Top 5 Trends Marketing Leaders Need to Know In 2023

Listen Time 39 Minutes

Each year billions of dollars are spent on digital marketing. And, each year this number grows. In fact, worldwide more than $602 billion dollars have been spent in 2022, and an astonishing $876.1 billion is projected for 2026.

No matter how big or small your piece of that $602 billion dollar marketing budget is, if you don’t spend it in the right places and know which trends to jump on (and which to avoid), you could be wasting a lot of money and missing valuable sales opportunities. In today’s economy, it’s more important than ever to spend wisely and be sure you’re taking advantage of the right digital marketing trends and skipping the others.

To explore the most valuable trends of 2023, Smart Route host Courtney Tyson, sat down with industry expert and vice president of technology at White Shark Media, Daniel Alvarado. Take a listen as they discuss everything from unpacking the most valuable AI tools and privacy changes, to the transition to GA4, multi-touch attribution, and conversation intelligence.

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About Daniel Alvarado

Daniel helps organizations use technology to create meaningful experiences, simplify complex tasks, and generate value for their clients.

He has eight years of experience in the Marketing Technology industry, providing support both from a Marketing Strategy and a Software Development standpoint in various roles, including but not limited to Digital Advertising Manager, Software Architect, and VP of Tech.

Currently spearheading a team of world-class developers behind AdClicks, a solution for digital marketing agencies and freelance professionals facing inaccurate, hard-to-read, irrelevant metrics in their client reports.

Episode Transcript

Courtney:
Hello listeners and welcome to episode 22 of Smart Route which is ironically also our very last episode of 2022. Thank you for listening in. I am your host and strategic partnership manager at call tracking metrics Courtney Tyson as marketers reflect on 2022 and look ahead to 2023. We wanted to take some time to discuss the martech trends to be on the lookout for in 2023 and so we’ve invited our call tracking metrics partner Daniel Alvarado Vp of technology at White Shark Media to lead us through to discussion. Daniel is an expert at helping organizations use technology to create meaningful experiences, simplify complex tests and generate value for their clients. Welcome Daniel and thank you so much for being here.

Daniel Alvarado
Thank you for inviting me. I’m super excited. Extremely happy to be here and have this conversation. There’s so much to talk about so I’m definitely looking forward to what we’ll be covering.

Courtney
Yes, this is gonna be a really fun call. Um, and so Daniel has spent 8 years or more I believe in the martech industry so he is an expert which is why we’ve invited him today but before we get started. Daniel can you tell us a little bit about yourself and. Your journey to becoming Vp of technology at White Shark Media.

Daniel Alvarado
Of course I actually started in the digital marketing space about ten years ago so that is correct. It’s a little over 8 Um and the great thing for me has been working on marketing itself through a few different angles right? and seeing things through different lenses.

Daniel Alvarado
I’ve been an account manager myself so I’ve actually managed campaigns for clients as you may or may not know white chirk media is a digital advertising agency. So I was on the frontline speaking to customers understanding their needs and being able to put together strategies for their. You know, paid marketing campaigns and utilizing tracking as a result of that I’ve also been a team leader I was a team leader for about a couple of years um, and then afterwards I was sought upon to do a director of marketing where I was leading a team. Um, overseeing multi-channel efforts which is actually one of the things that we’ll discuss today because multi-channel efforts have been going on for a while but obviously they become more important as time goes by. So um, that’s a little bit of where I was for a bit in terms of some of the highlights I’ve obviously managed you know. Close to half a million dollars a month and advertising spent before both through internal marketing as well as through some of our clients that we actually work with I am very technically savvy I love it. That’s my hobbyist as you can probably tell from the title. So I love tracking I love everything. That has to do with like nerdy things like that such as you know implementing the right pixels being very you know picky about how we implement those tags adding as much information as possible to you know what we are able to track and measure. Um, and I’m super big on numbers. So that’s a little bit about you know my profile and.

