Platforms Are Going For Share Of Behavior And Marketing Will Never Be The Same
As a marketer of consumer products, have you been in conversations that make you feel you don’t know enough about your customers? For instance no clear answers to questions, like who exactly is the customer? Why do they buy or reject our product? Where are they? How many of them are out there? Has your team mapped user journeys based on guesswork more than quality data? Have you had disjointed conversations with your media partners and research companies who have told you they can give you some online media data but they do not have all of it? So, one might have some search data, while another might have purchase data and still others would talk about social media data.
While we, as product marketers, face this challenge, how come Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent and Jingdong seem to know so much more about their (and our) users?
The answer lies in the volume, velocity and quality of user data that these platforms have. While we rely on custom or syndicated research, platforms such as Google, Apple, Tencent, Alibaba, Amazon and Facebook have data from millions of registered users. While our data collection has a start and end date, big platforms are generating data all the time. While our data is mostly “claimed behavior,” platforms have behavioral data. And while our research data might be focused on only part of the purchase process, platforms are adding more features to their services and thus are able to have a holistic view of their users.
Google might have started with search, Facebook with social media, Apple with devices and Amazon with retail, but today, all of them have a large and growing basket of diverse offerings.
All these platforms embrace third-party collaboration. They seek to foster symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationships with users, customers, partners, vendors, developers and the community at large. We already spend a lot of time with these platforms — a recent article in The New York Times said Facebook already has about 50 minutes of our time everyday. Similarly, data from as early as 2013 shows that Android (Google) users spend as much as 49 minutes and iOS (Apple) users spend an hour and 15 minutes with their devices every day. But in spite of such large and growing share of user’s attention, platforms want more. With their business models based on share of user behavior, platforms want to move much deeper into their user’s everyday life. But this isn’t easy with the present set of devices (smartphones and tablets) and present input and output tools (screen, keyboard etc) we use today. Screens and keyboards have limitations. Typing on a keyboard gets the job done, but it does not scale. However talking, like we do with our friends and family, does scale.
This brings us to why, other than because AI is reaching an inflection point, we have been hearing so much about conversational commerce, AI, bots and natural language interface in these past few months. Smart usage of Artificial Intelligence and natural language processing is now being used to redefine how we interact with platforms. Interface will be smoother and relatively friction free. This will ultimately motivate us to spend more time with these platforms.
“Smart usage of Artificial Intelligence and natural language processing is now being used to redefine how we interact with platforms.”
Let’s see how different platforms are going after share of behavior.
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled natural language processing at their F8 event in April this year and announced their ChatBot powered entry into conversational commerce on the, now 900 million, Messenger Platform.
At their I/O 2016 developer conference in May, Google talked about something similar. But they went one step further. For Google it’s no longer about search or maps or ads. It is about, as Sundar Pichai said, “helping people get things done in the real world.”
Google wants to make the conversational convenience available pervasively. And while Google Assistant is the tool that will help them in delivering this, Google’s new Google Home is the device with which they will enter our homes.
A device like Google Home is merely a starting point in how our interactions with platforms and computers are going to evolve in the coming years. These devices and their successors will only get more sophisticated and less intrusive over time.
Google’s various software platforms like Mobile, Watch, Car, PC, Home and the new AI powered interface make it pervasive and place it well to deliver on the promise of “getting things done in the real world.”
Apple
As compared to Google, Apple’s approach is more device-centric. Thus they have their announcements around multiple device-related platforms, namely iOS for iPhone and iPad, Mac OS for Macintosh devices, Watch OS for Apple Watch and Apple TV.
What stood out at the Apple WWDC 2016 was their newfound focus on Siri. SiriKit enables all developers to have their apps controlled through voice (Siri). Apple’s focus on Siri, which Apple claims gets two billion requests a month, was the theme that joined all other announcements they made in early June this year.
In addition to the Siri-enabled interface for all the apps on your iPhone, Apple also has HomeKit (for Apple enabled smart home) and CarPlay (Apple enabled platform for smart car interfaces that will go into their own car when it arrives, and any other car company it is partnering with).
The goal is to have the Apple platform ready for all spheres of our everyday life. Here is an overview of various behaviors that Apple wants to mediate through its platform.
All this has major implications for user privacy, which is why we also heard Apple talk about privacy when they introduced “differential privacy.”
Amazon
With its Fire Tablet, Fire TV, and more importantly, with Alexa via Amazon Tap,Amazon Echo and Echo Dot — is also angling for greater share of behavior through natural language interface. There are some parts of the Amazon strategy that are less visible now as compared to Google’s and Apple’s, but we can expect that to change with a few strategic acquisitions or investments that Amazon makes in the months and years ahead. As platforms evolve, we can expect more merger and acquisition activities. Platforms will try to acquire or partner with companies in order to serve more aspects of user’s everyday life.
If we now step back and look at the overall picture, we’ll realize that all major platforms are going after the same thing — a larger share of user behavior. As people spend more time online, behavioral data on these platforms starts becoming important and more important than what people say in a focus group or a telephonic research interview. Also, machine data being generated by connected devices is telling platforms more about how these devices are being used and what it says about the users. So, unless it’s being used to add more texture to a hypothesis or more meaning to conclusions we already have from behavioral data, marketing research data is dwarfed by platform data.
When we combine all this data with powerful computing and analytics, we begin to map unexpected correlations, unearth counter-intuitive segments, scenarios and more. In sum, we get richer insights about the same set of people. This in turn helps us model user behavior, create dynamic user segments, predict behavior and also make our products more personalized.
“Customers have always been ahead of marketers. With dynamic behavioral data, platforms have a chance to go real-time.”
With analytics thrown in, the gap between traditional marketing research and platform becomes starker.
This is important because it has huge implications for marketing and business. At its core, marketing has been about understanding customer needs and addressing them at profit. Two things underpin this and, traditionally, marketers have been in-charge of these two
- Customer Knowledge: Business owners and marketing teams have reached out to customers to understand them
- Customer Relationship: They have had a direct relationship with their customers
With the rising dominance of platforms and informationalization things are starting to change. User and machine data are either with companies that are developing these connected products or with platforms that these companies are aligned with. As a result:
- Customer Knowledge Is Changing Hands: Platform companies are the new owners of customer knowledge.
- Customer Relationship Is Changing Hands: Platform companies are building a direct relationship with the end user.
So, if marketing is all about understanding people and addressing their needs in a profitable way then with the knowledge of users and an ongoing relationship with them, platforms are much better placed to market than traditional consumer product companies.
And this is not a one-time thing. Ever-increasing volume of data over time will help platforms become better over time. This gives platforms a strategic advantage over traditional consumer product companies.
All this has far-reaching implications for both business and marketing. In my next post, I will highlight some of these.
Disclaimer:
I am not employed by any of the companies I have mentioned here. These are merely my observations on how platforms are changing the way people interface with the world they live in.
All products, logos, concepts, images, company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective owners. Using these here does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. No ownership or affiliation is claimed.
