative to close
the presence gap.
What happens when you hold the mirror up to your
own brand? First, grab your mobile device and perform
some of the top searches relevant to your business
category. Are you there? Do you like what you see?
What about when you do the same for YouTube?
Next, work with your agency or account team to obtain
your brand’s own “share of intent” metric. Evaluate that
metric for category-relevant searches on both mobile
and desktop, and see how you stack up against your
key competitors. Chances are you’ll discover some
gaps. Create a plan to close those gaps over time by
boosting your ad coverage across a greater number of
micro-moments and growing your share of intent.
When you fail to be there, you are simply handing
opportunities over to your competitors. Nobody wants
that (except your competitors). So fnd those moments
when you should be present, and dig in your heels.
FIAT drives brand goals
by being there for small
car searchers
After a 28-year hiatus, automaker FIAT returned to the American market, bringing with it the FIAT 500, a small city car. But after such a long absence, FIAT found it needed to build awareness with a new generation of American consumers. The time was a good one: gas prices were spiraling upwards and Americans’ interest in small, efficient city cars was at an all-time high. FIAT saw that its old perceived disadvantages could quickly become strengths. The company deployed online and mobile search ads on category terms like “small car” and “city car” to reach people in those micro-moments of research and interest. In addition, each ad made the most of its context. On desktop, FIAT’s ads took people to the company’s
online car configurator. (The FIAT 500 was available in a half-million color combinations, and customizing it was part of the fun.) On mobile, the ads pointed people to the nearest dealership, where they could see and buy the car in person. The results were tremendous. FIAT saw a
127%
increase in unaided recall. The FIAT 500 became a huge success in America, and even more importantly, the brand was back.
Four Key Moments
to be There
OK. You’re ready to be there in the micro-moments
that matter to your brand and you’re committed to
growing your share of intent, especially on mobile.
But how do you get started, since there are millions
of potential moments?
A good guiding principle is this:
be there across all stages of
the consumer journey, not
just when someone is ready
to buy. To accomplish this,
consider four key moment
types that represent the full
range of user needs.
Consider Both the Consumer’s
Intent and Context
To build a strong “be there” strategy across all moment types, you need to think about both user intent and context. Investigating intent will focus you in on more specific consumer needs that you could address within each moment type. For example, what are the top things people want to know about gluten allergies or the college application process? What do they want to do as it relates to hairstyling or digital photography? Here you want to look into things like top searches, trending searches, and top question-phrased searches relevant to your category. Ask yourself again: are you there? Prioritize some micro-moments your brand can’t afford to lose. Next, layer context on top of that intent. In other words, think about how the consumer’s needs might change based on their situation.
Does the device, time
of day or location call for
a more tailored approach
to being there?
For example, should you be there differently for I-want-to-go moments during store hours vs. after store hours? Should you have a different presence strategy for I-want-to-know moments when someone is inside your bank vs. far away? When they’re looking for instructions on-the-go on a smartphone vs. at home on a desktop? Thinking about these intent/context combinations will not only help you identify more specific micromoments to go after, but it will also encourage ideas for how to be most useful with your content, ad messages, and app functionality when you are there. For Sephora, finding out more about its consumers’ intent within the in-store context allowed it to be there more meaningfully on mobile.
Sephora learns how to be there in-store
The executive team at beauty retailer Sephora noticed how often its customers searched on their phones while standing in the store aisles. While many retailers fear that customers are using mobile to shop competitors, the Sephora team understood the power of mobile and was eager to see how the brand could tap into mobile behavior in a helpful and meaningful way.
The company learned that most of their clients were looking for reviews of the products they had in their hands, or trying to remember which shade of makeup they’d bought last time. With these needs-based insights in hand, Sephora developed mobile website and app functionality specifically to serve shoppers in those moments.
Be Useful
If you want to win the hearts and minds (and dollars) of
consumers in their I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-wantto-
do, and I-want-to-buy moments, you’ll need to do
more than just show up.
You need to be useful and meet their needs in those
moments. That means connecting people to what
they’re looking for in real time and providing relevant
information when they need it.
