Hi, there, I’m Mike Bifulco, a developer advocate on the Assistant Team.
Today I’m going to talk about
driving a successful launch for conversational Actions.
Imagine this, you’re working on a team that’s building a game for Actions on Google.
You get to the point in the process where you can see a light at the end of the tunnel.
That first release is coming.
Well, with any luck, you’re a member of a savvy team
that has done the work ahead of time to think about a marketing plan.
You know it’s critical to understand your audience
and have a plan to reach them long before your app hits the virtual shelves.
In addition to that, you’ve worked with your team
to define some metrics for success,
so that you know whether or not your marketing campaigns are doing a good job
of reaching the audience you’re looking for.
When it comes to putting together a marketing plan,
I'm pretty fond of this quote,
"A design isn't finished until somebody is using it."
When you’re wearing your marketer’s hat,
your goal is to bring a compelling message to that somebody,
and to get them to try out your cool new game.
We’ll break our marketing plan down into a few steps.
First off, let’s talk about the building blocks of strategic marketing.
If you’re watching I/O because you’re a developer,
remember, this stuff is good to know no matter what.
Having a broad understanding of your team's goals for launch
can only help you point towards success.
When thinking about how to market your game,
you’ll want to assemble a coalition of team members with a broad range of skills.
Generally, this cross-functional team
may include participation from the following groups:
public relations, creative leads, copywriting,
engineering and social media management.
There's a few key activities you'll want to think about
when developing your strategy.
You’ll want to get to a shared understanding of your target audience,
evaluate your marketing channels, and to think about measures of success,
so that you can track how well your marketing activities are working.
Defining your target audience should be based on the objective of your Action.
Specifically, determine if you are trying to reach existing users or new users.
Often building an Action is a way to attract new customers
thanks to the buzz this generates in PR.
However, given the nascent stage of voice AI in the average consumer’s life,
it's best to start with Actions that target existing users,
and then tackle use cases that drive new user growth,
once you’ve learned more about how your existing users
prefer to engage with your brand via voice.
For example, a game designed around managing a fictional sports team
might initially target gamers who are sports fans.
Later, they can expand their audience
to encourage new players outside of that core audience to try the game.
As you create your channel plan, think about how your promotion fits in
with your brands ecosystem and customer touchpoints.
Remember, that it’s important to have a consistent and cross-channel strategy.
Look to wherever your user traffic is highest to highlight your Actions availability.
Given the innovative nature of building an Action,
it's important to build flexibility into your channel mix
and invest in an experimental approach to your plan,
to discover what works best for your distinct user group.
Owned marketing channels may include PR, emails,
web properties, videos, events, and other social channels.
In-Action promotion may include,
conversation design, reminders, and Routine suggestions and notifications,
which we'll talk about a bit later.
You may also include paid promotion, including perks and prizing,
promotional partnerships with influencers and things like that.
As with all campaigns, it’s important to make clear success metrics for your program.
Remember that voice interAction is a new paradigm and interAction model,
so you can’t use the same metrics to measure its efficacy,
for example, conversion rates.
All of these metrics are available in the Actions Console
and you can get an export of Action analytics directly into Google’s BigQuery product,
which can help you draw insights from your analytics.
Now let’s talk about how to create a marketing plan for launch,
and what’s after that.
Typically, you have one opportunity
to capture the press’s attention and reach consumers
through articles, blog posts, news coverage, etc.
After that initial moment, you will need a steady drumbeat of reminders,
continuously educating users on your availability in this new interAction model.
To decide how to approach your plan for tackling this launch,
we’ll start with a few questions that help frame your marketing strategy.
First, how is your release positioned?
If you're lending something that is in a new category
like a completely new game,
this is a great opportunity to create a campaign
that focuses on exactly that, your new offering.
If you're releasing new features to an existing product
or updating an existing experience,
it may be beneficial to market your release hand in hand
with a larger event or planned marketing moment.
If you have existing communication tools, like newsletters, email, blog posts,
then by all means use your pre-existing channels
to launch and learn before investing further in new means of outreach.
If you have customer events or trade shows planned,
think about how to tie in your Action
or other Assistant integration into on-site experiences.
Finally, is your release tied to a specific holiday, season or cultural event?
If you know that your Action tends to be most impactful during a specific time period,
heighten your promotion efforts during this time.
For example, if you have an outdoor fitness Action,
increase promotion during the summertime, when people will be using it.