Daniel Alvarado
In terms of what I’m doing today I’m currently overseeing a team of 15 people which is just a combination of engineers designers and product managers as we’re working on. You know one of our new sub products which is called adclicks and that’s ah, a reporting engine. Um, that we are using both internally and offering as a product so that’s where that’s a little bit about me and that we’ll get to cover a few more topics.

Courtney
Well, very nice. Thanks for sharing you’ve had quite the journey and you have had such an opportunity to wear so many hats which is really cool so congratulations on all of your success and you know getting to where you are today. You know it’s interesting to think about. You know you’ve spent your career in this industry right? So you’ve seen martech trends evolve tremendously throughout the past decade and 2022 was interesting it right? it it brought the introduction of you know new data privacy laws and best practices sunsetting of Google analytics. Um. You know we saw omni channel and social media marketing kind of come to the forefront again right? We’re seeing new so new concepts it just connected Tv ai and conversational intelligence brought to the table. There’s just been a lot going on this year and a lot of different things that marketers. Are talking about in regards to Mar Tech Trends um so let’s dive into some and talk a bit more about what we’re seeing. Let’s get started and discuss social platforms. So Daniel can you tell us a little bit more about what platforms out there are gaining relevance. And how will we likely start to use our current popular platforms in new ways too.

Daniel Alvarado
Absolutely um, well I think that the most popular prop forms are no surprise the number one in my opinion, and also based on just the research that’s conducted across the industries I’ve been reading a few articles and we still have Facebook gets the number 1 ah, very closely followed by Youtube which is in general even though it’s not exactly social, but it is considered within that bucket. So we still have Youtube around and we also have Instagram which is very closely related to Facebook but it’s still on its separate blocket and they have their own different tools and their own different things. Um. And then I think one that’s actually particularly interesting that’s grabbing a lot of traction nowadays is Tiktok. There’s still some debate on you know, whether or not it’s going to be banned in the US or not but as of right now is still very much up and running and there’s there’s a lot of activity happening through Tiktok and it’s actually one of the ones that. Um, in my opinion. Um, is one that if you’re not in there already, you probably should you know there’s there’s a lot of value to be gained from that. It’s especially depending on the audience that you’re targeting. So if you’re in retail and if you’re in the world of being able to sell products to your end customers. That’s a pretty good 8 range to go after in terms of you know what Tiktok can offer. Um I think there’s a few different ways that you can approach social. But ah when people use it. They’re looking um they are looking to engage with obviously their peers and their friends and everything along those lines but it’s also turned.

Daniel Alvarado
Differently now. So you know I remember before it was all about connecting with friends and sharing you know, ah images sharing your own experiences but it’s also now turned into actually following brands and researching your products before. So I think that social proof. Nowadays is is a huge thing. So if you have a group following on social media if you have people that are talking about you and this is also very intertwined with like influencers right? Both at the big influence in terms of also maybe smaller. Um, microinflurs in specific niches that you find attractive to your brand I think that’s what’s basically taking a lot of traction nowadays and it’s important to stay informed. It’s important to understand who your customers are what kind of specific subsements you have within those. Um, and I think that’s how we can get creative is in is in doing a little bit of that influencer marketing and then also within Instagram for example, they now have a product that’s so it’s really helpful to showcase your products and I think that one is maybe the one where um. You can get a little bit more um ahead right now because there’s a little bit less people doing that than there is maybe on Facebook and you know Facebook is growing and you have a lot of different ad formats.

Daniel Alvarado
But the fact that within Instagram you are able to actually showcase product pricing and everything and it’s quite nicely blended into their organic posting I think it’s a really great implementation that they did and that’s why they’re becoming so so popular

