30-second summary:
- Keywords represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding consumer intent
- Using AI-powered chatbots, conversational data that occurs over messaging channels like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Messaging can give businesses a deeper understanding of what consumers want
- Below, we’ll discuss how conversational marketing platforms like Spectrm[1] use natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI) to guide customers through the buying funnel
- A robust conversational marketing platform makes it possible for companies to build chatbots that engage and convert customers on the websites, apps, and social platforms where people spend their time
For more than two decades, Google and other search engines have attempted to crack the consumer intent code. The entry point for a search marketing campaign is the keyword list. Yet keywords—whether spoken or typed—represent the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding what a user wants. There’s no way to clearly measure (or identify) user intent, but Google is getting better at figuring out what a user wants with technologies like Google Hummingbird, an algorithm update they rolled out in 2013. Google introduced Hummingbird in response to the increasingly conversational nature of search queries.
Per a 2013 article in Wired[2], “Google is now examining the searcher’s query as a whole and processing the meaning behind it.” In January 2020, Statista reported roughly 40 percent[3] of US search queries contained four or more terms.
Asking a search engine or virtual assistant a question is the beginning of a conversational journey that carries the searcher across channels until they ultimately find what they want (or not). Keywords[4] pull the curtain of intent back, but they only provide a glimpse of the customer journey, labeling the searcher’s thoughts