And with mobile, doing so is both more critical and
more achievable than ever. Why? With mobile we’re able
to add a rich understanding of context to consumers’
underlying intent. That context provides critical insights
into consumer behavior—and therefore powerful clues
for how you can be most relevant and useful for people
in their moments of need.
Why it Matters
Being useful in those moments matters. Consider this:
And the consequences of not being useful are serious too. Without utility, consumers will not only move on in the moment, they actually might not ever come back.
Only 9% of users will stay on a mobile site or app if it doesn’t satisfy their needs (for example, to find information or navigate quickly).
In fact, 66% of consumers will take actions that have some negative impact on the brand,24 including:
From “How can I eat healthier?” to “What is my credit score?” or “What’s the best SUV for toddlers in tow?”, consumers are turning to their phones to learn in the moment, even when it’s for larger purchases with higher stakes. Why? Because mobile helps them chip away at a long purchase journey whenever they’re motivated to do so.
of smartphone users say they’ve used their phone to make progress toward a long-term goal or multi-step process while “out and about.”
Consumers gravitate toward brands with snackable, educational content—not brands giving the hard sell
And when a brand’s mobile site or app makes it easy for a smartphone user to find answers, 69% of those users are more likely to actually buy from them
Helping consumers find answers to their questions can make or break a sale and influence their perception of your brand in the future. Realtor.com recently introduced a helpful video series for new homebuyers to drive that preference.
I-Want-To-Know Moment
Realtor.com helps homebuyers take their first steps
Realtor.com’s marketing team realized that searching for home listings is only one step in a long (and often confusing) homebuying journey. To be helpful to first-time homebuyers, they enlisted the help of actress Elizabeth Banks to create step-by-step videos to walk consumers through the homebuying process. (Check them out at youtube.com/realtordotcom)
The two-minute videos resonated with consumers, driving 400K YouTube views in the first three weeks. “Based on our experience that many new homebuyers turn to the web for help navigating one of life’s biggest decisions, we wanted to produce content that would be consumable digitally, on-demand, and in bite-sized, entertaining chunks. Elizabeth Banks delivered great content, and the digital platform drove amazing success for us.” —Andrew Strickman, Head of Brand and Chief Creative, Realtor.com
How to Be Useful:
I-Want-to-Go
Moments
In the case of I-want-to-go moments, consumers are looking for a connection to the physical world.
That could mean, for example, showing a nearby store where a particular searched-for product is in stock.31
Give them what they want by using location signals to highlight relevant locations, store inventory and driving directions in your ads and mobile site, and also within your app content. Proximity matters to these mobile consumers, and winning the I-want-to-go moments drives real results for both your brand and bottom line.
Be Quick
“I want it NOW.”
That sounds like something a toddler in the terrible twos would say, but it’s also what today’s consumers are saying. They want immediate gratification, and they’re making decisions faster than ever before. In fact,
Mobile created and enables this behavior change. Whether smartphone users are looking for local businesses, researching a product or service, or looking for instructions, not only do they have heightened expectations for speed in general, they also are often in a hurry to accomplish their tasks.
That’s why consumers expect your mobile site and app to indulge their need for speed by being quick and easy.
Three Ways to be Quick:
1. Eliminate Steps
Connect the Dots
While all channels matter, mobile drives the digital bus today. It has become the connective tissue across the online and offline world, driving valuable actions like store visits and phone calls that directly impact your bottom line. Consider this: When people use mobile search to help make a decision, they are
As micro-moments (especially on mobile) fragment the consumer journey and create new forms of engagement, they also challenge our assumptions about the value of “touchpoints” across media.
For instance, it may no longer make sense to plan your media strategy channel-by-channel for TV, radio, and digital. Are desktop and mobile separate digital channels that compete against each other? Not any more.
Consumers move seamlessly across many devices en route to conversion, so credit can’t just be given to the device in use when the “buy” button was clicked. That undervalues mobile’s role in the big picture.
connect the dots between all screens, channels, and media types. That also means organizing your teams around this new way of thinking. To rebuild your strategy, reframe your measurements. Connect the dots of micro-moments in three ways:
Connect the Dots
Across Screens
Most businesses still measure conversions and cost per acquisition separately for mobile devices and desktop.
