#40 - Voice Assistance: The New Frontier for Brands, with Wally Brill

11/28/18 • 32 min

Twenty-five years ago, it was websites. Twelve years ago, it was mobile. Today, it’s voice assistance. By 2022, voice commerce sales are expected to top $45B in the US and UK, and even today 72% of people with voice-activated speakers use them as part of their daily routine. Clearly, if you’re in the digital agency space, you need to understand voice user interfaces (VUIs) and get yourself in front of the trend. Wally Brill, Head of Conversation Design Advocacy & Education for the Google Assistant, is a perfect guest to walk us through this subject. He has twenty years’ experience with voice, primarily in the design of VUIs, both as a consultant and in senior roles with companies such as eBay and Nuance. In other words, he’s been in the game for as long as there was a game. In this episode, Wally shares insights on voice-based actions, persona design and what he thinks the future will hold.

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#39 - Getting the Most Out of Seasonality, with Hana Abaza

Since we’re nearing the holiday season and the annual retail apex of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, the Google Partners Podcast brings you an early holiday treat. Hana Abaza, Head of Marketing at Shopify Plus, shares insights about seasonal campaigns and campaign strategies as well as year-round wisdom for effective positioning whether you’re a digital agency or a marketer in the B2B or B2C space. A featured speaker at conferences about tech, startups and marketing, Hana is passionate about strategy and helping companies grow. And she’s the real deal with a track record of successful marketing strategy and campaign execution across a variety of companies. Now with her vantage point at Shopify Plus, she’s uniquely poised to share what she’s learned about what works in online marketing and why. Guest - Hana Abaza, Head of Marketing at Shopify Plus Hana has been involved in technology and startups for a number of years. She started on the B2C side before switching to a consulting role in marketing and growth in B2B SAS. It was while working at Uberflip in Toronto that Hana started looking for her next step, wondering if she wanted to stay with a startup or a more mid-stage company and if she wanted to stay in Toronto or move to the west coast. It was over coffee and “life advice” with Craig Miller, Shopify’s Chief Product Officer, that she found out about Shopify Plus. The new expansion of Shopify appealed to her desire to stay in the up-market space. Through that meeting, she moved into her current role as Head of Marketing where she pursues her interests and grows her talents relating to the entire marketing process from product development to commercialization. Host: Alex Langshur

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#41 - 5 Steps to Strategic Copywriting, with Joanna Wiebe

Recent episodes of our podcast have talked about positioning, seasonality, landing pages, and digital assistants. With the complexity and fast-paced evolution of many topics in marketing, it’s easy to forget that so much of what we do all comes down to words. There’s a lot riding on our ability to find the right message at the right time for any audience we’re reaching. If we’re going to succeed, we need to create or curate copy that sparkles, engages, convinces—and converts. The good news is that like many skills, good writing can be learned. So this episode, we’re excited to welcome one of the best teachers around: Joanna Wiebe. Founder of Copy Hackers, Joanna is a highly sought after conversion copywriter who has worked with clients as diverse as brick-and-mortar stalwart, Tesco, and digital native, Nectar Sleep. A globe-spanning speaker, Joanna joins us to share techniques that make words work harder. Guest - Joanna Wiebe, Conversion Copywriter The original conversion copywriter, Joanna Wiebe is the creator of Copy Hackers and CH Agency, where she and her team write world-class conversion copy for clients like Nectar Sleep, Datastax, Canva and Sprout Social. She's been invited to teach conversion copywriting on 100+ international stages at events like StartCon, INBOUND, Mozcon and Business of Software. Along the way, more than 50,000 people at businesses large and small have turned to Joanna for copy coaching, and thousands more have taken her online training courses, such as Copy School. Find her at copyhackers.com or on Twitter @copyhackers. Host: Alex Langshur