[[{"@type":["BlogPosting"],"@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/future-proof-your-brand-for-the-new-search-and-voice-assistant-age\/#BlogPosting","@context":{"@vocab":"http:\/\/schema.org\/","kg":"http:\/\/g.co\/kg"},"url":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/future-proof-your-brand-for-the-new-search-and-voice-assistant-age\/","publisher":[{"@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/#Organization"}],"audience":"https:\/\/schema.org\/PeopleAudience","inLanguage":[{"@type":"Language","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/future-proof-your-brand-for-the-new-search-and-voice-assistant-age\/#BlogPosting_inLanguage_Language","name":"English"}],"mentions":[{"@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/entity#Thing19"},{"@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/entity#Thing12"},{"@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/entity#Thing6"}],"dateModified":"2024-01-31T18:28:32+00:00","headline":"Future Proof your Brand for the New Search and Voice Assistant Age","datePublished":"2018-10-05T20:58:12+00:00","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/future-proof-your-brand-for-the-new-search-and-voice-assistant-age\/#BlogPosting_image_ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Future-Proof-your-Brand-for-the-New-Search-and-Voice-Assistant-Age.png"}],"mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/future-proof-your-brand-for-the-new-search-and-voice-assistant-age\/","name":"Future Proof your Brand for the New Search and Voice Assistant Age","articleBody":"I am walking into work on a misty fall day, wishing I was wearing a warmer coat. It gives me an idea, I should order a new coat, so that tomorrow, I don\u2019t have to drink three cups of coffee when I arrive to work to warm up. To start the process, I say, show me a trench coat that fits me, that I can get delivered by 9am tomorrow. My sunglasses bring up three styles for my review superimposed on an image of me, so I can see what I would look like. I say, \u201corder the grey one with polka dots and deliver it to my home\u201d. I walk more briskly to warm up, with the knowledge that I\u2019ll be wearing my new polka dot coat tomorrow to battle the London dampness. \nWhile this reality does not exist today, elements of it do, and evidence to how the \u201cfuturistic\u201d parts are really more reality than fiction.\nI never went to a site to shop, I merely asked for the information I needed to make a decision, reviewed the styles based on my personal taste and look and then proceeded to make the transaction all while never landing on a retailer\u2019s website, or browsing their catalog. \nThis change requires companies to start managing their brands for machines. Machines like Google, Bing, Alexa, Siri, and extending as far as a Tesla car or your connected fridge. It means that marketers have a new role, they need to not only think about their brand in the context of how humans understand your content, but also machines. \nThis was the specific topic of a panel I chaired at Retail Week\u2019s Tech conference in London, UK where Wendy Stonefield of Deloitte Digital, Nick Wilsdon of Vodafone, and Dawn Anderson of Move-it-Marketing shared how we saw the world changing.\n\u201cBrands are still spending large sums to build, promote and portray their brands as they wish them to be perceived across various channels. Proctor and Gamble is at the number 1 slot of the spenders with an impressive $7.12 billion in 2017, a collection of 17 auto brands spent $51 billion, and internet companies are rising through the ranks of spenders \u2013 such as Alibaba, Tencent, Rakuten and Amazon who is number 11 with a budget of $5 Billion ahead of Ford Motors, Coca-Cola and McDonald\u2019s.\u201d says Wendy Stonefield of Deloitte Digital London.\nBuilding, managing and sustaining brand image is more important than ever, but more and more challenging in the world where the customer experience is becoming fractured and owned by Google, Amazon, Apple, and not the brand itself.  \nLoss of the Customer Experience\nThere is plenty of evidence that supports that brands are losing control of the customer experience. Here are a few that illustrate the change and I believe are support for where things will be going.\nJob Search\nIf you do a job search in Google, you see a list of jobs for your area or discipline, can filter based on needs (full time vs part-time), and also keywords. But here\u2019s the kicker, if you choose a filter, Google takes you directly to the job post to read the details! \nWe see the same behaviour for Events, and answers to common questions.\n\nHealth Information\nOver the years we have seen the knowledge panels and answers in search evolve. Today, if you do a search for a specific medical condition, for example, Hashimoto\u2019s disorder, details, and common questions are listed directly in search.\n\n \nProduct Research and Purchase\nWhen searching for products, if you are a visual buyer, you can find out information about the product, the price, reviews directly in the image search results. The impact is that the research is being done off your website, so there is no evidence of interest until they purchase or don\u2019t.\nIt makes sense that Google wants to keep you in the search results as long as possible, since the longer you are there, the more ads they can display, and the more money they make.