When viewed in isolation, these metrics won’t show you the larger role mobile plays in your business. Don’t let these traditional metrics distract you from what’s really important: sales, revenues, and the bottom line. Your KPIs should measure the sum of all of your digital marketing inputs against profit contribution. Don’t just measure the immediate response to the last campaign seen before making a purchase. For example, if you test an increase in your mobile bids, look at how your account performs overall as a result of this change. The key point is to stop viewing your mobile and desktop conversions separately.
You don’t have mobile customers and desktop customers. You just ,have customers.
Here are four ways to start connecting the dots across screens.
1. Look Beyond Mobile Sales
Even if the sale itself doesn’t happen on a mobile device,
that doesn’t mean mobile didn’t play a role. Think about
all the ways consumers use mobile to connect with your
brand. They tend to look for prices, sizes, or reviews. Or
they look to get store directions, download an app, or call
a business directly.
These are critical micro-moments to measure—and
win—because they can ultimately contribute to a
consumer’s decision to buy.
Almost one trillion dollars in U.S. retail sales were
influenced by mobile last year alone.52
To begin measuring more types of mobile conversions,
start with your Estimated Total Conversions report in
AdWords. It helps you measure the full impact of your
digital spend across mobile and desktop, on sites and
in apps, and even in stores.
2. Account for Multi-Device Behavior
It’s critical to include this multi-device behavior in your attribution strategy. If you don’t, you risk overinvesting in the device where the final conversion occurred or missing out on opportunities to win the sale. Advertisers around the world have seen conversions rise when they pay attention to cross-device results. For example, U.S. retailers see 16% more search ad conversions when cross-device data is included.55
Connect the Dots
Across Screens
to businesses in 2018, up from 30 billion in 2013, according to estimates from BIA/Kelsey. Mobile phone calls typically convert at higher rates than website visits, especially for businesses with complex products, like insurance or credit cards. Make sure that mobile gets full or partial credit for those call conversions. (That includes those from clicks that led the customer to your website and then on to a call from a mobile phone.) Simply put, a mobile call is a mobile conversion. Sophisticated advertisers like Progrexion have learned to connect customers to the right people based on their location in the purchase cycle. It sounds simple—connect a new customer with your sales department and an existing customer with your account team—but you’d be surprised how many businesses still send callers straight into a general pool. 4. Measure More Than Just App Installs Even if their purchases don’t happen on your app, your brand’s app users are high-value customers, so treat them that way. Don’t just count installs and pat yourself on the back. Ask yourself how you can provide useful content and functionality to engage this user base to drive incremental transactions and sales.
A mobile metrics mindset helps Progrexion grow mobile sales 221%
Progrexion, the consumer credit repair experts, found that mobile callers were 30%–40% less likely to convert than people who visited its websites. They’re heavily driven by the success of the call center, and initially it looked like mobile wasn’t working from a CPA standpoint. Research showed the problem: many mobile callers were still early in the sales funnel and needed more information before they’d be ready to buy. Progrexion began routing mobile calls straight to salespeople who were experts at educating potential customers on the complexities of credit repair. The result:
and today, mobile’s average value per order is equal to that from desktop leads. “If we hadn’t changed our mindset and metrics, we would have missed out on a good chunk of the mobile pie.” —Josh Aston, Director of Online Marketing, Progrexion.
Walgreens understands a useful app creates more valuable customers
When Walgreens saw that almost 50% of people with the Walgreens app used it while shopping in-store, they jumped on the opportunity to elevate the experience. They enhanced the Walgreens app to let customers refill prescriptions via SMS or a barcode scan and launched a “web pick-up” feature that let people order on their phones and pick up in-store.
Between 2011 and 2012, Walgreens doubled mobile app downloads and saw 52% of digital refills come from mobile phones (a rate of one mobile refill per second).
