September 22, 2011

Cutting Edge Selling Today Means Understanding the ZMOT Revolution

Right at this moment, yet another revolution is taking place in the world of shopping, buying, selling and marketing. Since the explosion of the Internet into our lives not so many years ago, it seems a “new revolution” happens every few years.

But one of the latest and most exciting shifts in the way we do business is something no one can afford to ignore. It's a critical factor smart marketers need to understand now. It’s called ZMOT, (pronounce it Zee-Mot), and it stands for Zero Moment of Truth.

To understand what ZMOT is, let’s provide a bit of background and some info about beste anti-spyware software. The term has its origins from a similar term called FMOT, which stands for First Moment of Truth. The term was coined by the marketing gurus of Proctor & Gamble. Here is what FMOT describes:

A customer is shopping in a grocery store, say, and they are standing in front of the frozen food section looking at a wide selection of frozen pizza brands. There is a lot to choose from. The customer has a decision to make. This is the First Moment of Truth, or FMOT.

Marketers realized that FMOT is a critical moment in the buying decision. What will make the customer choose one pizza brand over another? The label? The brand name? The overall attractiveness of the product? Well, the pizza brand that wins this decision game in the mind of the consumer is the one that prevails in the First Moment of Truth. It was clear then, then if sellers could successfully manipulate the FMOT, they would beat their competition more often, and sell a lot more products.

Now enter an all-new level of the game: The ZMOT!

This all new, even more critical level of marketing was enabled by the advent of Internet search engines, and also by smart phones. That’s because consumers now have an incredible new way to make a decision about what they want to buy. No doubt, most people reading this article are already doing this.

Here's how it works: You see a product you might want to buy – but first you jump on Google and do a quick review to get more information about the product, and to see what other people are saying about it. You instantly find scads of information, including what dozens or hundreds of other people are saying about their experience with that product. If a lot of other people loved it, you’re probably going to buy it.

And now that people can bring their Internet-enabled smart phones right into the store with them, they can look up information about product at the very moment they are in front of them as they decide to make a purchase. That is the ZMOT, the Zero Point of Truth!

Just as sellers were eager to “win” the mind of the consumer in the First Moment of Truth, they now realize that they must prevail in the ZMOT, the Zero Moment of Truth. This means that what consumers find out about your product when they search for information about it online – with a computer or a smart phone – must be positive information.

So the question for sellers of any and all kinds of products today is – what is my ZMOT factor? What are people finding out about my product when they go online to gather the information they need to make a buying decision.

Understanding ZMOT Rob's guide, and knowing how your product can prevail in the incredible new ZMOT revolution, is now perhaps the most critical factor in selling and marketing today.

Allyn Cutts