What Are Micro-Moments & How Do They Change Your Video Marketing Strategy?

Five exam­ples of brands that are in the right place at the right time dur­ing video micro-moments.

Greg Jarboe By Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Accord­ing to Google, mobile devices – par­tic­u­lar­ly smart­phones – have for­ev­er changed the way our cus­tomers live. It’s also frac­tured the con­sumer jour­ney to online pur­chase into hun­dreds of real-time, intent-dri­ven micro-moments. And this has for­ev­er changed what con­sumers – espe­cial­ly 18-to-34-year-olds – expect of brands. And that makes each one of these micro-moments a crit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to shape their deci­sions and pref­er­ences.


Thanks to mobile devices, micro-moments can hap­pen any­time, any­where. In those moments, con­sumers expect brands to address their needs with real-time rel­e­vance.

What Are Micro-Moments?

Per­haps the best way to get up to speed on the con­cept of “micro-moments” is to watch a short video from Think with Google, “Micro-Moments.” Uploaded to YouTube on Sept. 23, the video’s descrip­tion explains, “Life is lived in moments. And today, so many of these moments are mobile – whether we’re enjoy­ing a new playlist, shar­ing a vaca­tion pho­to with fam­i­ly, or check­ing in on what our friends are up to.”

Thanks to Think with Google, there’s a full PDF guide with strate­gies, insights, case stud­ies, and cus­tomer exam­ples for mas­ter­ing micro-moments.

How­ev­er, once you get up to speed on micro-moments, you’ll real­ize that one of the things that they will require you to do is dra­mat­i­cal­ly change your video strat­e­gy.

Up to now, the smartest video strat­e­gy seemed to be the one employed by John Lewis, the lead­ing depart­ment store chain in the Unit­ed King­dom. Each year at this time, John Lewis would launch a new Christ­mas advert on YouTube – “The Jour­ney” in 2012; “The Bear & The Hare” in 2013; and “#Mon­tyTheP­en­guin” in 2014. This year, the John Lewis Christ­mas advert is “#ManOn­The­Moon.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuz2ILq4UeA

But this may be the last time that this wide­ly-antic­i­pat­ed, big bud­get, annu­al effort may be the best video strat­e­gy for John Lewis or oth­er brands.

Why?

What Video Micro-Moments Mean For Your Strategy

Four hun­dred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, so when we turn to our mobile devices to watch video, we can choose from a near­ly lim­it­less library of on-demand con­tent. That makes what we choose to watch more “momen­tary” than ever.

Lucas Wat­son, the Vice Pres­i­dent of Glob­al Brand Solu­tions and Inno­va­tions at Google, tack­les this issue in a recent arti­cle, “Video Micro-Moments: What Do They Mean for Your Video Strat­e­gy?” He wrote:

Video con­sump­tion has gone from prime­time to all-the-time – and to address this shift in behav­ior, we need a new mar­ket­ing mod­el when it comes to video strat­e­gy.

When con­sumers look for answers, dis­cov­er new things, or make deci­sions, they’re often turn­ing to a device for help. At Google, we call these micro-moments, and they can hap­pen in search, on your brand’s web­site, in an app, and – increas­ing­ly – they’re hap­pen­ing on YouTube.

These moments of intent are redefin­ing the pur­chase jour­ney; peo­ple want the right infor­ma­tion right away. Brands’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with con­sumers through video have explod­ed into mil­lions of these moments. But to win at video micro-moments, you have to know how to iden­ti­fy them and how to act on them.”

He goes on reveal that video micro-moments gen­er­al­ly fall into four cat­e­gories:

  • I want-to-watch-what-I’m-into” moments, when peo­ple are seek­ing videos on their pas­sions or inter­ests. And 53 per­cent of online video view­ers watch online video to be inspired or enter­tained.
  • I want-to-know” moments, when peo­ple are try­ing to learn some­thing. And near­ly 70 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als agree they can find a YouTube video on any­thing they want to learn.
  • I want-to-do” moments, when they’re look­ing for step-by-step instruc­tions on how to make or do some­thing. And search­es relat­ed to “how-to” are up 70 per­cent year-over-year on YouTube.
  • I want-to-buy” moments, when they’re using video to try before they buy. And 18-to-34-year-olds say YouTube is the best place to learn about a prod­uct or ser­vice that inter­ests them.

