What the Zero Moment of Truth Means for Business

By Brett Kishkis


The first moment of truth (FMOT) traditionally has been what advertisers labeled as the initial impression of a product or service. In the past, you would find the first impression of any product through an advertising campaign or by discovering the product in a retail environment. This had long been a barrier that each product or service was required to climb over prior to getting sold.

Because of the web, we currently have the ‘zero moment of truth’ (ZMOT). This is where customers discover the product itself or an advertisement for it. You then seek out testimonials and competitors' prices on the internet prior to making a decision to purchase. This is particularly crucial since customers can look at your competition as well. Around 70% of shoppers in the U.S. alone examine reviews prior to making a purchase. Additionally, there's no such thing as a product that is too minor or too inexpensive to get around zero moment of truth.

This is because it’s much easier than in the past. Before smartphones and the internet, consumers would only research big ticket items such as cars and expensive electronics. Now, it’s quick and easy to search reviews online using a smartphone while shopping. This pre-shopping can cause your business to lose a sale and one of your competitors to gain a sale. Having a barcode app makes this very easy.

Referral marketing has returned and is a bit more potent than in the past. In reality, it has gone from one-to-one to one to a million. Shoppers have tremendous strength. With technologies shifting at an extremely fast rate, individuals will proceed to acquire power. The way forward for search pertaining to search engines will depend more about what customers feel. Google’s entry into social networking and its plus one button are illustrations of this. In the future, Facebook likes as well as plus one's will matter enormously in search engine results.

It is essential to make zero moment of truth a top priority. There are numerous solutions to exploit this. Initially, understanding your own product or service on Google Trends provides you with details into what your potential customers are trying to find. Secondly, you ought to take a look at your goods, services, and company name with Google Keyword Tool. This may expose most challenges that your potential customers are attempting to fix.

Zero moment of truth impacts virtually all items. There's no item which is too minor for zero moment of truth to make a difference. 3M, for example, has more than 3,000 responses exclusively for scotch tape.

Your happiest customers have the power to help you with ZMOT. Blogs, video, and social media all help in this regard. Look at how many people that are reviewing Apple’s products on YouTube. Betty Crocker benefits every time someone makes a video of a recipe that uses one of their products. Every business should have a YouTube strategy. Not for direct selling. Rather, offering something that searchers will find helpful. YouTube is also the second most used search engine.

When you get some unfavorable reviews, there's no need to get stressed out. In reality, a few unfavorable testimonials are okay since they make your goods look authentic. If each review is five stars, consumers will think that your online reviews were manufactured. This can be, in reality, the case sometimes. Examine books on Amazon.com which were just launched. You will discover a handful of five star critiques on or prior to the release date. For such reviews to be legitimate, the customer would've had to purchase the book and had been so stimulated in which they read it in a single sitting. After that, they instantly logged on to Amazon.com to evaluate it. This is not likely.




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