Connect the Dots Across Channels
Foot traffic in retail stores continues to decline. This past year alone it’s decreased by over 7%. Yet during that same period, retailers have seen in-store purchases rise.56 Why? Consumers visited less, but they knew more about what they wanted when entering the store, because
Measuring how digital influences offline behaviors can reveal insights about your valuable customers and how they purchase. AdWords Store Visits Reporting offers insights to help you measure and optimize how online channels draw shoppers into your store.
Sears Gets Mobile Users In-Store Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores have more than 1,200 physical locations as well as an online store. “Not everything sold in a store is available for purchase online,” explains CMO David Buckley, which is why their digital strategy aims to drive in-store sales. When mobile users search for a product, Sears uses local inventory ads to show exactly how far they are from the nearest store that carries it.
Store visit data shows that, dollar for dollar, local inventory ads create five times more in-store sales than TV advertising.
“Consumers looking for products on mobile are more likely to be looking locally than when doing basic product research on a desktop,” Buckley said. “Local inventory ads get mobile users that information faster.”
Bealls Tracks Offline Sales with
Surprising Results
Bealls Florida department stores faced a classic
challenge in 2013: understanding its growing ranks of
mobile customers. How much of the company’s $650
million in annual sales was influenced by mobile?
Working with agency Merkle RKG, Bealls used Google Store Sales and consumer data to learn how often mobile customers arrived in one of Bealls’ 70 locations
Valuable Actions
Measure the influence of valuable actions that go
beyond the traditional online conversion—things like
phone calls, cross-device conversions, and even store
visits—and you can answer important questions about
your ideal customers. Do they shop across online and
offline channels? Do they buy more often after a specific
campaign? What marketing channel does the best job of
drawing them to nearby stores?
Once you understand how your most valuable
customers convert, you can create an organizational
structure and put incentives in place to better acquire
and nurture them.
Connect the Dots
Across Teams
Does your company have a digital team, a call center team, a brand team, and local and store merchandising teams? Do they all have different incentives? For many companies, the awkward answer is, “Yes.” Awkward because micro-moments aren’t a “performance thing,” and they’re not a brand thing. They’re not even just a digital thing. They’re a consumer thing, and that makes them everyone’s job. To create closer collaboration, you may need to rethink how your teams are organized, where they sit, and how they interact
To improve marketing in today’s mobile world, you have to nix the silos and unite incentives
This will make measuring the whole consumer journey much easier.
Macy’s comes together for its customers
What would you do if you learned that your
multi-channel customers were worth
That’s what Macy’s learned recently, and its
leadership decided to bring online and in-store
marketing together.
Macy’s began with a pilot test in its social dresses category, combining the online and offline silos into a unified team with one goal: to win sales. “We put their stock ledgers together; we put their on-order files together, so they had complete clarity of vision and a single view of the inventory. And then told them, ‘Go forth and run your business,’” said R.B. Harrison, Chief Omnichannel Officer for Macy’s. “And we got incredible results.”
The results were so good that in 2015, Macy’s announced a formal reorganization of all its categories and of its marketing and merchandising teams. “With the digital and offline teams united behind one goal, they could stop fighting over the customer and start fighting for the customer’s needs,” said Harrison.
Target builds a seamless new experience
As a result, Target has made significant changes
to the way they work to reach consumers in
micro-moments.
In its patio furniture category, for instance, the
company brought together its separate in-store
and online teams and said, “This is now the patio
organization.” The new digital-first group curates
its online and in-store assortments for maximum
shopper ease and impact. In-store signs direct
shoppers to Target.com for other furniture
models. In-store employees get credit for online
sales in their area, so they’re happy to drive sales
through mobile. Even the group’s data assets
were revamped to create a common view of each
customer across devices and channels.
The test was a success, and Target has expanded it
across the company. Multichannel guests are now
Target’s most valuable customers, making
“There’s no longer a delineation between how our guests live life and how they shop,” says Casey Carl, Target’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer. “They want to flow seamlessly across all of our channels, from desktop to mobile to our stores and everything in between, and so we’ve got to make that happen by having the right underlying architecture.”