Courtney
Yeah, what I’m seeing too is with Tiktok and and and linked into a little bit too. It all kind of ties into like social selling and even Instagram like for me I know I go to Instagram to look at like product reviews like what are influencers saying about. About certain products and things like that. So. That’s huge. We actually did a podcast this year too with a gentleman named Austin Armstrong who talks all about Tiktok and using it for your business which is really cool just to think about using it as a marketing engine um and 2 just thinking about social selling the idea of these. Social platforms being able to connect us with our customers. So you know me being someone who um and heads up at partnerships at Ctm I got I get a lot of sales outreach right from folks trying to sell me on stuff but it also allows our commercial teams right to connect with their customers as well and kind of build that trust with them in a different way. So. Interesting to think about you know those platforms that are up and coming. But how to kind of use the ones that we’ve already been using to our advantage as well. So thank you for that. So next, let’s talk a little bit about um Google and Microsoft in 20 and 23 what exciting things can we expect from Google and Microsoft next year

Daniel Alvarado
Oh man, that’s ah, that’s a hot topic right now for me, especially you know, being an agency. Um I think that we have seen Google kind of do a lot of push on their side towards automation and removing some of the control that. Um, some of the agency and account managers had and I think that’s a little bit of what you can continue to see ah happening in 2023 like my expectation is to see less need for technical knowledge and Google and also Microsoft also secondarily following suit as they typically would have. Um, is that you’re going to see less um options less advanced options within the campaign management. You know we’ve already seen search terms being removed in a few different scenarios a little bit less control on bidding because we’re pushing on automated bidding. Um, and again there’s there’s pros and cons to that. And I think what’s really important and the takeaway that I would give everyone is that it’s not really helpful to sit here and say oh, it’s such a shame that they’re removing all of these advanced options I think it’s also about maybe thinking. Ahead and saying well let’s let’s accept that. That’s how the market is trending towards and then what can we do as agencies or as business owners to take advantage of that. So now we’ll have a little bit less control. But that means we also have a little bit more time back because you’re not as involved in that nitty-gritty. You know.

Daniel Alvarado
Bit management search terms review adding more keywords because um Google is essentially owning all of that and managing it on your behalf. Maybe not so gracefully sometimes I will say you know we have some interesting performance changes from time to time and um.

Daniel Alvarado
But but again the important thing here is understanding that that’s the direction where things are headed is just less control a lot more automation on that side and it’s important that we embrace it and that we find alternatives.

Daniel Alvarado
You know how do we want to best use our time. How do we want to change the narrative with our customers as well. Um, and then ensuring that we have all the right tools in place to track the results anyways. So I think it starts there if you’re understanding your results even though there’s not a ton that you can optimize nowadays. Ah, that you’re still you know very safe and secure in terms of what you’re getting from your return. But I think that’s one of the key things is just the loss of control that we’re going to see with the push on performance macks. We have seen that um also with discovery campaigns. So. We are going to see Google push in that direction and of course my estimate would be also that Microsoft is going to follow suit in that regards I don’t know if that’s something that you’ve also heard um from other agencies that you’re working with.

Courtney
I would say what we’re seeing from other agencies is that there’s a little bit of like fear with this transition to GA 4

Daniel Alvarado
Yeah.

Courtney
Um, this is why I love to hear your positive mindset on it right? We got to look at the benefits got to look at the positive side of things and what I hear you saying is yes, we’re going to have less advanced options and we are hearing that and our agency partners are definitely like what are we going to do without these advanced options. But I Love your thought process in that. They’re just making things easier. They’re giving you some time back and as long as you know how to report on your data and present it. You’ll be good to go.

Daniel Alvarado
Exactly and that’s why you have to really think about having all of those essentials in place right? It’s making sure you have your forms being tracked. You got to make sure your calls are being tracked. We have that in one of our other points that we’ll discuss but it’s just essentially making sure that you are tracking as much as possible. Um and making sure that you’re not just focusing on that last conversion. But also all of the events that lead to that conversion as well and that’s where GA 4 kind of came in as a change.

Daniel Alvarado
I still see a lot of people even within our team. You know, just a little bit on edge about switching over to GA 4 because it’s such a blank slate you have to customize everything yourself or at least a good chunk of it as opposed to where Universal you have most things kind of already pre-built in. So.

Daniel Alvarado
That’s a little bit of what I I expect I also think that we’ll see CPC’s increase a bit. Um I think that’s been the trend over the last year or so where we have seen specially and competitive industries that have picked up after covid um, we have seen an increase in the cost per click. So.

