Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT is the term coined by Google’s Jim Lecinski in 2011.

ZMOT is the most powerful moment in a customer’s journey to purchase. This is because ZMOT shapes the consumer’s purchase decision. And if you fail to win your customers at ZMOT, you have already lost the sale.

There are four moments of truth for a product:

1. Stimulus
2. Zero Moment of Truth or ZMOT
3. First Moment of Truth or FMOT
4. Second Moment of Truth or SMOT

Stimulus

Stimulus is the moment that occurs when the customer is first exposed to your brand via an ad or piece of content (blog, infographic, video, podcast, etc.).

All of your first interaction marketing channels are sources of stimulus.

The first interaction marketing channels are those channels that deliver first-click conversions. These channels introduce your brand to the customers in their purchase journey.

You can determine these channels by going to Assisted Conversion report (under Conversion > Multi-Channel Funnels in your Google Analytics account) and then clicking on the ‘First Interaction Analysis’ tab:

Google Analytics assigns credit for conversions to those marketing channels that assisted in conversions in the last 30 to 90 days (the lookback window).

So if a marketing channel assisted in conversion more than 90 days ago, then Google Analytics will not give it credit for the conversion.

Because of this reason, the first interaction marketing channels you see in the Assisted Conversions report may not be the true first interaction channels.

There is always a possibility that some/many customers were first exposed to your brand more than 30 to 90 days ago.

You also can’t take any meaningful action based on analysing the first interaction marketing channels.

Therefore the first interaction analysis is lame. It is not the best use of your time and resources.

Unless you are a brand new business whose top priority is getting exposure and building brand awareness, you should avoid spending your time and resources:

• Doing first interaction analysis,
• Assigning a lot of credit to first touchpoints
• Investing in stimulus sources.

Get my best selling books on Attribution Modelling

• Learn to implement attribution modelling in your organisation
• Understand the customer purchase journey across devices
• Determine the most effective marketing channels for investment

 Click book covers to find out more

Zero Moment of Truth (or ZMOT)

ZMOT is the moment that occurs after the customer has been exposed to your brand but before a purchase is made.

It is the moment when the customer researches and decides about buying your product.

Consider the following customer’s journey to purchase:

• Step-1: Read a blog post
• Step-2: View a display ad
• Step-3: Read product reviews
• Step-4: Visit a product comparison website
• Step-5: Clicked on an organic search result
• Step-6: Clicked on a paid search result
• Step-7: Made a purchase

Here the customer is exposed to six different acquisition channels (blog post, display ad, product reviews, product comparison, organic search, and paid search) before he makes a purchase.

The ZMOT takes place at step 3 and step 4

The customer read a product review and went to a product comparison site before making the purchase.

These two touches seem more valuable than the exposure to other channels (the blog post, display ad, organic listing, and the PPC ad) as they play a very important role in shaping the customer’s purchase decision.

Had the customer not been satisfied with the product reviews and pricing, he wouldn’t have made a purchase. Consequently, these touches should get more credit for the conversion.

Not all the acquisition channels/touches are equally important in shaping the customer’s buying behaviour.

That is why I developed the Proportional Multi-touch Attribution Model

How ZMOT occurs

At ZMOT, customers go back and forth between various ZMOT sources.

ZMOT sources are various digital and non-digital channels where your customers go back and forth to make an informed purchase decision.

Note: Google recognises only online decision-making moments as ZMOT. But I think we can’t ignore offline decision-making moments (like the presence of physical stores, word of mouth, great PR, etc.) as in the real world, customers don’t choose offline marketing channels over online marketing channels and vice versa.

That is why I have included both digital and non-digital channels as ZMOT sources.

Following are the examples of ZMOT sources:

1. Online search (including both paid and organic search)
2. Word of mouth (non-digital channel)
3. Comparison shopping websites (like shopzilla.com, pricegrabber.com, and Google shopping)
4. Product review websites (epinions.com, trustpilot.co.uk, tripadvisor.com, etc.)
5. Coupons websites (like groupon.com, retailmenot.com, coupons.com, couponcabin.com)
6. Offers and special deals websites (like priceline.com, expedia.com, hotukdeals.com, etc.)
7. Loyalty, rebate and cashback websites (like ebates.com, cashbackholic.com, cashreporter.com, quidco.com, etc.)
8. Social shopping websites (like kaboodle.com, productwiki.com, shopstyle.com, etc.)
9. Affiliate websites
10. Offline marketing channels (physical store, salespeople, billboards, magazine ads, TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads, brochures, leaflets, etc.)

