Five steps to successful moment marketing

With more and more brands investing in the approach, Kugeran Kugalingam, Director of Strategy at TVTY, is increasingly asked what the recipe for moment marketing success is. Whilst there’s no hard and fast rule, these five steps will help to master moment marketing. 

1.      Moment planning:

There are two major factors which need to be taken into consideration when planning for moment marketing; “Always ready” and “Tactical”.

Always ready moments might include: when your brand’s TV commercial has aired; a competitor’s TV commercial; a change in weather; the key outcome of sporting events; pollen or pollution levels; social chatter etc. These micro-moments play a huge role in which how consumers perceive your brand, product or service. Planning for these can yield great benefits for your brand. Micro-moments are the moments which do not stand out and which are less obvious. These moments are consumer-centric and understanding the consumer’s engagement when you reach out to them when the moments are right for the brand and consumer are crucial.

Tactical moments are the key events which spark big peaks in interest throughout the year. These moments can be major sporting events, religious festivals or holidays, London Fashion Week, X-factor, seasonal occasions like bank holidays, Easter, Summer, Back to School or Christmas. These events are publicly known and can be planned for.

A good starting point for planning moments is identifying the stimulus point for your brand. You can achieve this by:

2. Creating a moment marketing calendar

What are the seasonal impacts: do consumers engage more with your brand when the temperature has reached a certain point or during public holidays?

There are an infinite number of events and moments you could choose to underpin your campaign, so it’s important to consider a range of possible triggers, including, events, micro-moments within these events and Always On triggers. The chart to the right highlights some possible questions to ask at this stage to help you define the triggers that might work best for you. You should also consider which bespoke data sources you have access to, which might form new kinds of triggers, and how you can creatively combine triggers to really cut through with consumers and optimise spend.

3.      Aligning the moments with business intent:

What are the business goals throughout the year and how do you engage with your consumers to achieve your goals? Is there any activity planned for TV?

Moment marketing is most effective when the campaign objectives are aligned to the wider marketing objectives. The diagram to the right gives examples of how top-level marketing objectives can be overlaid onto a moment marketing campaign to inform the strategy.

4.      Understand the factors influencing your target audience

It’s critical to understand which underlying factors are most likely to impact the mood and purchasing behaviour of your target audience. This is where working with your consumer insights team can be hugely beneficial.  We recently worked with Danone and consumer insight revealed that its Actimel brand was particularly relevant when consumers needed to stay strong, at times when they were ‘having a bad day’ and this formed strategy behind the campaign.

5.      Use a platform that allows you to launch campaigns automatically and monitor effectiveness

Automating your moment marketing allows you to constantly track the triggers you’ve selected and set up rules to launch campaigns when certain conditions are met. The example to the right shows how an automated campaign tracking temperature triggers a Google campaign in real time. A strong tech platform should also allow you to track effectiveness in real time.

As with any marketing, it’s crucial to review each campaign and assess the reaction from consumers. The campaign performance should be shared back with the original planning team to inform your next campaign