Daniel Alvarado
I do expect CPCs to continue to rise a bit and just get more competitive. So ah, you got to make sure that you’re not only doing search but that you’re also finding other campaign types that can complement your search efforts. Um, whether that’s again, if you’re in retail making sure that you have your right shopping campaigns. Or if you’re doing a performance max. Of course that you have your feeds in place make sure that you’re doing display that you’re doing retargeting. There’s a lot of different options that you have so that overall you’re not too fixed on what your search Cpc is but maybe overall what is your total. Right? And how are you seeing things holistically. So I think that’s a little bit of what we’re also see on that side and then a key thing that I also think it’s again within that same realm is I also see a push on making sure that we are.

Daniel Alvarado
Tracking things. Not only again on the last conversion but all of those events that lead to that conversion. So you understand your conversion paths quite well. Um in that you are true reading things not only to the individual platform whether that’s Google whether that’s Microsoft but just across the board. So. I think that’s what we’re going to see in general.

Courtney
Kacha. Okay and I would say too. You know I think when we talk about change and fear with the change right? I always like to say you know lean on your vendors lean on your partners lean on your clients anyone you can learn from you know. Gather as much information as you can and run with it I bring that up because here at Ctm you know we’re we’re definitely prepared to help our customers with the transition to GA4 we’ve been working to build and enhance that integration all year our integration with ads as well and we’ve made some really great strides and just making automation easier than ever. Um, especially with the introduction of like our global settings and triggers. So so lean on you know those resources you have out there to learn more about how you can kind of more smoothly go through that transition. Um, as we’re on the topic of data. Um, let’s talk a little bit more about.

Daniel Alvarado
Absolutely.
Courtney
Data privacy. So a lot more restrictions are being released and marketers really need to discuss this and how it impacts the way they’re doing their jobs so tell us a little more about what marketers are in for next year and when it comes to data privacy.

Daniel Alvarado
Yeah I think we’ll see just a push on removing cookies. Ah you know at the end of the day I think if I remember a couple years ago there was there was no issues with cookies. Then we slowly started to see the introduction of. You know permissions to track that information. Um, and then I think eventually we’re just going to see more and more restrictions along those lines. So um I think it’s it’s also relevant to keep in mind you know how can you What does that mean for you as an advertiser. So if you have a lot less of those cookies being accepted. What are your workarounds. Um that that you can implement as a result of that because I think you you have to think of how does that affect your tracking. How does that affect. Um, the way that you measure your results and that’s a little bit of what I think it’s it’s really important because it’s not going to get any better necessarily I think it’s just going to continue to um constrict further um, and it’s going to be super important to have.

Daniel Alvarado
The right tools in place and also the right mindset in place to say well now my conversions in Google have decreased. Let’s just say but I know that in terms of my overall revenue that I’m driving. The revenue has stayed consistent. So maybe I’m not necessarily seeing those conversions come through. From the vendor right? I can’t necessarily see those but I know that the influx of leads is still the same so you also have to think of the vendor in this particular case whether that’s Google whether that’s Microsoft. That’s only one part of the story. Um, and you still have to be um. Mindful of what you’re seeing within yourerrms mindful of what you’re seeing in terms of your feedback from the sales teams. Um and just rely on your own data as well as supposed to only relying what you’re able to see through third party tracking tools because again that there’s a little bit of that happening.

Daniel Alvarado
Um, I’m curious. You know what are you guys doing um to work around that like are you guys preparing any changes in the way that you manage those permissions and the way that you manage cookies cookie duration anything along those lines.

Courtney
That’s a great question. Um, so to my knowledge it’s it’s not necessarily going to affect us directly right? and the information that we’re able to pull in right now. Um, with that said we did have 1 of our partners on the podcast earlier this year name’s Nava Hopkins and she.