Get my best selling books on Attribution Modelling

• Learn to implement attribution modelling in your organisation
• Understand the customer purchase journey across devices
• Determine the most effective marketing channels for investment

 Click book covers to find out more

The ZMOT sources your customers actually use depend upon the following factors:

1. What they are planning to purchase (product/service, what type/nature)

2. What stage they are at in the consideration process (looking for the best deals, coupons, comparison shopping, etc.)

3. Where they are (i.e. the country they live in, current location: in the office, commuting, at home, etc.)

4. What devices they own and are currently using (laptop, desktop, smartphone, tablet, smart TV, etc.)

5. What is their comfort level (some people are more comfortable buying online, some are more comfortable buying offline)

6. Their buying behaviour (many people never make a purchase through a smartphone or buy high price items online) 

84% of all shoppers use ZMOT sources in the path to purchase. ZMOT is a critical part of any shopper’s purchase journey.

Shoppers can range from using an average of 5.8 ZMOT sources when choosing a Restaurant to a high of 18.2 sources used by Automobile shoppers.

Source: Google Think Insight and ZeroMomentofTRuth.com

Why do you need to win customers at ZMOT?

You need to win in order to reduce the checkout abandonment rate, gain the trust of your customers, and build brand retention.

Seven out of every 10 shoppers who added items to an online cart didn’t actually make the purchase. A lot of those shoppers went off to search for a better price, or maybe a coupon or a savings code.

So how can you keep from losing those customers — or having to win them back all over again?

.

It’s never been easier to walk out of the store

ZMOT shopping is comparison-shopping on steroids. Shoppers use smartphones to check competitors’ prices, look for coupons and deals, and measure shipping costs down to the penny. If they’re standing in the aisle at your store and they see a better deal, they’ll walk away.

Source: Google Think Insight and ZeroMomentofTRuth.com 

Now for the billion-pound question. How do you win customers at ZMOT?

Build strong brand loyalty

It is very hard to compete in a world full of low-price items, better products, and better deals.

You can always find someone selling your product/service at a lower price. You can always find someone providing a better deal, a better offer, or a better discount.

So you can’t compete on price alone. You can’t compete on product features or offers alone. Build a great product, and the customers will automatically come. This isn’t going to happen.

You need to make a strong emotional bond with your customers so that they think of you at ZMOT. You want your customers to buy emotionally and not rationally.

Think of why people buy Apple products even when they are overpriced. It is not because of its features. It is because of the strong emotional bond and sense of self-worth, Apple has been able to create through its creative and effective advertising.

Creating user engagement is critical for building brand loyalty as user engagement leads to repeated visits, leading to brand retention.

Related Post: Practical Tips to develop user engagement for e-commerce website

My Step-By-Step Blueprint For Learning Google Analytics 4 BigQuery

Get the only ebook on GA4 BigQuery ever published (83 Pages)

Download the FREE ebook

Do remarketing

Remarketing is very effective in winning customers at ZMOT.

With remarketing, you can target people who have already shown interest in your product/service but have still not made a purchase because they forgot about you or your offer in an attempt to search for a better price/deal on the internet.

Remarketing is also very effective in targeting existing customers to build brand retention and loyalty.

Find your ZMOT sources and be visible there

80% of success in winning the ZMOT lies in showing up at the right place and at the right time – Jim Lecinski

Following are a few tips which can help you in being visible at the right place and at the right time:

1. Create a balanced portfolio of acquisition channels.
That means don’t rely just on organic search or paid search to acquire customers.

Diversify your traffic acquisition strategy and get traffic from different sources (organic search, paid search, display, email, affiliate marketing, referral, etc.)

2. Get your products listed on comparison shopping websites. All these websites can introduce or re-introduce your brand and offer it to the customers.

3. Product reviews and ratings matter a lot at ZMOT. Provide good after-sales service and encourage customers to leave reviews.

Users pay attention to reviews. Listings that averaged three or more stars in reviews took 41 out of 47 clicks. The volume of reviews matters. 29 of 47 clicks went to listings that had at least 4 reviews.

Source: ZeroMomentofTRuth.com 

Keep a close eye on the reviews left by your customers. A lot of bad reviews can easily destroy the possibility of any future sale.

That is why reputation management and brand monitoring are so important. You must always maintain a positive brand image to win at ZMOT.

4. Provide coupons, offers, and special deals and get listed on the websites which deal with them.

78% of shoppers say that online coupons or promo codes will close a deal for them when they’re undecided.

61% of visitors to affiliate deal sites say they’re likely to switch brands if they find a better coupon. So if you’re not offering coupons, think twice.

