Today is going to be a special episode—I wanted to focus on the topic called marketing in the moment. The reason for that is if I look back at my history, in business, and in marketing, that is really what put me on the map. It’s also the content that has really helped people in the past. And I believe it is even more relevant today than it was when I wrote the book about 11 years ago. It was published in 2009, and I wrote it around 2007 to 2008. 

The topic of marketing in the moment was really born around this concept that I coined called web three-o marketing. When I was analyzing marketing 10-plus years ago, I started to notice this shift. It was a shift from email marketing to mobile marketing, from long-form blogs to Twitter, and from just YouTube to more live streaming or kind of virtual reality like secondlife.com. So it was making these shifts to more of the newer methods and platforms. 

While I was ahead of my time when I wrote that book, the phrase marketing in the moment really meant meeting your prospects where they are today—making sure that the content you’re putting out, the way that you’re marketing is 100% relevant to where they are in the process, and what platform or device they’re on. 
If they’re looking to interact with you via text message—they texted in and then you decide to call them—that’s not marketing in the moment. If they’re engaging with you through text or through another medium, that is the medium that you need to be meeting them and marketing and aiming to move them forward in the process. It’s all about looking at where your prospects are in that customer or business (if you serve businesses)—that customer journey. 

Are they in the research stage? Are they now looking at your website? Are they going to interface with you on live chat? Are they going to ask for testimonials or are they going to call in? How are you meeting them where they are today? 

What I’ve seen with a lot of local businesses is that they haven’t adapted with the times to make sure that they’re meeting those customers where they are, how, and where they want to be communicated with. The biggest shift that’s been happening for many years has been mobile. Your prospects don’t want you to call them. Why would you call them if you can text them? If they want you to call them, they will tell you that through a text message. If they’re emailing you, they don’t want you to text them. They don’t want you to call them or they don’t want your direct mail materials. They want to interface with you on that particular platform. That is marketing in the moment—advertising in the moment—selling in the moment. You’re in the moment where they are in that process. 

And in order to effectively do this, you do need to make sure that you’re on all those key platforms. You need to understand how your prospects want to interface with you. Now, there are some businesses where marketing in the moment is being available via phone because you have a business that warrants a phone. If they want to interact with phone, you need to make sure that that marketing channel and marketing method are 100% dialed in—your phone scripts are on point, you’re well-staffed up, and everything is completely dialed in. 

However, if your customers are a little bit more tech-ish or tech-savvy, they’re going to reach out to you on Facebook Messenger and you need to make sure that you have that setup. They’re going to be wanting to text in, email in, or leverage live chat or video chat. They’re gonna want to have all those methods that are completely dialed in. You’re going to be, otherwise, you are losing customers if you’re not ready to market to them or engage with them on those particular platforms. 

Your business needs to continue to adapt to the changing attention. If the attention is moving to Facebook and Facebook Messenger (which I’m seeing happening at a drastic pace) Facebook Messenger being integrated into websites and then people having those conversations there. You need to have that dialed in and ready to go or your competitors are going to pass you by. 

Marketing in the moment is all about those micro-moments that are going to make or break your business, the micro-moments that are going to make or break the potential sale. It’s all about how you show up, it’s all about are you ready to engage and have those conversations with your prospects on the devices and platforms that they want? 

So, when I coined the phrase web three-o marketing that was talking about how things were shifting again from long-form blogs where people are leaving comments, very few people are leaving comments on blogs anymore. The attention then was shifting over to Twitter where people could then leave these little micro 140-tweets, questions, comments, ideas, etc. If people didn’t want to be watching as much static video, but they wanted to engage with you on live stream, then you need to start pushing out live streaming and being able to engage with them there. 

Now is the absolute best time to make sure that you’re marketing in the moment—to make sure that you’re capturing all those potential pieces of attention. All those micro-moments that you are in control that you’re ready for. It is an extremely powerful tactic if you can execute this effectively.