Courtney
Echoed just exactly what you had said in terms of you know, making sure that we’re giving the um, let’s say the the advice around making sure that marketers know they have to think of new ways to get to know their customers and. Get to know who they are and what they want and so you talked a lot about relying on that data from crns from sales teams just really finding new ways to learn more about who their customers and what their customers are um so that’s kind of what what we’ve ran with this year in terms of talking about the first party cookies. Do you know it happened to know when.

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Daniel Alvarado
Yeah.

Courtney
They’re planning on going away.

Daniel Alvarado
They did push the end of third-party cookies again. So now it’s been pushed from 2023 to 2024 so at least within the year I think we’ll be fine, but it’s important that you take it as a transitional year.

Courtney
Oh it’s okay.

Daniel Alvarado
Um, and we all start thinking if what would what would we do then without those if that was the case but at least for now it’s been pushed until the end of 2024 so we’re talking about maybe second semester of 2024

Courtney
Gotcha. Okay, while we’re on the topic of data privacy I wanted to bring up 2 We’re seeing a lot of this at call tracking metrics in terms of regulations that the government is putting on the telecommunications industry. So what we’ve been doing is working all year to help our customers comply with those new us regulatory guidelines around which you’ve probably heard about sort of stir shaking and a to p so these are regulations that are going to help fight spam calls and text messages and do away with those number spoofing calls that you get right? so.

Daniel Alvarado
Yeah, yeah.

Courtney
Those are the sorts of things that we’re working on on our end to ensure you know that we’re complying our customers are complying. They’re still able to communicate with their customers via phone via text successfully. So.

Daniel Alvarado
Good and I’m happy to hear that you guys are always on top of that because there’s so many different regulations that you probably have to deal with right.

Courtney
And they’re always changing and so it’s the government who’s putting these in place right? The Fcc specifically and then they have to communicate to all of the carriers right? and then they all have their ways of doing things. So it’s definitely been um, a consistently flowing process of just.

Courtney
Changes coming down the pipe. So our team has done a really fantastic job of just helping our clients stay up to speed boom what’s going on and ensuring that you know there’s no interruption in service and that you know they’re complying. So yeah, thanks. Daniel. So um, let’s see let’s let’s move on to the next.

Daniel Alvarado
Good.

Courtney
Trend we have on our list here and I should say like it was actually really hard for us to pinpoint which trends to discuss right? because there is so much going on. Um, but this one’s interesting and I think I just kind of talked about you know, calls and texts and all of that. Let’s talk a little bit more about Omni Channel Marketing um you know it’s it’s important as ever. Let’s so let’s touch on it. Um I know that you specifically wanted to talk about the importance of integrations and reporting so I guess let’s start there.

Daniel Alvarado
Yeah, absolutely and so what do we? First of all, let’s just clarify right? So what are we saying within Omni Channel Marketing is just ensuring that we are not relying just on search that we’re not relying just on social but rather that we’re doing a holistic approach. Um, through all the different avenues that are possible and that are also relevant to our customers. That’s I think important of course more is not necessarily better, but you do have to understand where your customers spend their time. What kind of content. Do they view what kind of applications. Do they use and then once you understand that you can define your plan. And say well I’m going to do a combination of search a little bit of display some social media some video ads and e Etc, etc. So I think that’s that’s what’s key and so what happens as a result of that as a result of that you now need to be able to combine the different.

Daniel Alvarado
Spend numbers to different metrics from all of those into 1 same place. Um in order to be able to make decisions because one of the mistakes that I see people make all the time is to pause campaigns on specific vendor because the ah ROI is not there. And that’s that’s super common and so what can you do about that is that wrong, no not necessarily but you have to remember that the data that you get. Let’s just say for example from your Instagram campaign. That’s only one part of the puzzle you have to look at everything at once. And it is important to understand that you can you are not able to drive only bottom-of-the-funnel leads. That’s not how it works so you have to make sure that if you want more bottom of the funnel you do still have to feed the top in order to make sure that more of those leads come through and that they can progress. Through all of your different marketing approaches and all of your engagements. So I think it’s important to understand that hey okay, well I have my social ads and they have an ah ROI that is negative and then I have my search campaign that’s got a positive ROI and then I have my video campaigns which is kind of in the middle. But overall how am I doing as a business am I actually driving overall the results that I want therefore if we are we are in a good place and what’s happening is that maybe you’re looking at social s just a driver for revenue. But that might not be the case.

