TECHNOLOGY • BUSINESS 01.20.20
End-to-end curated experiences drive engagement.
Engagement is not about "just giving people stuff on demand," but letting them "lean in" so they can "curate and control what they consume," marketers told Think with Google.
To "keep up with today's curatorial consumer" who controls their content consumption, marketers are cooking with data signals, creative and media to "co-create end-to-end content experiences."
They're looking at the "end-to-end content and experience and media," rather than "the media experience isolated from the channel experience from the point-of-sale experience."
Understanding consumer intent is "more powerful than demographics."
Creative and marketing are "leaning in" to understand and predict what consumers want.
Consumers expect personalized messaging for their intent. They show intention as they leave behind "countless, fragmented data signals," along different digital channels on their customer journey, wrote Think with Google.
"The brands that understand and respond to intent are better positioned to be there and be useful for all of their potential customers, not just those that fit an age and gender profile."
Using search signals to predict intent.
To "provide assistance at every step," marketers need to "juggle" boundless data. One way to keep up, is to "start predicting" consumer needs at every step of the journey, using search signals, wrote Think with Google.
"Search enables marketers to tap into real insights across media to predict consumer intent at scale. And putting the right actions behind that power lets marketers go from fragmented planning and chasing intent to building an engine that predicts what people need throughout the journey."
Six needs that drive intent in search behavior.
People are using conversational language in search queries. That's creating better insights about what is "ultimately driving the search behavior," wrote Think with Google.
Working with Kantar's NeedScope, Google found there are six canonical consumer needs, and that "search behavior is driven by all six needs."
- Surprise Me.
- Help Me.
- Reassure Me.
- Educate Me.
- Impress Me.
- Thrill Me.
"How your brand responds to these needs in search can shape the journey. Ignore them, and the consumer could abandon or overlook you completely. By focusing your search strategy on satisfying people’s needs, you have a better chance of influencing their decision and ultimately, winning the sale."
Using data to tell a story.
Brands are using rich signals in creative ways to "break through crowded categories," wrote Think with Google.
To show they could save people money, Xfinity Mobile used You Tube insights to serve a video campaign series, showing viewers what it would cost them to watch the next video on their cellular data rate.
Signals and insights "showed the value" of the new service "by literally putting a price tag on how much videos were costing them to watch."
Marketers used Google megabyte data to learn how many megabytes were needed to watch certain videos. They calculated carrier costs per video and delivered a "contextually relevant six-second ad that quantified the data cost of the video they were about to watch."
"Data allowed them to tell the story."
Intent is crucial to deliver curated CX.
Consumers are favoring chatbots for routine customer experience tasks. Voice and chat bots are making giant strides to predict intent with real-time contact center data.
"Contact center customer intent and interaction data needs to be analyzed as effectively as web interactions. That's how you understand the customer journey and deliver seamless, personalized integration across all channels and devices, said Karl Walder, Oigo CX.
Showing customers you hear them.
Customers give a lot of information to brands. They "expect" brands to use all that knowledge to offer "a personalized and relevant service based on their preferences, purchases, and lifecycle events," Kantar wrote.
They want to give feedback whenever and wherever they choose, and know brands hear them.