\n \nVoice Search\nDon\u2019t believe me that the customer experience is moving away from your website? OK, let\u2019s talk about Alexa. Amazon has done a great job getting us excited about asking Alexa questions, having her build our shopping list, or playing \u201cWe will Rock You\u201d for dance parties in the kitchen. What we haven\u2019t all realized is that Alexa\u2019s presence means that we are informing Amazon of our preferences, family habits, and are being provided with very easy access to a single ordering channel. As a working parent, I can\u2019t help but revel at the experience of creating my personalized shopping list and having it ordered, never having to get out pen or paper, or leave my home.\nI believe that Google and Amazon are only at the tip of the iceberg with this trend. We know that Apple is playing already in the voice assistant world with Siri, Google too with Google Home, and that Facebook are working on their voice strategy.   Microsoft recently announced how they are using Bing across their customer experience to bring data from search, email and the desktop into results.\nChallenges for Retailers and Large Organizations\nRetailers are already struggling with the changes of the current internet with online brochures\/flyers, ecommerce, and social. The largest retailers not only have to keep up with the pace of change across channels, but they also have the challenge of being large, slow and complicated. Their size alone makes it difficult to keep up.\nAnd now they have to figure out how to manage their brand for the machine channel?\nWendy adds, \u201cThe  introduction of voice search, the Internet of Things (IoT), Chatbots, are all there for the taking or breaking of brands.\u201d\nThe challenges are real. How do you get a large organization to be nimble enough to change, and move quickly to take advantage of these changes, while bringing value to the organization in the process?\nNick Wilsdon from Vodafone, shared his biggest challenge in trying to be agile in this very fast, evolving \u201cmachine channel\u201d In his role as the Head of Search, he is challenged with finding ways for Vodafone to show up in search in Google, but also in voice, on Alexa. Simply put, his challenge is Data. \n\u201cData is spread out and siloed. For example, the team built a well-received Vodafone Alexa Skill  to let pay monthly customers to retrieve their bill amount, question bill differences over the month and find information on new services. However, this application currently only works for accounts paid monthly and not pay as you go (PAYG) or B2B customers.\u201d\n\u201cIn addition, driving change is slow. To overcome this, we come up with small tasks that move things forward and celebrate their achievements. For example, organise a hackathon with your developers over pizza. Create an agile environment, where teams can try new things and use the outputs to show executives the business value in managing the brand for these new channels.\u201d\nOne of the key challenges is ownership. Is this new world of brand marketing a Marketing Initiative or IT.  Dawn Anderson of Move-it-Marketing explains that \u201cthere are so many technological choices and options afforded to organizations, and at various stages of maturity, often knowing which is the optimal path to take is overwhelming.\u201d  So where should you start and who should lead it?\nHow to Start Building a Foundation for the Machine Channel\nIn my 15+ years working with Enterprise customers at Cisco and now at Schema App, I am a big believer that wherever you start, you need to be able to show value quickly, to support ongoing investment, and also to keep the teams engaged, and motivated.\nStart with Structured Data\nMarketing teams have an easy, high-value opportunity to help Google, Alexa, and other machine consumers understand their content using the advanced SEO strategy called Structured Data (aka Schema Markup).  \nWhat is Structured Data? In 2011, Google, Yahoo and Bing created a vocabulary called schema.org (a machine language), to help them understand content on web pages. This vocabulary enables companies to translate their content into machine language, aka code, and as a result of doing this translation, Google rewards the website with features in search and better-matched traffic because the content is fully understood. \nWe experience these enriched search results through review rich snippets, images in search, prices in rich results and more. \nIn November 2017, Gary Illyse from Google stood up and said, \u201c[Add] structure data to your pages because, during indexing, we will be able to better understand what your site is about.\u201d SEMpost\nToday, Google, Bing, Alexa and others identify features as a result of embracing structured data, and we only see these accelerating. In the recent months, we\u2019ve seen Google release new features, such Media, Speakable, Podcasts, and Fact Check. With Speakable being a specific feature to enable control on what is an answer is Voice Search.\nBrands can leverage tools like Schema App Highlighter, or built in Apps in their Ecommerce Platform to add schema markup to content on your site you want customers to find, and therefore want the search engines and voice to understand.   Many of these solutions require little to no IT involvement, empowering marketing to start managing the brand for machines, and speed to value.\nAs a result of taking this first step into managing your brand for machines, there will be tangible benefits such as increased organic search traffic, increase clicks, higher customer engagement and perhaps the opportunity to reduce paid Ad investments all while starting to future-proof the brand. \nVoice Search Alexa Skill Pilot\nNick Wilsdon of Vodafone said it best, buy a couple of pizza\u2019s and a couple of developers and build something simple. What should you build? We recommend looking at the top questions customer service teams get and turn them into a skill. Often companies are already answering these questions on their phone system (IVR).  