Source: ZeroMomentofTRuth.com

5. Provide a good user experience on all devices (desktops, tablets, smartphones). In the real world, people can go back and forth between various devices at ZMOT. So it is critical that your website provides a good user experience at each stage of ZMOT. You must also run marketing campaigns on multiple devices to increase brand retention and customer acquisition.

6. Use affiliate marketing to increase your reach exponentially. You can’t bid on every possible keyword in your niche. You can’t target every possible customer. But your affiliates together can. They can introduce your brand and your offer to a much wider market.

Get my best selling books on Attribution Modelling

• Learn to implement attribution modelling in your organisation
• Understand the customer purchase journey across devices
• Determine the most effective marketing channels for investment

 Click book covers to find out more

Finding ZMOT sources through Google Analytics

If you manage a medium to large ecommerce website, there is always a high probability that your top assisted marketing channels are ZMOT sources.

You can determine your ZMOT sources by going to the Assisted Conversion report (under Conversion > Multi-Channel Funnels in your Google Analytics account) and then clicking on the ‘Referral’ link in the ‘basic channel grouping’ column:

Once you have determined your ZMOT sources, you need to target them either by being listed there or through brand monitoring or by advertising there through display ads.

My Step-By-Step Blueprint For Querying GA4 data in BigQuery without understanding a single line of SQL.

Query GA4 BigQuery Data via ChatGPT (73 Pages)

Download the FREE ebook

First Moment of Truth (or FMOT)

This moment occurs when a customer first encounters a product on your physical store’s shelf.

As an online marketer, there is nothing much you can do to optimize the FMOT.

If you manage a purely online business, then FMOT is not relevant for you.

Second Moment of Truth (or SMOT)

This moment occurs when the customer actually uses your product. SMOT is the customer’s experience and satisfaction with your product.

You can win customers at SMOT by constantly providing a great user experience and after-sales service.

All the tricks of the typical conversion optimization program, from landing page optimization, and A/B testing, to surveys, can help you optimize SMOT.

You must win customers at SMOT to maintain brand loyalty, generate repeated sales, and high customer lifetime value.

SMOT fuels ZMOT as it helps maintain a positive brand image.

For very mature businesses (like Dell, Apple, Google, etc.), SMOT can be more important than ZMOT as their top priority is often maintaining their market share.

Other articles on attribution modelling

1. How to analyse and report the true value of your SEO Campaign
2. How to valuate Display Advertising through Attribution Modelling
3. Understanding Shopping Carts for Analytics and Conversion Optimization
4. 6 Keys to Digital Success in Attribution Modelling
5. Google Analytics Attribution Modeling Tutorial
6. How to Measure and Improve the Quality of SEO Traffic through Google Analytics
7. How to explain attribution modelling to your clients
8. Default and Custom Attribution Models in Google Analytics
9. Understanding Missing Touchpoints in Attribution Modelling
10. What You Should Know about Historical Data in Web Analytics
11. Model Comparison Report Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
12. Data-Driven Attribution Model in Google Analytics – Tutorial
13. Conversion Lag Report Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
14. Selecting the Best Attribution Model for Inbound Marketing
15. How to do ROI Analysis in Google Analytics
16. Conversion Credit Models Guide – Google Analytics Attribution
17. Introduction to Nonline Analytics – True Multi Channel Analytics
18. Conversion Types Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
19. Attribution Channels Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
20. Differences Between Google Attribution & Multi-Channel Funnel Reports
21. Introduction to TV Attribution in Google Analytics Attribution 360
22. Conversion Credit Distribution for Attribution Models in Google Analytics
23. Conversion Paths Report Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
24. Attribution Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics
25. Touchpoint Analysis in Google Analytics Attribution Modelling
26. Attributed Conversions & Attributed Revenue Explained in Google Attribution
27. Which Attribution Model to use in Google Analytics?
28. Google Attribution Access and User Permissions – Tutorial
29. Conversion Path Length Report Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
30. How to set up a data-driven attribution model in Google Analytics
31. View-Through Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics
32. Offline Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics – Tutorial
33. How to Create Custom Attribution Model in Google Analytics
34. 8 Google Analytics Conversions Segments You Must Use
35. You are doing Google Analytics all wrong. Here is why
36. How to Use ZMOT to Increase Conversions and Sales Exponentially
37. Connected Properties Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
38. Marketing Mix Modelling or Attribution Modelling. Which one is for you?
39. How is attribution modelling helpful for ecommerce and non-ecommerce websites?
40. Conversion Time & Interaction Time Explained in Google Analytics Attribution
41. How to Allocate Budgets in Multi Channel Marketing
42. How Does Attribution Work?
43. Data-Driven Attribution Model Explorer in Google Analytics
44. Introduction to Attribution Beta – Attribution Project in Google Analytics