by Chelsea Sanchez | Nov 26, 2018 | The Lens Blog
Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing the way consumers find what they need. User interfaces such as voice-first search are essential ways for small businesses to connect with their customer base. Users are more and more frequently taking advantage of voice tech, which provides access to information hands-free. Below are a few common voice command usages: These are all tasks that lead shoppers to businesses in their area. Voice tech opens up new ways for your customers to find you. Optimizing your business for voice will help you get ahead. Furthermore, new integrations (such as Grubhub Reorder) can help customers access your business through voice without you having to do anything. Voice can also help business owners streamline administrative tasks, freeing up time for them to focus on big-picture items. The majority (91%) of voice command usage occurs on smartphones. Mobile voice searches are 3x more likely to be locally based. That means individuals using voice are looking for stores they can walk or drive to. Making sure you have localized SEO keywords will help you get found through voice. It’s also important to have your business appear in the top three results for a few specific keywords. It won’t be cost effective to try and land in the top three search results for many keywords, but a few will help you get ahead in a meaningful way without stretching your marketing budget too thin. Finally, make sure your website loads quickly (test on Google here). Fast loading sites have a higher chance of getting used by voice tech. For most small businesses, building out an...
by Crystal Collier | Oct 30, 2018 | The Lens Blog
As technology continues to power the Age of the Customer, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing the way we do business. Conversational user interfaces are becoming widely adopted; voice-first customer service is a great way companies can offer customers help when and where they need it. Although today’s usage is minimal, with only 19% ever trying voice commands for help and 6% doing it frequently, companies need to be preparing to offer this emerging channel. Introduction of a well-designed voice-based user experience (VUX) would likely increase voice-first support adoption over smart devices. A recent study by Social Lens Research identified the following voice-first trends that point to potential VUX use cases: Conversational user interfaces will have major impacts to several common customer service channels: Self-help: Voice search will be an important way to help users find information, self-serve tools, and live support. Chat: Enhanced voice AI chat will allow users to do more advanced and streamlined self-serve via chat. Phone: AI-enhanced phone support will personalize, improve and speed service by equipping agents with customer data, resolution paths, advanced decisioning for refunds/make good gestures and offers. What companies are leading the way in VUX? Unsurprisingly: Amazon and Google. Amazon Connect’s integration with Salesforce allows companies to input frequent customer requests into the platform to help the AI determine where to guide the customer (place an order, product issue, etc.). The contact flow begins with the AI gathering information and determining what the customer needs; if necessary, the customer can ultimately be transferred to a live agent. Capital One, a customer of Amazon Connect, has built out...
by Julie | Oct 15, 2018 | Research, Smart Assistants, The Lens Blog, Voice commands
Our most recent study, Voice Commands: Current State October 2018, highlights a growing use of voice commands today and the potential for exponential growth. Easier to use, higher quality voice experiences are essential to capturing market share, especially for industries that are currently being found through voice command. Developing higher quality voice experiences for consumers will be essential for companies to stay competitive in the next five years. Key Findings: Although voice command usage is still in the early days, voice commands are a critical part of the mobile experience. Designing a mobile voice experience is important now. Entertainment, media and local businesses are the most likely to lose out if they don’t optimize for voice search and create compelling voice experiences in the short-term. Poor voice experiences, narrow use cases, privacy concerns, and limited IoT device ownership are limiting voice adoption. Fixes to these issues are likely to accelerate the usage of voice commands. Given existing high usage and the natural fit, opportunities exist for voice-first IoT devices at home, in the car, at work, and at school. Multicultural moms who are constantly online are the current power users of voice. They are more likely to use voice commands for more activities, across devices, and in different locations. Voice experiences that are consistent across devices will likely be important to meet their needs. Different audiences will require distinct voice experiences that take into considerations device preferences, locations, and use cases. http://www.sociallensresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Voice-Command-Research-Study.mp4 View the strategic implications here: In the next few weeks, we will be releasing industry-specific data with current trends and voice command usage examples. For more...