Daniel Alvarado
But it is helping you establish social proof. It is helping you get people to sign up for your newsletters. It is helping you get more subscribers that you can then market to in different other places. It’s helping you get more people that you can then retarget. So if you look at only that piece of the puzzle.

Daniel Alvarado
It’s It’s very easy for you to sometimes make the mistake of assuming that it’s not working So I think my takeaway for everyone when it comes to Upni Channel is just to make sure that you’re looking at each specific Network has an objective and you have to have that clear. And then also seeing how is that affecting your overarching efforts and what’s the ah roi that you’re getting overall right? or your return on ad spend as a whole. So I think that’s that’s key. Um, and there are so many different tools out there to help you do that. There’s different reporting tools out there call track and metrics also make sure I think you have integrations with.

Daniel Alvarado
All of the key vendors such as Google Microsoft and things like that so you have to have something in place to help you understand that? Um, but that’s the key takeaway for me. It’s just make sure that you know where to put the money but also don’t look at them as individuals look at it as a holistic approach as well.

Daniel Alvarado
Because that’s what it is.

Courtney
I love that and I love how you explain it as a puzzle and each channel right? each strategy. Whatever right? It all adds to the puzzle and tells the whole story. Once it’s put together. Um, and we talk a lot about omni channel at Ctm too because the way I look at it. I’m not a marketer right? but the way I look at it is with Omni Channel Marketing you’re reaching your customers in the way in which they want to engage with you like I had just said I like to go to Instagram. And look at reviews from influencers right? And then I might go to the company’s websites like that’s how I prefer to interact whereas someone else might just prefer to pick up the phone or they might prefer to go to a different site to look at reviews right? So it’s good to just make sure you’re communicating with your customers and the way they want to be communicated with. And that’s what you know we push to is that our platform allows you to collect those calls chats texts forms fills to make sure you’re not missing any of those pieces of communication. Once they do take that step to engage with you.

Daniel Alvarado
Yep, and that’s actually super important and you know call track metrics has allowed white shark to get a lot of those insights and provide a lot of value to our customers as well. So um, and I and I think you know speaking on general ah results and tracking. I think that a part of that omni channel. It’s also looking into multi-touch attribution as well. That continues to be something. That’s really important and then also in terms of you might see a spike in people trying to find attribution software and that’s also something that’s becoming increasingly popular. Um, which is now the thing of having like 1 pixel to like track the conversions from different vendors as well. You’ll see ah a bit of a pickup on on that as well. You know there’s a few different applications that do that? Um, and I’ve seen that across the board so that you’d not only rely on.

Daniel Alvarado
The data from the vendor. But of course again threat carefully because you have to still listen to the vendor’s information because they do for example with Google they have you know smart conversions now with Facebook they always infer based on the user’s email and you know they have their own. Individual data that you might not be able to get through a third party so there’s a few different things like I said what’s important is that you understand that it’s all connected and that it’s not as black and white as you may often think.

Courtney
I love that you touch on multiuch too. We’re hearing a lot about that as well from our agency partners looking for solutions to help them understand that journey. So we’re working on some things as well. We just released ah a multitouch feature and we’ll continue to build on that next year so glad that you brought that up helps me feel like we’re going and.

Daniel Alvarado
Yeah, yeah, love it.

Courtney
Right? direction. Ah, um, all right? So the final trend that we wanted to discuss is around conversation. Intelligence. So ironically, um, ah our Ctm sales engineer Jason Smith he just trained our entire company on our suite of conversation intelligence features and what we offer. And how marketers could take advantage. Um, but I’d like to get your kind of um perspective on this daniel and how conversational intelligence might apply um to marketers in 2023.

