Recently, I got a news alert on a topic that I was interested. When I clicked on it, I got this message below:

I was extremely perturbed as I was not expecting a pop-up message like this, as I really wanted to control the choice of ads from my side, to decide whether I wanted to see any ad or not. I really didn't care, I found an alternative source for the same information and got to read it.

What I having been observing is that businesses still follow 20th century marketing models which I strongly believe does not work in the new emerging digital ecosystem.  Also, marketing of yesteryears was about "pushing" messages but marketing of the future is about managing and engaging empowered customers who decide to "pull" and then engage with the message or not.

Information monopolies & interruption marketers really don't work that way. They believe now with digital, they have captive customers looking into their home screens and they can apply the same old world marketing principles. Those principles don't work any more. The TV remote/Set-top boxes changed the way customers started viewing television programs & skipping marketing messages. In the digital world, the quick switch to a new page or clicking a skip button makes marketing messages a blind spot even more. 

The Consumer Decision Journey is changing

In an interesting article, Jack Loechner, Editor of Centre of Media research, writes "Marketing has always sought those moments, or touch points, when consumers are open to influence....Marketers have learned to “push” marketing toward consumers at each stage of the funnel process to influence their behavior. But the qualitative and quantitative research in the automobile, skin care, insurance, consumer electronics, and mobile-telecom industries shows that something quite different now occurs..."  Information Monopolies  & marketers need to learn and adapt to this new paradigm.

Publishers need to look at themselves thro' a new lens

More recently, a leading Privacy advocate Alexander Hanff  led a revolt against publishers which caught the attention of European regulators. And he outlines possible ways in which publishers, of course with the support of marketers, how they need to change their approach.

Information monopolies should work closely with marketers and build a transparent dialog platform to engage with these new informed, empowered customers in the digital economy. They need to move away from "message  & influence" mindset to a "inform & dialog" mindset. It requires not a "Talk down" approach but a "Listen-up" approach.

I was reading an interesting update on Forrester Marketing 2016, where companies & marketers were asked to take cognizance of micromoments. I don't disagree fundamentally with this theory but I was thinking how do marketers prepare & adapt to this new paradigm.

One of the top questions that came to my head was - How do marketers really identify these micromoments? In an increasingly walled garden world of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon- many customers' micromoments are happening, as I write this, in different digital platforms independently. Not only that, there are ever so many billion micromoments that happen offline in a customers' life and how do marketers make sense of it?

My premise is that it is now increasingly becoming  O2O(Offline-to-Online & Vice-versa) world, marketers need to look at this very differently. Here's my view of how this should be looked at:

Intent-driven micromoments - Some digital platforms naturally fit into intent-driven micromoments. For example, Google is a great example of a digital platform where "billions of intents" are searched by customers. People don't search for a product, they search for a need.They can be searching for a home, for a restaurant, for a car, for a college education, for naming a baby to be born, comparing a product to be bought, for a holiday etc. etc. In a customer's buying cycle - the trigger, consider & search- happens here. Marketers need to find a way of dominating "intent-share" at these micromoments.

Sharing-driven micromoments - Google, as a platform, does not naturally fit into this micromoment as customers don't share their moments there. A digital platform like Facebook fits here far more beautifully & perfectly. It is not difficult to see people sharing their convocation photos during the current season, their holiday, their child's birthday, their family get-together etc. etc. Sharing-driven moments provide opportunities for marketers to blend brands with their customer's life needs and see how they can be a part of these different micromoments. Marketers need to find ways of dominating "sharing-driven moments" & align it with their brand's storytelling.

Experience-driven micromoments - Some digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook, blogs fall here as customers share their experience - good and bad - here. For example, tweeting about poor govt. services is becoming a norm and governments globally are encouraging this. The same is with product performance, customer service, product support etc. where again experiences are largely drive this micromoment and is shared with world outside.  This micromoment can be a new business opportunity for a competing brand and retention opportunity for the incumbent brand. Again, marketers need to find ways of dominating "experience-share" micromoments.

The above are largely only online micromoments but as a marketer, one needs to find offline micromoments, which they can own,  that are contextual in the households they have been bought again & again. Be it thro' embedded IoT & other "service-led" mindset transformation platforms, marketers need to find new solutions here. 

Finally, in this battle for the customer & the micromoment, the other question to be asked is, who owns the data of the micromoment & privacy related issues need to be addressed very carefully by marketers. Doc Searls, in his book talks of intent casting,  where customers play a role in sharing their intent and brands then need to play a reverse role of fulfilling the micromoment.

Managing the customer micromoment is far more complex & deep than one can think of. And marketers need to rapidly innovate to gain share of this micromoment in their customer's life thro' relevant platforms and contextual marketing.