by Julie | Aug 6, 2018 | Smart Assistants, The Lens Blog
Here are a few stats all marketers should know about voice assistants as they evaluate how and when to include voice first tactics in their marketing strategy. Usage of voice assistant is widespread, with nearly 50% of Americans using voice assistants via smartphones, dedicated devices or other devices. Most usage is occurring on smartphones today. Only about 8% use voice commands via standalone devices. Source: Pew Usage of smart speakers is expected to grow exponentially as voice search grows. Voice searches are expected to be 50% of all searches by 2020. Source: Comscore Smart speakers are used mostly to play music, ask a question or check the weather. Other top uses are set a timer/alarm, find a recipe and listen to news/radio. Source: VoiceBot.ai Amazon and Google Assistants control approximately 80% of the smart speaker market today. Amazon is the leader, with 40.7 million monthly users of Amazon Echo and about 60% of all smart speaker users. Google Home comes in second with 18 million users. Source: eMarketer Google has an accuracy advantage that will likely help it close the market share gap. The Google assistant is close to 5x more likely on average to know an answer than Alexa. Google’s superior accuracy is not surprising given its history of being a search engine. Google also wins on the smartest voice assistant on mobile over rivals Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. “Google obviously plugs into the Google search network, which has all the resources that Google has including all the history of search,” 360i Dentsu’s Calladine said. “It’s why Google has become the most popular desktop search engine. I think that’s the main advantage of...
by Julie | Jan 30, 2017 | Research, Social Research, The Lens Blog
Public health marketers trying to reach multicultural audiences need to take a mobile-first approach. Multicultural audiences tend to have larger out-of-pocket health expenses, delay seeking help from medical professionals and are more apt to look to mobile devices to manage their health. Top implications for public health marketers trying to reach multicultural audiences include: Budget constraints need to be addressed and taken into consideration in order to help multicultural audiences make positive health choices, especially Hispanics. Hispanics (76%) and African Americans (67%) were more likely than whites (59%) to say that budget at least sometimes limited their ability to make healthy choices. Hispanics (67%) and African Americans (67%) were also more likely than whites (52%) to say they sometimes avoided seeking medical help because of the cost. Health educational campaigns need to be mobile-optimized to reach multicultural audiences. 94% of Hispanics and 93% of African American respondents reported using mobile phones to help achieve their health goals compared to 88% Whites. 58% have used their phones to research information about a health issue. Hispanics (59%) and African American (61%) were more likely to use their phone to find health information than whites (56%). Social media distribution, influencer outreach, and mobile apps are great opportunities for initial attainment and ongoing engagement with multicultural audiences Hispanics (44%) and African Americans (40%) were more likely than whites (32%) to follow health-related social accounts Hispanics (46%) and African Americans (45%) were more likely than whites (39%) to read a blog for health info. Health app usage is high across ethnic groups at 57%. Hispanics (61%) and African American (60%) over-index on the use...
by Tom Young | Jan 27, 2017 | Facebook Marketing, The Lens Blog
After abandoning reading for watching videos, viewers can barely be persuaded to stick around watch a video. In fact, average attention spans have sunk below those of a goldfish. What’s a marketer to do? Data is showing that videos designed for no sound can help. 85% of Facebook video views are silent (Digiday) 84% of millennials silence video ads (Wibbitz) Half the audience who routinely skip ads says they’ll give silent ads a try. And the more video people watch online the more tolerant they seem to become of ad viewing. (Wibbitz) The upside is there, given millennials are 112% more likely to share ads they like than other age groups (Unruly). But proceed with caution. We aren’t saying muting is enough – producing a video that works well without the sound takes some thought and effort. Here are few ways to make your silent videos work: Movement and readable information within the video help make a video on mute work as illustrated by this clever jewelry ad by Kay Jewelry. Happy Holidays! Thank you for celebrating the last 100 years with us! Posted by Kay Jewelers on Friday, December 23, 2016 Hotels.com won a well deserved Shorty Award for silent ad combining their usual cheeky humor with silence. The #IAmAWitness anti-bullying video produced by the Ad Council shows how strong graphics and data work well in silent mode. Good captions are key and Facebook has made that easier with automated captioning. Great examples of autoplay and silent ads over at the Facebook video creative spotlight area and Hubspot. Share your favorite autoplay and silent videos in the...