Marketing in Action can be complex as it is still a very new discipline.
As a result, the marketing process will take more time
and need a thoughtful approach,
flexibly designed to react how your users respond.
Use a combination of “Always-on” and “Peaks” promotional efforts
which will consist of three areas,
in-product promotion, existing marketing channels, and paid promotions.
Google provides tools to help you get the word out.
While your owned channels can be the most effective way
to tell your users about your Action,
Google offers several tools that enable Action discovery.
The Assistant Directory where users can quickly learn about your Action.
Assistant Links so users can immediately engage with the Action,
and tools to make it easier for users to rediscover your Action via the Assistant.
Naming.
Make sure your Action’s name is as short as possible,
since users will always have to say it in every query.
Ensure your brand is used as the publisher name,
and not the name of the agency who may have built your Action.
Devices.
Ensure only the devices where users have the best experiences are listed.
For example, it probably doesn’t make sense
to make a Canvas-based game available on smart speakers,
since users won’t have a screen to look at.
Linking.
Be sure to link any other properties like websites or apps to your directory page.
This helps Google verify your brand and enable cross-platform functionality.
Images.
While images will only appear on mobile,
ensure images represent your Actions’ ability versus your branding exclusively.
Ask your Assistant query examples.
Make sure every query highlights a different functionality,
and not just different invocations.
Use the most contextually relevant trigger verb
for the functionality that you’re displaying.
For example, sometimes “Talk to” makes more sense than “Ask”.
Assistant Links let users immediately jump into your Action experience
as though they’d invoked it with their voice just by clicking a link.
Assistant Links can be particularly useful
on social channels to drive immediate engagement,
including newsletters and email promotions.
Use Assistant Links liberally throughout your website and promotions.
For example, a recipe website that has all its recipes Assistant-enabled
should include an Assistant Link on each recipe,
so the user can easily click into the Assistant experience.
Make sure the Assistant Links you use are contextually relevant
to the specific functionality you’re promoting.
Create Assistant Links that deeplink into specific areas of your Action,
including context-based parameters which will be fed into your Action.
Do not drive users to the top of the experience every time,
which requires them to go through the intro flow again.
Your Action can push notifications to users whenever relevant,
such as sending a reminder when the due date for a task is near.
Before you can send push notifications to users, you must ask them to opt-in.
You can do this by showing them a suggestion chip
to ask for their permission.
When they grant permission, you receive an updated user ID
to send push notifications to that user.
Google Assistant Routines execute multiple Actions with a single command.
This is perfect for those times when users wake up in the morning
or many of the other tasks they perform throughout the day.
After someone engages with your Action, offer a Routine suggestion
that lets users add your Action to their Routines.
For example, you might use a Routine for daily trivia question game,
giving users the opportunity to hear a trivia question in the morning
right when they wake up.
For best results, only offer Routine suggestions
once a user has demonstrated proof of high intent.
For example, when they’ve linked an account
or engaged multiple times in a week with your Action.
Alight, now time for a quick recap of what we covered.
Building a marketing plan for Actions on Google
is critical to establishing and growing an audience of people
to engage with the Action your team has worked so hard to make.
Remember that it's important to plan ahead,
by putting together a cross-functional team who knows your audience,
and how you're going to measure the success of your marketing campaigns.
Your marketing plan should be a thorough, thoughtful, and nimble understanding
of how you communicate with your audience, where you can find them,
and the best way to craft a message that will resonate with them.
Have a plan for initial launch, and be aware of how your messaging will change
as you continue to ship updates.
Be aware of any events or times of year, which may be relevant to your app,
and be ready with a boosted campaign when the time comes.
Finally, take advantage of the tools provided by Google
to help users find your Conversational Action.
Provide useful, helpful information and metadata about your app,
so that users understand what they’re seeing.
Add Assistant Links to your webpages, where appropriate,
so that users on Assistant-enabled devices can launch your app straight from the web.
Finally, enable re-engagement with push notifications and Routine suggestions.
At that point, you might not be ready to say your work is finished,
but you'll have done some great work
to help your target audience discover, learn about and hopefully use your app.
And that's that.
Thanks for spending time with me today. I can’t wait to see what you launch.
There's plenty more to learn about building with Actions on Google
and marketing your Actions.
If you enjoyed this talk,
check out some of our other I/O Technical Sessions about Assistant,
and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter.
Thanks so much for watching.