go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

EMOT – electronic moment of truth

during the customer’s journey down the “purchase funnel” from awareness through consideration to the purchase, there can be many moments of truth. For modern consumers, who spend a large portion of their day online, or at least “connected” via a mobile device, many of these moments of truth are “electronic” – in other words, electronic moments of truth – EMOTs. Understanding EMOTs through the purchase funnel can lead to greater efficiencies in advertisers’ marketing programs to drive customers expeditiously through the funnel. 

For example, when a customer goes online to do research – an EMOT electronic moment of truth — if they can’t find you, you don’t exist.  Many many factors contribute to being “findable” online. Proper search engine optimization (SEO) can ensure a brand has web pages that show up near the top of the results on the first page of search engine results. Also, using brand names that are not common words like “open” (american express small business brand) or “tag” (male deodorant from P&G) means they can more easily be found. For example GE’s “ecoimagination” or Subway’s “footlongs.”  (see “made-up words” post) are easily found. 

Other EMOTs could include a person standing on the street (in New York City) and needing a restaurant recommendation in the vicinity, immediately! They use their mobile device and search for restaurants in the area around their current GPS location. When they search on their mobile device, if the website is not mobile compliant and does not display properly or cannot be used by a primitive mobile browser (no graphics, no javascript, no flash, etc.) the user would not be able to find what they are looking for. So this EMOT was a FAIL for the customer. 

The brands  that will be the most successful are the ones who can deliver value at every EMOT of their target customer. If the customer goes online to search and research, the brand’s information should be findable – even better, the specific bit of information being sought should be findable. If the customer needs recipe help while standing in the store (”what ingredient or how much should I buy?”) the information should be findable, specifically through a mobile device.  Ultimately by delivering value at each EMOT, brands can answer customers’ missing links and thus efficiently move the customer down the purchase funnel towards the purchase.

Tags: electronic moment of truth, emot