Winning the Negative Moment of Truth
As a student in the Communicating Value and Web Conversion graduate certificate program from the University of Florida and MECLABS Institute, I recently read the ebook “Winning the Zero Moment of Truth” by Jim Lecinski.
Even though it is obvious content marketing for Google, it’s still a very good book. It’s six years old at this point, so I’m sure you’ve heard the term Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) by now, but there are still many good ideas you can get from the book to improve your content and other digital marketing.
The power of ratings and reviews
As he explains in the book, Lecinski’s ZMOT term is a play off a quote from Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley (p. 11, Lecinski, 2011):
The best brands consistently win two moments of truth. The first moment occurs at the store shelf, when a consumer decides whether to buy one brand or another. The second occurs at home, when she uses the brand — and is delighted, or isn’t.
That got me thinking of creating my own play off of ZMOT that ties into Lafley’s Second Moment of Truth.
In much of the book, Lecinski explains how important ratings and reviews are for a range of products thanks to how friction-free getting this information is on the internet versus the pre-internet days. No longer are people only reading the print edition of Consumer Reports to get reviews on cars and washing machines, now they search reviews on everything.
“When I go to a presentation at, say, a Hilton Hotel, I tell the audience this: ‘There are more reviews online for the Bounce Dryer Bar than there are for the hotel we’re sitting in right now.’” he says (p. 38, Lecinski, 2011) He says that 70% of Americans now say they look at product reviews before making a purchase (p. 10, Lecinski, 2011).
What comes before ZMOT? Delivering value
Well, ratings and reviews are so important, Lecinski has a curious oversight in his book. He discusses many digital marketing tactics to get discovered, but he doesn’t focus significant space on how to make sure those discoveries (in the form of reviews, at least) are good for your brand.
The answer, of course, is to win Lafley’s Second Moment of Truth — when customers use your product.
I called it the Negative Moment of Truth because it comes before Zero. However, it’s a cycle of course and nothing really comes before zero. The Second Moment of Truth cycles back to the Zero Moment of Truth.
Deliver value to the customer, and the ratings and reviews will encourage future customers to buy when they encounter the ZMOT.
You might also like …
Customers as Value-Creating Partners, Not Just Value-Extraction Targets
Customer-First Marketing: The customer is always right … but not always right for your company
Categories: Consumer Marketing, Marketing Consumer Marketing, ecommerce, marketing insights, Online Advertising
