25/11
2011

Latest in Conversion Rate Optimization CRO

Why ZMOT is BS

SEO, PPC, Inbound Marketing, Online Marketing, Internet marketing, Search Optimization, Conversion Optimization, CRO, Landing pages, Landing page optimization, email marketing, database marketing, behavioral marketing, retargeting, remarketing, ZMOT,

One of my most favorite sayings in the world goes like this:

“A sale, like a war, is won by many battles and lost by one”

This is true across every industry and business and why there is no single ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth). There are multiple events that take a customer to the point of decision to contact your dealership or buy your car.

Our own studies have shown along with many others that a visitors will visit a site multiple time and even see and click multiple ads before they convert to a lead basically showing that there is no one single moment where a visitor decides to convert or buy.

So what is ZMOT?

Well for the car business I believe it’s a name for the process a visitor goes through before…

“You get a seat at the table”. (I talked about this in “The Currency Of Trust” post in March of 2010)

That’s really all a lead is… “ a seat at the table”, like any other marketing you will still have to sell yourself, sell the dealership and create rapport with the customer to get the dealership visit and / or ultimately the sale.

So what has ZMOT changed?

Actually nothing, the most it has done is made us aware that customers and visitors have more places than they want to get the information they want about buying a car and that we need to be transparent, something we have all known for some time. It has made us aware that the first point of contact and decision is on the web not on our lot, again something we have known now for many years.

At the MOST ZMOT may have made more dealerships see that the conversion is the point of your web marketing, without it you don’t have a chance to gain the rapport and relationship you need to sell the car.

That brings me to the ONE THING… there is a single action that can dramatically affect your ability to convert leads and sell customers today. That is NOT giving the vital information needed to make the decision to consider you dealership in the buying process.

Marketing is so fragmented today and every visit is so fragile that it only takes ONE THING to not look right to your visitor, ONE THING be clouded, one moment where you message isn’t clear or its too hard to get the information the visitor or customer wants or needs for the them to just move on or that lead to just not email you back or just not answer the phone when you call.

“It is all too easy today for consumers to just cut you out of the buying process for you not to be ultra-transparent and more importantly HELPFUL. The bottom-line the consumers web shopping experience when it comes to automotive is more of a process of elimination not one of inclusion”

So the ONE THING is more of a ZMOL (Zero Moment Of Loss) if you have marketed or sold in the car business long enough you have experienced it, you have even seen it physically, that moment when you know you just lost the sale.

That’s just my perspective… What say you?

Larry Bruce @pcmguy

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