I was on vacation, in a super fancy day club. It was a hot sunny day, so I decided to order myself a mojito. I wasn’t expecting anything too fancy, but I guess when you’re paying $25 for a drink, you know it's going to be nothing out of the ordinary. As soon as the drink was brought to our table, I knew I had to share this with my friends on Instagram. I started to frantically reach out for my phone, only to realize it had been stolen. For the last 5 days of the vacation, I was without a phone. This is when I realized how dependant I had become on that tiny little object that I needed to keep charging every 6 hours. I am not a smoker, but I am sure I felt the same way a chain smoker feels when they are trying to quit.
Now that I have established my dependency on my mobile phone, let me quickly walk you through a typical day’s usage. When I finally disable the alarm on my phone after hitting the snooze button at least three times, the first thing I do is check my emails and messages. Before I begin my day, I always like to check the weather, for which I use the weather app on my phone. After spending more than necessary time studying the weather, I launch the music app, connect my phone to the Bluetooth speaker, and listen to my favorite tunes while sipping on freshly brewed coffee and scrolling through my Instagram feed at the same time. By then it’s time for my online lectures and since the camera on my laptop is not in the best shape, I use my phone to attend lectures and group meetings. Every now then I also find myself searching for random things on google. Sometimes even asking the search engine to solve simple math problems.
Sometimes I am simply awestruck at how many things Google can do for us! Hell, now it can even control the lights and the thermostat in my room. I would say that Google is definitely one of the most, if not the most used app on my phone. I am also a sucker for watching television shows and videos, so you will often find me watching my new favorite Netflix show, on my phone while washing the dishes or cooking food.
Another app that I have come to use way more than I expected is the Fitness+ app from Apple. With the help of my apple watch, it helps me track all my physical activity for the day and it also provides a huge library of workouts for me to follow. Some of the other apps that I use on a daily basis are Snapchat, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard, WhatsApp, TikTok YouTube, Internet Banking apps, LinkedIn, Wealthsimple, Splitwise, Uber Eats, google maps and google home.
With the plethora of options that are available to us, we have multiple apps available for the same functionality. It’s my personal observation that I tend to stick to the more established apps to perform daily functionalities. Google is my go-to for everything. Now when I talk about Google, I mean all the apps that come under its very large umbrella. If I want to know something I search on google, if I want to go somewhere, I search on google for the address, if I want to buy something I rely on google to find it for me on the world wide web, If I want to learn something I log on to YouTube to watch a video and it goes on and on, but you get the idea. Google is there to help you in every moment you need it. And that is exactly why the company has managed to be there in every micro-moment.
As we know that google categorizes micro-moments into 4 groups. Some of the other apps that do an amazing job at seizing the opportunity in micro-moments Netflix, Apple Music, Crypto.com, and UberEats.
We can categorize Netflix and Apple Music into one category for the purpose of this discussion. They both do an amazing job for “I-want-to-listen/watch” micro-moments. Even though they are out of the scope of the micro-moments that google defines, it is something that I have really come to love.
Netflix and Apple Music have content to deliver for every mood you are in. It understands when you’re looking for new content and delivers just that. But it just doesn’t deliver any random new content to you. It's always personalized and to your liking, something that it has learned through observing your usage patterns. I know it sounds creepy, but I appreciate it. Netflix even introduced the shuffle button that plays random snippets from shows and movies, to help you decide what to watch.
Now the next app I am going to be talking about, not only does it excel at “I-want-to-buy” micro-moment but is also exceptionally good at “I-want-to-sell” micro-moment. The app that I am talking about is Crypto.com. I have been wanting to invest in cryptocurrencies for a while now but never got myself to do so because the process was just way too complicated. Even popular platforms like Binance and Coinbase are very daunting for beginners. Crypto.com simplified the entire process and made it as easy as adding stuff to your cart and paying for it at checkout. It has also made selling your digital assets at the touch of your finger. And we cannot talk about Crypto.com without mentioning how amazing and easy its user interface and user experience are.
Now I’m thinking a little out of the box here. 10 years ago, ordering takeout was a very lengthy and not so easy process. I dreaded making that call and explaining to the person on the other side of the phone, repeating the same thing 100 times and still having the wrong order delivered.
Uber-Eats so efficiently satisfies my “I-want-to-buy” or “I-want-to-order” or “I-want-to-eat” micro-moments. It has streamlined the entire process of ordering food.
Although UberEats is a life savior, I do have one thing to complain about. Initially, their UI and UX were not the best. It was clunky and somewhat hard to navigate. However, they have done a great job at changing that and making the app environment very user-friendly. That is exactly why you will find me scrolling through my UberEats feeds for hours before placing a $20 takeout order.
So, after digressing a lit bit, let me stir back to the topic and conclude this article. This dependency on mobile is only going to grow, especially crediting to virtual/voice assistants. If you want to be there, in every micro-moment that a person is going to take an action on that might be beneficial for your business, you need to have a super-strong marketing strategy for mobile. So the moral of the story is that Marketers need to acknowledge this growing dependency on mobile and small businesses need to jump on the bandwagon and create a focused marketing strategy that caters only to mobile.
Comments