Brands Winning Consumers In Video Micro-Moments

Wat­son goes on to out­line three ways to make sure you’re stay­ing rel­e­vant and use­ful in moments that real­ly mat­ter. He uses beau­ty brand Sepho­ra as an exam­ple of a brand has fig­ured out how to use video to play a mean­ing­ful role dur­ing one of these micro-moments.

But oth­er brands are also using video to shape the deci­sions and pref­er­ences of smart­phone users based on what they want in the moments that real­ly mat­ter. Here are five exam­ples.

1. Coca-Cola

When Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” cam­paign, it rec­og­nized that peo­ple may turn to mobile to find their own cus­tomized Coke.

In “Coca-Cola Meets Con­sumers in the Moment on Mobile,” Wendy Clark, Pres­i­dent of Sparkling Brands & Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing for Coca-Cola North Amer­i­ca, reveals how “Share a Coke” inspired con­sumers to take action and how Coca-Cola was there for them in the moment on mobile.

2. ‘Star Wars’ (Disney)

Before mil­lions of peo­ple go to the movies, they go to YouTube – often on their smart­phones. This is espe­cial­ly true among teens and young mil­len­ni­als, 65 per­cent of whom agree that watch­ing trail­ers on YouTube influ­ences which movies they will see.

Per­haps this explains why “Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens Trail­er (Offi­cial),” which was pub­lished on Oct. 19, 2015, already has more than 57.3 mil­lion views.

3. Realtor.com

Realtor.com’s mar­ket­ing team real­ized that search­ing for home list­ings is only one step in a long (and often con­fus­ing) home-buy­ing 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 home-buy­ing process.

For an exam­ple, check out “Episode 1: Know­ing When You’re Ready.” The two-minute videos res­onat­ed with con­sumers, dri­ving 400,000 YouTube views in the first three weeks and more than 1.4 mil­lion views in the first four months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TQC987BSiU

4. Home Depot

Home Depot mar­keters fig­ured out years ago that do-it-your­selfers were turn­ing to their phones to learn every­thing from “how to tile a bath­room floor” to “how to build an out­door fire pit area.” Many con­sumer end­ed up search­ing for answers on YouTube.

So to be more use­ful in these I‑want-to-do moments, Home Depot began to build out a bet­ter con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy by cre­at­ing a “how-to” col­lec­tion on YouTube. Today, the col­lec­tion has hun­dreds of videos, with the top videos reach­ing more than a mil­lion views. The full Home Depot “how-to” col­lec­tion has received more than 43 mil­lion views.

5. Unilever

Unilever real­ized that online demand for hair infor­ma­tion wasn’t being met by beau­ty brands. So they part­nered with Google to use search term data to pre­dict hair trends and con­sumer behav­iors before they hit the mar­ket.

Based on these insights, blog­gers for Unilever’s “All Things Hair” YouTube chan­nel cre­at­ed new con­tent with con­sumer intent and con­text in mind. They pro­vid­ed sim­ple, cred­i­ble answers to con­sumers in their I‑want-to-do hair care moments and drove phe­nom­e­nal brand engage­ment.

The result: Unilever’s chan­nel became the #1 hair brand chan­nel on YouTube in just 10 weeks. With­in a year, the chan­nel had amassed over 50 mil­lion YouTube views! Fifty mil­lion times when peo­ple want­ed help with their hair, Unilever was there.


Now that video con­sump­tion has been frac­tured into hun­dreds of real-time, intent-dri­ven micro-moments, brands need to shift their video pro­gram­ming sched­ules and adver­tis­ing bud­gets to cap­i­tal­ize on these micro-moments. Yes, Christ­mas will con­tin­ue to be a major event on the depart­ment store chain’s cal­en­dar and, yes, the Christ­mas sea­son now stretch­es from ear­ly Novem­ber to late Decem­ber. But what about hun­dreds of micro-moments that occur through­out the oth­er 10 months of the year?

Greg Jarboe

Written by Greg Jarboe

President, SEO-PR

Greg Jarboe is President and co-founder of SEO-PR, an award-winning content marketing agency that was founded in 2003. He’s the author of YouTube and Video Marketing and also a contributor to The Art of SEO, Strategic Digital Marketing, Complete B2B Online Marketing, and Enchantment. He’s profiled in the book Online Marketing Heroes, a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and writes for Tubular Insights and The SEM Post. He’s an executive education instructor at the Rutgers Business School and the Video and Content Marketing faculty chair at Simplilearn.

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