Working in experiential marketing for more than ten years, I know its effectiveness to build engagement between customers and brands. I would risk saying that experiential marketing is still the most effective discipline to empowers brands to start a real conversation with customers and not a monologue from traditional advertising in which a product try to convince and highlight it's irresistible attributes.
Although they are complementary strategies when a product activation or a brand experience hook someone, it presents a unique opportunity to have people accessible to listen, feel, talk, give an opinion, and may even become a brand ambassador of this brand for a while. It is a whole conversion funnel happening in a lap of time.
The fast smart speakers' adoption will tight-knit these relationships and allow brands to frequently push a step further to strengthen proximity and loyalty with customers.
29.3% of Australians owns a smart speaker at home, and 46% use it every day.
Even-though the issue of Skills discoverability (a Skill is the equivalent of an App in mobile) is still a problem; currently, 29.3% of Australians owns a smart speaker at home, and 46% use it every day. They are adopting smart speakers at a far faster rate than their U.S. counterparts.
Google and Amazon still flooding the market with more devices, and the proximity of holiday shopping seasons will undoubtedly increase these numbers.
Ironically, my first contact with voice assistants came from a colossal failure by the marketing strategy perspective.
A Google Home Mini was given to me on a Valentine Day by my prefered supermarket chain in Australia where I'm a frequent online shopper. And the call-to-action was " Shopping Made Easy". That's awesome! Isn't it? Actually, the skill wasn't working for my frustration, and they missed an excellent opportunity to put one step further into my home. It was a lost opportunity to teach me a new behaviour - shopping by voice.
Creativity will be not only a crucial factor to overcome technical challenges, but also to build impactful conversational experiences.
After starting CogniVocal to explore the voice possibilities and designing voice interactions to engage users, I realised how challenging it would be to implement a voice-first strategy and create outstanding voice experience.
As all emerging technology, the voice ecosystem is evolving daily. However, there is no doubt that creativity will be a crucial factor in overcoming technical challenges and building impactful conversational experiences and accelerating people's adoption.
We are just scratching the surface of possibilities in voice interaction. When customer retention and loyalty have been an extreme challenge for all companies, voice assistants may provide an unparallel opportunity to start real conversations with customers even though the brands have to start your first talking like babies.