…Get the unfair advantage on your competitors and customers
You might be thinking fantastic I can use these techniques to trick my customer into buying my product or service….
You are wrong and its time to stop reading any further and go and buy one of those million-dollar templates from someone for $197
Thinking that these techniques shortcut any sales is as stupid as thinking buying a Funnel template from someone who claims it’s done over 1 Million dollars and you can get the same in the next 90 days.
With hardly lifting a finger.
It’s the modern-day version of selling Snake Oil.
Let’s take a quick look at common key fundamentals of using behavioural science and psychology principles to guide your customer to purchase with less stress and a faster process.
The three main ones used are reverse psychology, scarcity and reciprocity.
There’s a high possibility you are using at least one of these now in your marketing strategies and funnels.
Often these principles when are explained are normally without the context of how they apply to each situation, it is like giving someone a car that has never driven before and getting them to take you to the shops.
It is probably not going to end well.
Although human behaviour is very predictable each person is unique in what they “think” they want.
Before we go further into how that applies in today’s funnel flows let’s jump back in time to 2005.
Moment of Truth (MOT)
This term was actually coined by Procter and Gamble (P&G) and it refers to the 3 – 5 seconds of a shopper noticing a product on a store shelf.
You achieve this by very good demographic profiling and targeting your packaging to capture their attention. Today we achieve this with laser targeted profiling, landing pages and very good remarketing aka funnels.
It might surprise you that the moment of truth concept has actually been around since the 1980s and spoken about by Jan Carlzon at the time president of Scandinavian Airlines.
He defined the concept very well in this statement:
“Any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression.”
Let’s break down the MOT into the three core areas:
• First Moment of Truth (FMOT) happens when the customer is looking at a product. This can be in-store or online as mentioned above.
• Second Moment of Truth (SMOT) happens when the customer actually purchases the product and uses it.
• Third Moment of Truth (TMOT) happens when customers provide feedback about the product. They share it with the company as well as their friends, colleagues, family members, etc.
Originally A.G. Lafley who was the chairman of P&G came up with only two moments of truth but later on added the third.
Now if we fast forward to 2011 Google did a mass amount of research into customer behaviour due to the introduction of the digital age and smartphones changing how we search for answers to our questions.
They coined a term called Zero Moment of Truth which slotted in perfectly as per the diagram example below:
Jim Lecinski (Vice President of Sales for Google) who actually coined the term to describe the change in the actual buying decision and the new journey of the consumer.
Let me provide some context to why did Google conduct this research and how it affects you today.
In a previous article, I highlight some of the changes that happened in 2010 to search with new services being offered.
But I don’t believe anyone could have predicted all the changes that occurred during 2009 and 2010 with the increase of mobile internet, search behaviour, social media and many other factors.
Google and Shopper sciences in April 2011 published the Zero Moment of Truth Macro Study and this uncovered that the average consumer used over 104 sources of information to make a final purchase decision compared to 2010 of just 5.3.
Wait a minute, this is the information that people are pushing today but its research data from about 9 years ago…
Yep, you would be correct in thinking that about 98% of all digital marketing training is copied or duplicated from the same sources.
Very little new research and information makes the light of day until many years after it was conducted.
We see all too often from research to the public domain it can take 10 – 20 years and even longer for medical breakthroughs to become daily accepted common practice.
Right now, you might be asking why is this relevant to the latest behaviour science and how can I use these ninja funnel techniques in my business.
Keep reading and I promise you it will be worth it…. having context on the research is just as important to how you implement it.
Think about it for a moment, if you could tap into the latest research of today and apply it to your business today, what results would you have tomorrow?
ZMOT is significant as this provided the first marketing framework that highlighted the importance of digital channels as a critical part of your customer journey and decision-making process.
In a similar timeframe as the ZMOT research was taking place, McKinsey and Company were conducting studies as well in 2009.
They published information about a new way of thinking about the customer journey using new technologies. The traditional marketing mindset saw customers behaviour within a funnel using a linear process.
You would become aware of the product and brand then eventually follow several steps to purchase a product and become a loyal customer.
Image via McKinsey
As the above images, you go through each stage and customers drop off as they go through the traditional funnel.
Many people even educate on using funnels the same as the above example however would you trust data over 10 years old in the digital world to be correct today?
What the research found is pretty astonishing, thanks to the power of the internet and the technologies that accessed them the decision-making journey looked similar to this:
Image via McKinsey.
The concept and reality of this new model introduced a completely new way of how consumers behave when buying products and services.
This model shows you the importance of providing customers with the right amount of information at the right time to make a purchasing decision, instead of just “plugging your funnels”
If you combined this framework along with ZMOT you had the most powerful marketing framework of this decade.
Let me tell you the most fortune 500 company made the most of this research and applying the principles to most of their campaigns which skyrocketed their net profits!
Imagine if you had applied these to your business 10 years ago!
What’s crazy is that most online courses only ever taught the ZMOT part of the Customer Journey however rarely combined.
Take a moment to think about what we are about to jump into.
If you applied the latest research from that was up and coming but not common knowledge 10 years ago when it was ground-breaking how different would your business be?
I am presenting you with the opportunity to do exactly that a decade on from the last major research to what we find today.
This is part one….
Part two will be released soon.