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

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

• This week I’ll be on Bradley Metrock’s show, This Week in Voice, which should air February 1, 2019

• If you’re in Atlanta, come to the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) event on February 6, where I’m moderating a panel about voice technology with Kesha Williams from Chik Fil A (she was the main keynote at The Alexa Conference), plus speakers from Home Depot and 360i: How Voice Will Disrupt the Buyer Journey - Innovation Series presented by Nebo Agency

• Next podcast appearance: Alexa in Canada, the Voice Experience with Dr. Teri Fisher. This will air the week of February 11.

• Social Media Week Austin: #SMWATX Feb 19-22, I’m speaking about voice marketing. Date and time announced February 11.

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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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).

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!)

016 - Voice Marketing from Stubb's BBQ (Alexa Skill)

Neat use of real warm audio - true voice of a brand - that offers novelty, fun, and some utility. Good example of early voice marketing. Playful and I like that it’s based on archival material.

Example of CPG (consumer packaged good) product marketing on voice with “Alexa, order more Stubb’s Original Bar-B-Q Sauce”). Note: Tested and still working in December 2021!

Stubb’s Legendary Bar-B-Q Sauce was created by the west Texas barbecue hero and beloved Stubb’s founder, C.B. Stubblefield. Now Stubb has his own Alexa skill. The “Ask Stubb” skill pieces together past voice recordings of Stubblefield to bring recipes, stories, cooking tips, BBQ tunes, and some larger than life personality to Alexa users, straight from the man behind the brand. 

December 6, 2021 update from Emily:

The Ask Stubb Alexa Skill appears to be down and no longer updated but you can see the skill page here and check out the marketing ideas, which are still solid and IMO should be revived and shared. Doing this in 2018 was pretty ahead of the game and today it would even be beneficial to simply promote the hands-free add to cart phrase below.

Ask Stubb is an Alexa Skill promoting Stubb’s BBQ Sauce and featuring recipes and archival audio

Skill created by Proof Advertising in Austin.

Video preview of the skill here.

•” The skill includes ten tips, more than 20 recipes and a few of Stubb’s favorite songs.
• Users can order Stubb’s Bar-B-Q sauce directly from the skill.
• After the first week of launch, Ask Stubb was featured as a popular skill on the Alexa Skills Store.” -via CommArts

Takeaway:
With Alexa skills and voice right now, done is better than perfect. Establish a presence like this because this is all leading toward voice search optimization on Amazon, one of the largest search engines. Stubb's will ultimately sell more BBQ sauce because of this. In this case, it’s content marketing to drive ecommerce through voice.

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