How marketers working with Google monetize our discomfort

The first part of the article

Today, three of the four owners of the smartphone, when they have any need that requires immediate satisfaction, the first thing they turn to Google . Accordingly, marketers working with Google (including myself) survive due to their ability to play on your impatience and impulsivity, which are manifested when using a mobile device. We should be right there and slip your advertisement exactly at the “micro-moment” - that is, the second when you decide to resort to a smartphone in order to eliminate the discomfort of the inability to get something. This could be anything - a hot sale, a route to the store that is about to close, information about courses, where they quickly grab the amount of space.

As in simple termsGoogle’s representatives explain : “Moments are moments of intent when decisions are made and preferences are formed.” But such a formulation does not fit with the fact that they cannot openly state: the mood “I want right now!” Usually gives rise to unpleasant feelings of fear and anxiety in us. When you look at something in a similar mood (here it is not necessarily about goods), these emotions undermine your composure. Your urgent need - for information, navigation, transactions, no matter - begins to mix with the desire to somehow get rid of a heavy feeling.

In reality, the goal of Google (and of all marketers associated with it) is to get as much money out of you as possible when you are not able to reason sensibly - and we achieve this through advertising. Micromoments are so important to Google that in May 2016 their Keynotes were dedicated to teaching marketers how to get the most out of them. The bottom line is not to miss any of these points and in each case show an ad that is most suitable for the corresponding kind of impulse. In an ideal world, marketers would be taught to help users competently work with Google in those seconds when they can easily succumb to outside influence. In fact, we are being trained to wrap your confusion in our favor.

Every day we experience about 150 micro-moments, often unnoticed by ourselves. Most of them are accompanied by advertising. These ads are tailored to what you are looking for, tailored to your age, gender, income level, location, browsing history (as well as all the other targeting options that I talked about in the first part). Marketers who are not able to instantly display an ad in these elusive moments of mental turmoil will not live in the market for a long time.

Speculation on despair and desperate desires for a consumer society is not new. In fact, it rests on that. But over the past few years, the ability to quickly respond to despair with targeted advertising has reached unprecedented heights. Three factors contributed to this:

• The number of devices available to consumers has reached a critical mass.
• Our attitude towards smartphones has changed.
• Our relationship with Google has also changed.

Here is a textbook example of a micro-moment for which any marketer is ready to kill: you, a buyer, are standing in a shoe store, which is about to close. You know for sure that there is a new Air Max model here that you have long had a look at, but you have not had time to read the reviews. For these sneakers you will have to pay a tidy sum, so it’s definitely worth a look what people say before paying money. But you do not catch the eye of the seller, who could ask a question about the model. Or, rather, even the seller is a stone's throw away from you, but you will believe what you read on the phone more than what you hear from him (we all sin this).

“Dear customers,” they say over the speakerphone, “our store closes in five minutes. Please go to the box office with the selected goods. "

At this moment of despair, you are turning to Google. Drive “Nike Air Max Reviews” into the search bar. The page with the results is loaded, all of our ads are scattered.

While Google is “thinking”, in the AdWords account of every marketer who is targeting your location, your request (“Nike Air Max Reviews”), your gender, age, income level, and so on, is undergoing frenetic work. The savvy marketers who suit you in all respects will not spare money at the auction for the first place on the mobile screen (in mobile marketing, the first and second positions in the results are valued, because only from them there is good - the vast majority of users will not scroll page).

The advertisement is loading.

“We are closing now,” the seller tells you. You continue to ignore him, poor fellow.

You are already ready to click on the ad to read the reviews that it promises you, and at that very moment your eyes grab the price in the text. The same model they cost $ 25 less. That's all, now you have decided. The conversion took place. Trying not to meet anyone’s eyes, you go straight to the exit. Then, chilling in the car, you go through the ad and buy sneakers through the site.

Somewhere in the world, some marketer has just recaptured your moment. As a reward for the victory, they received not only your money, but also a much more valuable trophy - conversion. Their AdWords account book is marked +1. Now they will always be able to return to this moment, see with what leverage you were brought to the purchase, and make the necessary adjustments so that your client’s advertisement comes first in your future micro-moments.

Marketers profit from micro-moments in the interests of advertisers (in our example, Nike Corporation) in almost all niche markets, both B2B and B2C. It does not matter what the advertisement sells: sneakers, loans, suretyship, a file with documentation or a free e-book. If there is an action that the marketer is seeking from you, there will always be a corresponding moment when they will take advantage of your desperate desire.

*

In some cases, the despair that we use against you at micro moments arises naturally, as in the example of a shoe store. But sometimes it is cultivated by us artificially. Countdown advertising and sales that are supposedly “only today” are just a small part of the methods we use to provoke the syndrome of lost profits and play on fear, anxiety and doubt.

There are industries that initially offer services aimed at the urgent need inherent in micro-moments - in such cases, a mobile device turns into a panacea for the user. Here you can recall the locksmith enterprises that have abused Google ads for many years in order to have more fun with people when they cannot get into their home.

For example: a successful marketer working with such companies knows that for women who seek online help from their phone after the end of a standard working day, prices should be higher. Marketers understand that these women who accidentally left the house without keys are probably exhausted from fatigue, that with them, perhaps, children are not the fact that they have another way out. In other words, these women will do anything to stop this torment, and the price will not scare them away.

After a client clicks on an advertisement and contacts an unscrupulous advertiser, he can sell the call to an offshore center while she is waiting for help. When rescuers finally appear, they will require ten times more than what was indicated in the announcement. Fraudsters do not hesitate to get a full payment on the spot. One common practice is to break the lock and refuse to let the client into the house until it pays.

*

Experienced marketers know: it’s not enough just to be at hand when you experience the feeling “I want right now!” for some specific reason. Sometimes it happens that you are looking for something ephemeral, but to benefit from it is no more difficult. In the world of continuous micromoments, at the top is the one who realizes that we are on the phone in a restless state, not only in cases where we want to go somewhere, buy something or do something.

Today, the average consumer spends about 4.7 hours every day on the phone. And I bet that most of this time he does not feel much desire to buy something on sale, catch a store before closing, or sign up for training courses. Of course, many minutes of these hours fall on those time intervals when you are exhausted from boredom: sit in the toilet, listen to your wife tell you what happened today, or drive along a quiet street. Anyone who has mastered the art of micromanagement manipulation well will not see the point of handing you an advertisement in moments of boredom - you have no underlying intentions and you won’t follow emotions.

But there is another kind of “empty” time, when you are just overcome with strong feelings and announcements will come in handy: these are the moments when you are in some kind of awkward social situation. All of us people find ourselves in similar situations a hundred times a day: in the elevator, in the queue at Starbucks, when someone is sitting across from the train or when a colleague asks how the weekend went. There is no adult who would not be familiar with this unique feeling deep inside, arising from such meetings in the modern way of life, would not feel that it was somehow ridiculous to buy coffee, sit down at a table and just sit with him, no that without being distracted. When you need only one thing from the market - so that it saves you from oppressive discomfort, the phone becomes a real salvation.

You don’t even have to open Google itself to play into his hands. If you go to Gmail, Youtube or just start surfing the Web, you will be shown an ad. Though click, though not, the show will take place and will be counted; You have embarked on the conversion path and sooner or later, many days and clicks later, it will bring you to a climax.

When you are looking for relief, no matter what variety and for what reason, on any of the channels operated by Google, there is always a suitable advertisement. Google shares methods that allow you to convert when you are unable to resist, and marketers are actively, and often irresponsibly, using them. We are constantly encouraged by best practices.