Daniel Alvarado
Absolutely so there’s a couple of things around conversational intelligence and I think it’s kind of ah down to ah it’s not only conversational intelligence is also just general Ai right? So we have um, two branches there you have natural language processing.

Daniel Alvarado
Which is essentially what you’re going to see from chat Bots and also from different call vendors that are allowing us to like read transcripts and be able to get um essentially a read On. Um maybe finding Keywords within the calls that we have for example within Chatbot so that we can respond quickly to things. Without having to have a dedicated person. Um, so I think what you’re seeing from that or spawn from that is just a time savings because I don’t have to have a dedicated person on a live chat. For example, if we talk about chatbots because that’s also within that bracket of Conversational Intelligence. It’s like.

Daniel Alvarado
I don’t have to invest in as much staff for example to be responding to those messages and we’ve actually seen an increase in the number of conversational interactions or or interactions that are handled by a conversational agent like that. Um, by as much as two hundred and fifty percent since it started the pandemic and this is more of ah, a global event. Um, and I see you see that everywhere now you know banks have their chat bots um, there’s there’s a lot of different platforms out there that are already doing it and it’s also been in boom in terms of just how many vendors you have around that. So again, it’s just time savings. It’s also because it’s it’s good for the customers because they can get an immediate answer as supposed to being on the queue. So you also have to think about customer satisfaction as a result of that conversational intelligence the more that customers interact with that.

Daniel Alvarado
The more the machine learns also about what’s a positive outcome. What’s not a positive outcome. Um, and so I think that those are maybe the 3 components. It’s just time savings and satisfaction for the customer and also again, just continuously improving based on what you’re able to find that’s within the chatbut part. Um, one thing that I Also think it’s super important within the actual conversations or the calls. For example I think it’s sentiment analysis I think it’s extremely important that we are now able to get machines to analyze a call.

Daniel Alvarado
Listen to it and give us our take or give us their take on how that customer is feeling how that customer is feeling within that call were they able to find what they were looking for was the issue that they had resolved and a lot of those you could infer directly from that same intelligence or that same technology. Um, and I’m not really sure. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on how you guys are doing it. But um, what I what I see from a marketer standpoint is that you can quickly tell whether or not you know out of so many hundreds of calls How many of those had a positive outcome. By just essentially looking through the transcripts and then maybe putting in some rules. Um, and I think that’s what would be super helpful because we used to have to listen to calls all the time and we still do you know to provide our customers with like some input is like hey we noticed this.

Daniel Alvarado
We noticed that maybe we could have maybe picked up the phone a little bit faster or we noticed that we could have been a little bit more friendly or hey this was a very qualified lead but it didn’t close because of X Y C so we used to provide a lot of that to our customers and we have to spend you know a good deal of time depending on the size of the customer and how many calls they had So now we can save time on that.

Daniel Alvarado
By getting some of those conclusions from tools such as you know Ctm in this case and other tools out there as well.

Courtney
Yeah, yeah, so I can talk a little bit more um on what we’re doing which definitely echoes everything that that you just said so specifically we have a keyword spotting tool that when transcriptions is enabled. It helps our clients to spot identify and then take action on keywords. And sentiment within their customers’ conversations automatically which is really cool, right? So our system spots a keyword that indicates a customer is unhappy then we can go ahead and send that you know that organization a notification your agent had a call with an unhappy customer right? or maybe someone can barge into the call and help. That that agent out. Um but 2 just thinking about call and lead scoring for marketers is huge too. So the tools that we have to be able to help you maybe automatically score a call based on things we’ve picked up whether it be the sentiment or keyword spoken maybe about a product or their intent to buy. Helps marketers to automatically score calls which then helps you kind of keep data clean because we’re also helping you to determine well which of those are you sending as conversions to ads for example, right? So those are ways in which you can think about it. We’re doing a lot with this moving into next year and we even have the ability to for our customers kind of create these like um. I guess customized conversation intelligence transcriptions in a sense where you know we’re we’re listening for. We’re listening to to calls. Um, but you know we’re listening and based on your collection of recordings so that we have a full idea of.