One digital marketing company, decided to create an Alexa Skill to answer the top questions in their area of search expertise, so that they could showcase the value of owning that answer.  Retailers might start with answering questions about their locations opening hours. Something I can imagine asking Alexa as I sit on the couch browsing clothing in search results.\nTake Control of How your Brand is Understood by Machines\nWe have lost control of the customer experience, and it is only just starting. Retailers and Brands can start taking control of this new sales and marketing channel with some advanced SEO tactics, and through experiments to show value, and the experience of the future.\nMarketers have a new role, they need to not only think about their brand in the context of how humans understand your content, but also machines.\nIf you need a hand getting started with your structured data strategy, we\u2019ve helped customers such as SAP and Keen Footwear drive more quality search traffic to their websites. \nStart reaching your online business goals with structured data.Let\u2019s Talk\n ","description":"Managing your brand for machines will bring tangible benefits such as increased organic search traffic and higher customer engagement."},{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Thing","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q180711","kg:\/m\/019qb_","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Search_engine_optimization"],"name":"SEO","alternateName":"search engine optimization","description":"practice and strategies of increasing online visibility in search engine results pages","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/entity#Thing19"},{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Thing","name":"Structured Data","sameAs":["kg:\/m\/05p2j70","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q26813700","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Structured_data"],"description":"information with a formal data model","alternateName":"Schema Markup","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/entity#Thing6"},{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Organization","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","streetAddress":"201 - 412 Laird Road","postalCode":"N1G 3X7","addressRegion":"Ontario","addressLocality":"Guelph","addressCountry":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/#Country","name":"Schema App Address","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/#PostalAddress"},"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"290","height":"93","url":"https:\/\/ezk8caoodod.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/SA_Logo_Main_Orange_w300-1.png?strip=all&lossy=1&ssl=1","@id":"https:\/\/ezk8caoodod.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/SA_Logo_Main_Orange_w300-1.png?strip=all&lossy=1&ssl=1"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"ScheduleAction","name":"Schedule a Demo","url":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/book-a-demo\/","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/#ScheduleAction"},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"1350","height":"650","url":"https:\/\/ezk8caoodod.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Schema-App-Featured-Image.png?strip=all&lossy=1&ssl=1","@id":"https:\/\/ezk8caoodod.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Schema-App-Featured-Image.png?strip=all&lossy=1&ssl=1"},"description":"Schema App is an end-to-end Schema Markup solution that helps enterprise SEO teams develop a knowledge graph and drive search performance.","knowsAbout":["http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q1891170","https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q6108942","https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q26813700","https:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/wiki\/Q180711","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q33002955"],"keywords":["Structured Data","Knowledge Graph","Rich Results","Semantic Search","Search Engine Optimization","Schema Markup","Semantic Technology"],"location":"http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q504114","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lifeatschemaapp\/","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/2480720\/","https:\/\/twitter.com\/schemaapptool","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCqVBXnwZ3YNf2BVP1jXcp6Q"],"legalName":"Hunch Manifest Inc","name":"Schema App","telephone":"+18554448624","url":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/","email":"support@schemaapp.com","knowsLanguage":"http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q1860","areaServed":"http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q13780930","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/#Organization"},{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"Thing","sameAs":["kg:\/g\/11j4y6gmvy","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q94440681"],"name":"Google Knowledge Panel","description":"box within the Google search results with information for a specific entity from the Google Knowledge Graph","@id":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/entity#Thing12"}],{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Schema Markup","item":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Future Proof your Brand for the New Search and Voice Assistant Age","item":"https:\/\/www.schemaapp.com\/schema-markup\/future-proof-your-brand-for-the-new-search-and-voice-assistant-age\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]