SEO and ZMOT – Optimizing for the Zero Moment of Truth

Nowadays, purchase decisions are being made in a completely new marketing landscape and as SEOs we need to understand how to optimize our websites, links and social media for this new marketing reality embodied in Google’s concept of the ZMOT.

Background on ZMOT

Google recently introduced a new marketing buzzword for a not-so-new marketing concept.  They call it the Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT and the term stems from two popular concepts introduced by Proctor & Gamble: FMOT (First Moment of Truth) and SMOT (Second Moment of Truth).  The FMOT refers to that moment in the store when a consumer decides which brand to purchase from the dozens staring back at him or her from the store shelves.  The SMOT then is the moment when the consumer uses the product back at home.  Google then added to this the ZMOT – the moment when the consumer is researching the various products by reading online product ratings, reviews, blog posts, what their social network has to say, discount coupons, etc., to gather the information they need to make a purchase decision.  For a passionate and well-researched description of this new marketing reality, see Jim Lecinski’s ebook, ZMOT: Winning the Zero Moment of Truth, which is published by Google and distributed for free.

Now purchasers of big ticket items (B2B as well as B2C) have always researched their purchase decisions so this is not a new concept.  But what is new (besides the fancy acronym) is that, thanks to the social media revolution, this same kind of online research is now so easy to create and consume that it is no longer reserved for the big ticket purchases; consumers are researching items like laundry detergent, and even pens and Scotch tape that sell for less than a dollar! The important implication is that your brand now must be visible and well presented at all these ZMOT touch points in order to “win” the ZMOT.

Winning the Zero Moment of Truth with SEO

In chapter 6 of his ebook, Jim Lecinski outlines the 7 smart ways to start winning at ZMOT:

1. Put Someone in Charge

2. Find Your Zero Moments

3. Answer the Questions People Are Asking

4. Optimize for ZMOT

5. Be Fast

6. Don’t Forget Video

7. Jump In!

While all these steps are important, I’m going to focus on steps 2, 3 and 4.

Find Your Zero Moments

To understand where the zero moments are for your prospective customers, you can look at what they are searching for and what they are finding.  The former is old hat for SEOs – all it takes is good solid keyword research paying special attention to keyword phrases used in the research phase of the buying cycle such as “ ___ reviews”, “___ comparisons” and “best ___”.  Looking at what they are finding, on the other hand, is labor-intensive and may be new to many of us but in this case it is well worth the effort.  For example, suppose you were researching humidifiers.  A Google search on “humidifier reviews”  yields a bunch of low-authority sites:

Figure 1

Now if you sell humidifiers and you’re not listed in these review sites, then you have two choices to try and win the ZMOT: get your product listed on these sites or try to displace these sites with a higher authority microsite that is optimized for the search term “humidifier reviews”.   Each of these choices is actionable.  In one case your task is to figure out how to approach these reviews sites and get your product added.  In the other case you will need to design and build out a microsite dedicated to this purpose.  And you may decide to pursue both.  The point is that winning the ZMOT requires that you find these zero moments that your customers are finding and take action.

Answering The Questions That People Are Asking

You must be able to anticipate the questions that buyers are asking in the research phase of their purchase cycle and then answer them with appropriate content.  Continuing the humidifiers example above, suppose that you decide to create your own humidifier reviews microsite.  The first question to answer is what questions should the microsite address?  Here again effective keyword research can help guide your efforts.  Using Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, I found the following for keyword traffic:

Figure 2Based on this, I can immediately see that procuring a domain like humidifier-reviews-ratings.com would be a strong start. Furthermore, based on the keyword ideas above, I have a great list of content ideas for the new “expert reviews” site, since I know what people are actually looking for. Another source of up-to-the-minute insights like this is the site search data from your own site.

Optimizing For ZMOT

Now that we know where our customers’ zero moments are and what questions they are asking at those moments, what can we do about it?  Marketing’s job has always been to craft the message and position the product or service against the competition.  But now with the new marketing reality, our customers are reading reviews and ratings and tweets and blog posts about our products, all of which are written by other people and therefore are no longer under the control of marketing.  At best we can only hope to participate in the conversation.  And participate we must.

According to Wendy Clark, senior vice president for integrated marketing com­munications and capabilities for The Coca-Cola Company, “The days of controlling the message are absolutely over. At best you’ll be invited in and you’ll get to co-create and participate with consumers.”  As Wendy notes, you have to adjust your content for all four parts of the conversation: paid (your advertising), owned (your content), earned (social media, awards, reviews and ratings) and the newest part, shared (brand exposure through partner websites and stores). Consistency and appropriate style are the keys to success in optimizing for the conversations that will affect the ZMOT for your customers.