Zero Moment Of Truth
Thu, Oct 6, 2011Zero Moment Of Truth
What is the Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT) and why is it of pinnacle importance (yes pinnacle) to be in front of your customer during this zero moment decision process?
The Zero Moment Of Truth is a new stage of the consumer buying cycle, and most marketing and search engine optimization strategies are simply not keeping up with target markets.
It’s really pretty simple, if your product or service is not in front of your customer during a Zero Moment Of Truth decision you will not get the sale.
The Incoming PR labs team has tested “Zero Moment Of Truth targeting” with search engine optimization and seen incredible results – 8% sales conversions from first time organic visitors – by seeking out and targeting the keyphrases a user searches for during a Zero Moment Of Truth decision, and by providing them the exact information they were looking for.
I’ll explain exactly what I mean in a moment, but first take a look at this video from Google’s new ZMOT site:
Winning the Zero Moment Of Truth
#1 take away from the video: “The Zero Moment Of Truth can’t be an afterthought… you must think of it as part of your go-to market [search engine optimization] strategy”
So the Zero Moment Of Truth is that moment in the consumers buying cycle when they grab their laptop, mobile phone, or some other connected devise and start digging deeper into the product or service they are considering buying.
If we are anything alike – I’m sure you’ve had your own Zero Moment Of Truth decision.
Sitting at your computer looking for a new widget you decide to search for “widget name reviews” or “best prices on widgets”. These are zero moment keyphrases. And when you use them you are usually moments away from making the purchase decision.
Zero Moment Of Truth in the wild (our labs test)
How did we test zero moment keywords with the above mentioned 8% conversions on first time visitors from organic search engine traffic?
We picked a very competitive niche in the smoking cessation market and targeted only Zero Moment Of Truth keyphrases for the products we were offering.
We built a strategically search engine optimized website from the ground up to target the zero moment keyphrases we had isolated and provided our visitors with exactly what they were looking for. In our case this was honest detailed reviews of the top 10 products in the niche along with user submitted reviews for the various products.
First we established affiliate relationships with each of the top 10 products in the market. We ordered one of each product, tested it and provided honest reviews including video, articles and photos. We encouraged our visitors to submit their own reviews and ranked the products initially by our own experiences, then later by the accumulated ratings of our visitor submitted reviews.
From the beginning we designed and optimized the sites on page factors to show that we were all about honest product reviews in the niche. We used our tiered off-site content and link building process to achieve top rankings for the Zero Moment Of Truth keywords we had identified.
The results of targeting the Zero Moment Of Truth decision in our consumers could not have been more glaring. Visitors read our reviews, chose a product, and made the purchase. Eight out of every 100 visitors to our site made the purchase decision right there, at the Zero Moment Of Truth. That’s an incredible result for first time visitors!
That’s the power of search engine optimization combined with consumer buying habits.
How can you implement a Zero Moment Of Truth search engine optimization strategy?
First let’s see where you stand:
When you start to type in your product or market name in to google what are the auto complete suggestions?
Does your website appear near the top of the page one results for those phrases? (if not our search engine optimization services can help)
How does your brand appear on the key ratings and review sites for your category?
If someone searches for your keyphrase from your TV, print or radio ads what do they see?
Search for phrases like [your brand], [your brand] review, best [your category], [your brand] coupons/discount code, even [your brand] scam.
That should give you a pretty good idea where you stand for your Zero Moment Of Truth keyphrases.
Here are the 7 ways Google suggests to start winning the Zero Moment Of Truth:
- Put someone in charge of Zero Moment Of Truth strategy
- Find your zero moment keyphrases
- Answer the questions people are asking at the Zero Moment Of Truth explicitly in your content
- Use both on and off site optimization strategies
- Be fast – “In the world of ZMOT, speed beats perfection” – Jim Lecinski (Google)
- Use video – a huge portion of ZMOT is visual, engage your visitors with video and answer their questions.
- Jump in. “Showing up is 80% of life” – Woody Allen
If you have questions about how to best incorporate the Zero Moment Of Truth in to your businesses search engine optimization strategy just reach out to one of our search engine optimization specialists, they will be happy to help!
You can also visit Google’s Zero Moment Of Truth site.
To your ZMOT success!
Greg Netland
http://IncomingPR.com
