Marketing, marketing, and more marketing. Everyone does marketing, talks about marketing, or requests marketing quotes. However, we rarely stop to think about the origin of the term, which is none other than market; and in fact, the literal transcription of marketing would be just that: merchandising. If the aim is to reach the market in order to build loyalty, expand it, or compete with other agents, what really should be at the forefront of anyone's mind who claims to be involved in marketing is the consumer.
"The holy grail of marketing is being able to predict consumer needs," says Matt Mierzejewsky, senior vice president of search optimization at Merkle, in a recent post for the prestigiousThink With Google blog. The post, which discusses digital assistants as the next marketing revolution, is a prime example of where customer experience is headed in the coming years. Especially since that "revolution" is much closer than we generally tend to think.
Digital assistants are being programmed to go far beyond simple "request and response" mechanisms: from giving us makeup tips to adding magic to bedtime stories for the little ones in the house, says Mierzejewsky. And these programs are going to radically change the way forward-thinking and intelligent brands interact with people. We are talking about "additional signals" from customers, assistants that understand daily routines and needs and can therefore take a projective or heuristic view. Assistants that are shedding their skin to move from being reactive agents to generating proactive recommendations based on the changing and incremental context of each user. The author himself gives an example of how this change in the relationship with brands can occur:
User: "OK, Google. What's the best brand of running shoes?"
Google Assistant: "Good question. Are you looking for something for yourself, for Sheila, or for the kids?"
U: "For myself."
GA: "Based on your training patterns, it seems like you prefer running on trails rather than pavement. Is that correct?"
U: "Yes, mainly trail running."
AG: "Based on popular ratings, reviews, and product purchases, here are the top three brands for you. Would you prefer to shop online or in a store?"
U: "I want to see some today."
AG: "Okay, there's a sporting goods store on 5th Street that has these shoes in stock, and they even have a few sizes in your size. Would you like me to reserve them for you at the store?"
U: "Yes. I'll stop by this afternoon."
AG: "I'll put it on your to-do list and remind you when you're downtown."
An example like this, much closer than it might seem, shows the significance of the level of "assistance" that is being designed. The current stage, which involves "mundane" tasks such as calling a contact, playing a song, setting an alarm, checking the weather forecast, or staying informed about news and events, is useful to a certain extent for the user, but it does not contribute anything to brands. Hence the profound review that is taking place. The goal is to add intelligent dialogues with predictive resolutions, so that brands can constantly explore their market and also optimize the way they address their users.
In fact, the data that is increasingly being collected for anonymized and statistical processing, with the aim of forming behavior patterns and advanced segmentations, already allows us to trace the different levers of action depending on which channels we are talking about. Today, Mierzajewsky assures us, we already have the capacity to explore intelligent assistance using only the data that most companies already have at their disposal. And, in fact, this is an exercise that must begin today if we want to be able to tackle the design of a sustainable conversation with a digital assistant tomorrow.
"Knowing who you are building an assistance experience for is critical," adds the Think With Google post, "but context is also important in determining how the assistance experience can be most useful. And that context can be something like a person's location, mood, or needs at a given moment. These dynamic attributes can affect the messages to which the user will be receptive and, more critically, when and where," which is precisely the scenario described in the example of the sneakers above. It only takes five interactions between human and machine for a brand to start counting a new sale. To do this, the brand must first be forward-thinking, consider this possible scenario, and make its systems available to the assistant's algorithms. The question should not be whether "it is easy or difficult," but rather the cost of being left out of this profound renewal of consumption cycles.
The more customer signals there are, the more creative possibilities there are. And the more options there are for creating messages and investing in advertising. It's not the same to receive an ad for a restaurant first thing in the morning as it is at midday; it's not the same if the goal is to find a trendy place with a discount as it is to indulge a small child's whim. The data is provided by the customer. The intelligence to cross-reference it is provided by the brands.
The author reviews a success story with City Pass, whose mission is to sell discounted tickets to attractions in popular cities in North America. The case consists of two phases: one involving high market segmentation for the development of last-minute search campaigns, and another involving the creation of a specific experience if there was a match between a search and a segmentation. The result? An 8% higher ROI than campaigns without contextual indicators.
"Understanding customers' assistance needs, even in ways that don't seem to generate immediate revenue, will go a long way toward developing your brand's role when it comes to digital assistant conversations. (...) In other words, getting to know the people behind the people [ understood in the marketing sense of the word]."
Those who understand this process will have the keys to successfully conducting conversations with digital assistants. Ergo, for the ultimate function that marketing is supposed to fulfill: building loyalty, expanding, or competing in the market.
Photo byDavid MarcuonUnsplash
