Embrace Marketing Technology, But Don’t Forget the Human Factor

In an industry where innovation is the only constant it’s imperative to stay on top of the marketing technology pipeline. But the question of where to focus and invest can sometimes feel like looking into a crystal ball.

At VERB, we’re experts in many fields, unfortunately clairvoyance isn’t one of them. However, we devour the latest technology news, weigh our clients’ goals and budgets carefully, and build trusting relationships with vendors to decide where to invest our clients’ valuable resources.

Companies often look to technology or digital platforms to offer quick fixes, however there’s little thought given to how many human hours are needed to run the platform, talk to another human when it’s broken, or tell the story behind the numbers to make them digestible. You also need that strategic storyteller in place to change course when necessary.

At VERB we carefully audit, test, and consider whether any given platform, or piece of technology will be useful to achieve client goals. This seems like it should go without saying, but, never sign a contract without a deep understanding of the tool you’re signing on for. In order to understand whether it’s the right fit it’s necessary to look inwards and be sure that the investment of money and time will help you fix a problem or achieve a goal.

We focus on what’s important, and how it can help our clients excel. This year we’re investing our time and technology budget into:

Personalization and Machine Learning. Stop treating every website visitor like they’re the same. Serve up new content to returning visitors, highlight your amazing new offer to someone who’s almost ready to book, and increase conversion rates by serving up content that resonates. It’s all about delivering the right piece of content to the right person at the right time on their preferred device. Phew! That’s a big job. So, we employ machine learning and AI to help us understand what certain audience segments, or individual visitors want to see.

Personalized content performs up to 178% better and more than 78% of consumers will only engage with offers if they have been served up personalized content during their previous engagement. You have eight seconds to grab visitor attention, make the most of it.

We undertake deep dives into audience segments, personas and individual preferences to create content, calls to action, and experiences meant for each visitor. We then employ machine learning to tell us what’s resonating with who. This strategy has improved client conversion rates by more than 45% in some cases. It really works, but make sure you have the strategic, creative and analytical people in place.

Bots and Artificial Intelligence. The robots are here and now is the time to shape how we want to see this technology grow. We want to be on the proactive side of it. This means using the technology to automate processes, understand our visitors better, and deliver the right content at the right time. It also means having fun! Don’t use chatbots to recycle content from your site, give them a little personality to inject something unexpected into someone’s day.

Visitors expect to be able to communicate with brands when, where and how they want. VERB employs an ‘always on’ strategy for our clients and thanks to the rise of chatbots and AI we’re able to automate communications, improve messaging platforms and ultimately, increase conversion, especially in those late night hours.

We’ve also begun testing AI platforms to produce content that is better left to the robots, while we use our time to strategize and tell stories. Our conclusion so far: the robots have a long way to go. In one test we ran, only 50 percent of product descriptions created by an AI platform were accurate. But having 50 percent of a project done is better than none and this test helps us understand where the technology stands, what needs to improve, and how much we can rely on it. Now is the time to understand and help shape the role this technology will play five years down the road.

Deep Social Listening. Proactive monitoring, sentiment analysis, and crisis management are core to our process, and play a critical role in our ongoing client strategy. The days of social media monitoring taking place on a platform-by-platform basis are over. People are talking about your brand well beyond your owned channels and this shouldn’t be news to anyone. The next step is to employ deep social listening to learn about what people are saying about your brand, your space, your competitors, and your partners. In turn, this will inform content creation, identify both positive and pain points, highlight opportunities and help problem solve.

This strategy has uncovered some amazing insights for our clients, such as an active birding community close to home, a forum on the other side of the world talking about a client destination, and keeping an eye on what people are saying around intent to travel. All of this insight allowed us to communicate within forums that had previously been a mystery, create blogs, social posts and itineraries around these subjects, and improve guest’s interaction with each brand.

Without question, digital platforms can make life easier. However, it takes a strict vetting process, a deep understanding of what you’ll get out of the tool, and a trusting relationship with the vendor can all go a long way in helping you find success.

Where are you spending your technology resources this year? We’d love to hear about it!

VERB Interactive is a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.