How These Brands Are Using Amazon Alexa to Boost Sales
Digital personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa are growing in popularity. With a simple voice command, these assistants can do things like play music, find products, operate smart home devices, and much more. With Amazon Alexa skills, users are able to add a wide range of functions to their device.
Alexa skills are essentially apps that can be added to the digital personal assistant. You have skills for games that can be played through Amazon’s Alexa, news services, banking skills, and skills for movies and TV shows. There is also a variety of skills that are developed by businesses to provide users with services while also promoting the brand; voice app development is the latest frontier for marketers across all industries.
To get a better understanding of how Alexa skills can be used for marketing, let’s take a look at a few brands that have had success with this approach.
Tide
As a company known for selling laundry detergent and fabric care products, Tide developed an Alexa skill that can help people learn how to remove tough stains from clothes.
When the Tide skill is enabled on an Alexa device, the user can get step-by-step instructions for removing many of the most common stains that people encounter.
Of course, all of the different stain removal recommendations involve using Tide products, which is one way to boost sales. But the skill also has the benefit of creating a strong branded association for users. When an item gets a stain, a user is going to use Alexa to activate the Tide skill, putting the brand in the forefront of the consumer’s mind when it comes to stain removal.
Johnnie Walker
The whiskey brand Johnnie Walker developed an Alexa skill that can engage users in some interesting ways. With the Johnnie Walker skill for Amazon Alexa, consumers can find the perfect blend for their tastes or gift a bottle to another person. Additionally, it can order the bottle for you directly or use location services to help you find the product in a store near you.
Beyond helping users find the perfect bottle of whiskey, the skill has features that can guide you through a tasting of various Johnnie Walker products. It’s also capable of recommending different drink recipes that can be made using Johnnie Walker whiskeys. Along with that, it has a feature that shares interesting facts about the Johnnie Walker brand and general whiskey trivia.
Time Out
Time Out is a city guide service that provides users with recommendations for things to do and places to visit in various cities around the world. Recognizing the potential of a voice service, they developed the Time Out skill to help raise brand awareness and make their services more accessible to Alexa users.
With the Time Out skill, users can get a daily briefing for three can’t miss opportunities in the city of their choice. The recommendations are selected by Time Out editors from the city in question, and Alexa supplies details about different events and attractions. She can even provide information on tickets and booking for different events.
Why Brands Need to Develop Alexa Skills
With advances in language processing, voice commands are well on their way to replacing text as the primary search interface for most consumers. As voice becomes the new standard, customers are going to expect voice services from the brands they use. Companies that don’t optimize for this search format risk losing clients to competitors that are quick to put out voice search skills.
Voice services like Amazon Alexa skills also offer a more personalized way to interact with consumers. Instead of typing text into a search bar or navigating buttons on an app, consumers get a much more conversational experience that’s similar to interacting with a real human.
