029 - Amazon Alexa In-Skill Purchasing Gets Upsell - Voice Marketing for Brands

Announcements - what's happening in February 2019 (first two minutes of show):

Show notes:

  • CPG and FMCG especially need to pay attention to the updates in Alexa: ISP (in-skill purchasing) just got a facelift in the Developer Console, making it easier to upsell. This is just getting started.

  • Skills with very high conversion rates for upsell to premium version (34-50%!): Big Sky (weather) and Escape the Airplane (game)

  • Voice in the car - HUGE opportunity (car is faster growing and has 60% higher MAUs than smart speakers)

  • Today is like first gen iPhone: you can't multitask - only one app at a time

  • Where we are with skills now: you can only do one thing at a time

  • This will improve

  • Voice is for EVERY brand

  • Typing is unnatural, awkward, and slow. We are computing in computer-ese. Let's talk. We can speak and process so much faster than we can talk or read.

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028 - Curating Customer Experiences with Voice Assistants - Jon Chu

If you are a food brand (like an FMCG such as cereal or canned food, or like food delivery such as Uber Eats), what should you consider in creating a voice skill for Alexa, Google Home, etc.?

Why A.I. isn’t the best term, but curated intelligence is more apt.

Intent matters. Focus on solving one particular customer problem at a time.

Mentioned:

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Jon Chu: @jchu

027 - How to Make the Voice Assistant Like Your Brand


Hear how the future ubiquitous voice assistant will decide whether to promote your brand.

We spend major ad dollars on the duopoly (Google and Facebook) with Amazon a distant third. Those ad dollars will shift.

Telenav announced that it is integrating Amazon Alexa into its automotive navigation system offering.

1.0:

The voice assistant we know today will be so much smarter tomorrow. 

Your shadow, your assistant:

The voice assistant will be every person’s personal assistant, their shadow, their life historian and documentarian. It will mitigate our drudge work for life admin tasks like errands and comparison shopping. It will save us all kinds of time. I hope we use that time well.

What won't change:

We are at the mercy of an algorithm today: many ecommerce retailers live and die by SEO on Google and on Amazon. Tomorrow our brands will be at the AI's mercy. The data will be richer, the algorithm more complex.

Amazon, which is nearing $800 billion in value, is making a noticeable push in advertising products, hoping to grab a piece of Google and Facebook’s duopoly of digital advertising. Voice commerce is estimated to be a $18.3 billion opportunity by 202…

Amazon, which is nearing $800 billion in value, is making a noticeable push in advertising products, hoping to grab a piece of Google and Facebook’s duopoly of digital advertising. Voice commerce is estimated to be a $18.3 billion opportunity by 2023.

This idea of the future is not radically different from the game we play with search engines today. You bid to be at the top based on a user’s query, or you work on your content to rank high organically.

The same process will happen but with less screen, and more anticipation of the user’s needs or next purchase.

When the assistant recommends a product, it will try to match to the user’s needs, history, and preferences. Google does this today with search results. Your website gets rewarded for relevancy. Everyone tries to game the SEO algorithm but ultimately if you have great content that solves the searcher’s problems google knows it and ranks you higher. There is no silver bullet.

Up Next:

Tune in next week for episode 28: my upcoming interview with Jon Chu, an expert in voice first ecommerce and retail.



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026 - Marketing in 2019 & Beyond: Social Media and Voice

Year-end episode. Predictions - keeping it simple, two areas of focus:

  1. Social media - tech companies and their manipulation-based business models will change. They’ll evolve in two ways: First, greater transparency that frustrated users will seek. Second, more cohesion with government (as Steve Case posits in The Third Wave).

    Facebook (including Instagram), Twitter, and LinkedIn: the revenue models are based on manipulation through constant feedback loops that surveil users (the product). This is the new fast food. Users will begin to see it as unhealthy like they do cigarettes and Big Macs.

  2. Voice marketing - why smart speakers and voice assistants are like the automobile in 1903 (famous Ford/Horace Rackham quote). Voice is not a fad.

1-minute clip:

Also mentioned:

  • 06:40 - Brian Roemmele, The Oracle of Voice re: “computerese” - Brian is spot on. 06:40

  • 08:16 - Mitch Joel (I quote Mitch re: the 1.0 state of smart speakers and how it’s like the internet before the hyperlink - hard to navigate). Spot on again.