Courtney
You know your customers I guess as it is do they have accents. Maybe that affect how we’re picking up the transcription and that sort of a thing So the customization I think is pretty cool too.

Daniel Alvarado
I Love it and I also love that you mentioned that it’s not only about being able to make some conclusions based on the data but I’m also reading from what you’re saying is that you have the ability to then create some Automation. So as a result of that. So. If you are able to do that Then That’s obviously a double time saver which I think it’s It’s absolutely amazing.

Courtney
Agreed agreed as I talked about before I mean Marketers need new ways to collect data around their customers and while listening to those recordings and pulling out words and phrases. You know, certainly helps to help you better understand your customers right.

Daniel Alvarado
Yeah, like yeah I could tell you for example that again depending on what you on what your service is you? You also want to use conversational intelligence for example to pick up on trends of. Ah, what are customers asking for nowadays, you know so you can use that to also create your own content. So. It’s not only about maybe telling whether the call was good or not but it’s also okay, well what competitors are they mentioning. You know what kind of activities are they saying like if you’re offering. For example, if you’re on retail and you’re offering for example. Ah, clothing. Okay, well what kind of clothing are you know customers asking for if we’re talking about. For example, if you’re a travel agency or something along those lines. Maybe you want to know what are the main activities that people are asking about so there is so much that you can use from that which again talked about first party data and what you can use. You can turn that into then marketing campaigns that are tailored around those things as well. So there’s there’s also that component of being able to create content from what your customers are saying as well. Which I think is extremely important.

Courtney
That’s yeah, that’s a great point as well. So thanks for bringing that up. Um, so that was 5 trends. We successfully covered 5 trends twenty twenty three is really going to keep marketers on their feet. Um. Daniel before we wrap up here. Is there anything that you would like to add or plug.

Daniel Alvarado
Ah, yes, in fact, ah as I as I mentioned during the intro one of the things that I’m currently spearheading is a project to scale up and get into the market of reporting tools. Um, so we have our platform called atclicks. Um, and you can find more about at Clicks at atclicks app. It is a multi-channel. Um, all in 1 automated white label. Um, and it’s super easy to use that was our bet you know it’s just making sure that it was um. Extremely easy for people to create the reports to share them with their clients and our approach was to make it as pretty as possible so that you can wow your customers because at the end of the day. The reports are for your customers and so that’s kind of the focus in the approach. Um, so to learn more about ad clicks go to Aclicksa app.

Courtney
Thanks Daniel and I can say firsthand I have seen ad clicks. It is. It’s a beautiful platform. It’s super easy to use I’ve seen multiple demos at this point actually and the reports that it creates for marketers are just they’re they’re great. They’re pretty to look at right but they allow you to very easily digest. The the information that obviously they’re trying to present right? So you guys done a really great drop over there and congratulations and we certainly look forward to continuing to share ad clicks with our partners and with our customers as well.

Daniel Alvarado
Absolutely And thank you so much for the further kind words I do appreciate that from bottom of heart.

Courtney
Of course, of course, this was so great and just to recap. Um, today we talked about social platforms which you know which are up and coming as well as how to adjust to the existing platforms. We’re used to. We talked about changes to be expected from Google and Microsoft. Rise of data privacy and regulations. We talked about Omni Channel Marketing and lastly conversational intelligence. So Daniel I want to thank you again for being here and sharing your expertise with us. We really appreciate it and we really appreciate white sharks partnership as well.

Daniel Alvarado
Thank you again. Courtney for inviting me. It has been a pleasure I hope to join you know a couple more of these in the future and it was absolutely great. Look forward to a very successful 2023 for all of you marketers listening to us today and then for you guys as well.

Courtney
Thank you so much? Yeah, well definitely. We’d love to have you back and just want to thank your listeners too for your support throughout 2022 as well. We definitely look forward to bringing you more compelling content in 2023 happy holidays. Everyone that’s a wrap. Thank you. All right.