Mike de Block

It’s not your imagination, marketing really has gotten harder, as the attention span is decreasing among consumers. It has changed our traditional way of buying from: stimulus-shelf-experience to what Google calls Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT), which you can see below. The result is that companies have to facilitate reasons to stimulate word-of-mouth in order to influence the second step in the ZMOT buying process.

Forth-flowing, traditional billboards will not work anymore, since people on the road are paying more attention to their mobile phones then on the road, not even mentioning the billboards along the highway. 

Brands therefore have to outcare their competition to get into the heard of their core group. Enable your customers to help your company get shape, but do not let them decide. Since, you only have to facilitate the carrot on the stick, which makes them talking and engaging. However, at some point you have to spread some carrots, but as you are not the salvation army, you only have a few carrots to give away. For this reason it’s vital that prior to giving out carrots you have to grow the engagement level with your core group of followers through interaction. Many brands go wrong at this point, since they assume they will get the attention anyhow. However, the attention economy is the new battleground, which makes it vital to first create an army (brand advocates) before you go to battle with your (yet) non-believers. The carrots will then please your army and convince the non-believers that they better join your side, since you care. In short, it’s the famous game of reciprocity, where people tend to return a favor. This is extremely vital in the process where brands should have a face or at least behave human. Therefore brands first has to show your customer a favor, before you can expect your customers do something in return. For this reason, the quote from Michael Poter is really hitting the nail on his head in what in essence is most important to gain succes. So for all CEO’s out there who might read this post (you cannot blame me for my ambition), remember that “Whatever is good for the community is good for business”. Fortunately, this is closely linked to my field of interest; social commerce which is essentially the concept of word of mouth in the context of sales. Surprising or not;)