  • Join me at The Alexa Conference on January 15-17, 2019. Get 20% off tickets with promo code: ALEXASPRK203

024 - Instagram Influencer Marketing and Authenticity

I spoke with Jamie Stuckert, Marketing Manager at Wild Foods, an Austin-based natural ingredients company. We talked about influencer marketing, focusing on what works and doesn't work on Instagram for building an authentic brand and educating people about health. Jamie shares her experiences running social media for the brand account for Wild Foods and her own personal brand, Keto Like Jamie.

Jamie has stories about followers seeking medical advice through DMs, inspiring people to lose 100 pounds on keto, and toxic energy drinks using models to promote their products.

The bottom line is that being real - flaws and all - works.

Hear bonus content - part 2


Timestamps:

3:18 We don’t throw just any picture up for the sake of having content

3:40 Goal on IG is to educate

4:20 KetoLikeJamie - personal brand

6:00 Overcoming self-consciousness and being really honest - imperfection is okay

6:26 How do I market my brand with influencers?

6:52 What works when it comes to influencers?

7:32 We want to pay for someone who stands by our brand, uses our product daily, is into the natural lifestyle

Follow Wild Foods and Jamie on Instagram:

@WildFoods

@KetoLikeJamie

Jamie's YouTube channel

Learn more about Wild Foods: https://www.wildfoods.co/

023 - Easy Alexa Skills for Brands - Brielle Nickoloff, Voice UX Design - Witlingo

Hear my conversation with Brielle Nickoloff, Voice UX Designer at Witlingo. We discussed what the startup is doing to help podcasters, politicians, entrepreneurs, authors, comedians, and other content creators or personal brand promoters get voice skills onto Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant quickly and easily.

“Castlingo is the easiest way to publish short audios to let your audience listen to what you have to say.”

Get a Voice Marketing Presence with Castlingo (check out their promo which ends 12/8/18).

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Brielle Nickoloff is a Lead of Voice User Experience Design and Research at Witlingo, a Washington D.C., based startup that builds products and solutions for Voice First devices and platforms, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana.

Brielle earned dual Bachelor’s degrees in Linguistics and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Much of Brielle’s research in the space began with a closer look at the ways one’s emotional reaction to a voice interface is notably more inflated than reactions to other types of user interfaces. She loves to design for maximally accessible and minimally intrusive technology by leveraging the beauty of natural human language.

Attend the Alexa Conference January 15-17, 2019 (Brielle and I are both speaking - come say hi!)

40% of adults now use voice search once per day. Read more Voice First Facts from Witlingo.

Follow Brielle Nickoloff on Twitter: @ElleForLanguage (I love her handle!)

022 - Coca-Cola's Ultimatum to Atlanta's White Elites - Melanie Touchstone Interview Part 2

Watch my interview with Melanie above OR stream the audio only below:

An inspiring story from 1964 where a corporation took a huge business risk to do the right thing.

Dr. Martin Luther King was awarded the Noble Peace Prize. But in the midst of controversy surrounding race relations in a southern city, the white Atlanta business community refused to attend the celebration. Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. called upon some of his business acquaintances with serious sway to urge the community in the direction on the right side of history and honoring Dr. King's incredible achievement.

J. Paul Austin, President of Coca-Cola, and Robert Woodruff, former CEO of Coca-Cola, gave the white business elites in Atlanta an ultimatum. They threatened to move Coke's headquarters out of Atlanta unless the powerful people and business leaders of the city would honor Dr. King.

This is Part 2 of my interview with Melanie Touchstone, Director of Digital Marketing for the Metro Atlanta Chamber.

Did you miss Part 1? Catch up:

Marketing a City: Atlanta (Part 1) Interview with Melanie Touchstone, Metro Atlanta Chamber

WATCH Part 1: City Branding: Marketing Atlanta: https://youtu.be/1EczxzQnS8Y

Get in touch with Melanie: https://twitter.com/MelTouchstone

The Digital Dive Podcast 2010-2012: http://thedigitaldivepodcast.com/

021 - Marketing a City: Atlanta (Part 1) - Interview with Melanie Touchstone

Enjoy part 1 of my interview with Melanie Touchstone, Director of Digital Marketing for Metro Atlanta Chamber.

ATL Brand Box: http://atlbrandbox.com/

Get in touch with Melanie:

https://twitter.com/MelTouchstone

The Digital Dive Podcast, 2010-2012: http://thedigitaldivepodcast.com/

Recorded November 16, 2018.