Maximizing Micro-Moments with Michael Janda [DMC Recap] 

Michael Janda is an experienced agency veteran, who shares systems and strategies to help creative freelancers and agencies run their businesses with confidence and make more money. 

He has written two books: The first, Burn your Portfolio all about how you can thrive as a designer in a workplace environment, and the second, The Psychology of Graphic Design Pricing on how to overcome the pricing confusion to be fairly compensated for your work. 

Michael has recently left his agency to pursue his passion in business coaching and speaking, so he jumped at the chance to speak at the DMC event this August about the importance of micro-moments.

4 Types of Micro-Moments

Marketing has changed over the last 8 or 9 years and we as marketers have to change as well, Michael said. He presented a construct on how to plan marketing based on micro-moments, a phrase coined by Google. Micro-moments are when people reflexively turn to their devices, usually in the smaller moments when we consume our media. These moments come in various forms, and Google puts them into 4 categories:

• I Want To Know 
• I Want To Go
• I Want To Do
• I Want To Buy

These are the four things people are thinking about when they pull out their phones in those reflexive micro-moments. This is a part of the buyer journey as it is now, but can also be scattered throughout what we see as the old “linear” process. How we process and consume content is changing constantly with social media and easy access to information through our smartphones. 

People Approach Buying in Moments, Not Funnels

We as marketers have to start by redefining a narrative and the brand we represent. We have to think in a different way—we can’t afford to think in a funnel. Nothing in our marketing strategy should be linear marketing anymore. It has to be adaptable content to engage with our audience. That is why it is important to have snippets of content as a part of your brand story, presented for consuming in a variety of different ways. 

People don’t give you the time to consume your content. Overwhelming content gets skipped completely. In order to avoid this, you have to optimize your content in a way that gets delivered as fast as possible.

Marketing for Micro-Moments

How do we market content for micro-moments? Michael outlines four steps:

1. Create the long-form content first. Long-form content can be anywhere from 500-4000 words. Michael used 1200 words as a baseline for his research. Long-form content can be a book, ebook, website article, blog article or even a longer video. Interestingly, search engines give preferential treatment to long-form content, so it is still valuable. Long-form content creates expertise and authority for Google rankings in addition to adding more value for the readers, and can become the foundation of a campaign.
2. Dissect your content into “snackable” pieces. This means taking your long-form content and finding valuable tidbits to break down into subtopics, data, lists or quotes. And then planning your content based on the “time bucket” micro-moments as seen above. Remember to always define the action you want your audience to take with these “snackable” pieces.
3. Measure and Adjust. When looking at the time bucket content pieces, you can see that marketing is changing, and all encompassing of individual consumers’ experiences. People will use their phones to research products, find reviews, call a store location, find a store location to visit in person, and then make a purchase. There are no longer online customers and in-store customers—there are only customers. And because of this, we must adjust the way we deliver content.

In conclusion, the main points Michael wanted the DMC attendees to walk away with were:

• Be smart with your first 8 seconds of content.
• Create Content based on intention.
• Create content based on time.
• Create content that entices the user to take the next step.
• Measure moments and connect the dots between content and action.