How To Promote Your Amazon Alexa Skill

By Published On: January 4th, 2019Categories: voice & assistants

By using Alex Skills, brands have an amazing new possibility to get their voice heard. Amazon’s voice assistant “Alexa” is enabling customers to simply use voice commands to interact with a multitude of services. In this regard an Alexa Skill is a functionality that is enabled though these voice commands. You can think of it as a voice app.

Some of these skills help with travel plans, sending text messages or ordering food. These Skills are still somewhat limited, and the ground-breaking ones are yet to come. Nevertheless, the market for Alexa Skills is growing rapidly – both for users and new applications.

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The Skill ecosystem is similar to the Apple Appstore that enabled revolutionary possibilities for app developers when it opened its gates about a decade ago.

Alexa Skills are on the same trajectory of a revolutionary technological shift, enabling the direct communication of humans and machines, through voice commands.

 

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Brands that can establish themselves early in this space will gain a huge first mover advantage and are still not running into too much competition. For this reason, developing your own Alexa Skills and bringing them to the market is definitely a promising path to follow for any brand or individual.

 

The fundamentals for your Alexa Skills strategy

Having developed a great Alexa Skill the next step is to get people to actually use it. To achieve this, it is important to make sure that customers’ expectations are met and a general ‘voice first’ approach is being implemented in any development and marketing efforts.

 

It starts with the right name

Choosing the right name is key. Pick a name that is easy to remember and stands out from the crowd, while still pointing to its actual use case. What is the Skill able to accomplish and what’s the user benefit?

Make it a name that is easy to say, because this is how it is going to be activated. Short and easy to pronounce hits the sweet spot.

 

What’s the benefit of the Skill?

Make sure to point out the major benefits and functionalities of your Alexa Skill in its description. Use specific and optimized keywords to be found effortlessly by your customers.

 

 

Your Skill icon conveys more than any words can say

Give your potential customers visual cues on what kind of functionality they can expect, by using a fitting icon. An individual design helps to enhance your branding. Choose an icon that is simple, recognizable and that has a strong visual focus.

 

Drawing attention with the right promotional tools

After you got the fundamentals in the Alexa Skill Store right, marketing and promotion is next on the list. This step is all about creating awareness about the Skills’ existence.

 

Email Marketing just works

If you have been in the market for a while, chances are that you have a well-established email list already. Use it! Send out a mail announcing your newly developed Alexa Skill and how it will positively impact your customers’ lives. This will get you your first couple of users – guaranteed.

email marketing

 

Build a landing page for your Alexa Skill

You have two options here. Either you find a place on your existing website to prominently feature your new voice app or you build a brand-new landing page. Getting eyeballs onto your product is the main goal here. Further it helps you to become a little less dependent on Amazon’s promotional tools while at the same time enabling a more long-term oriented SEO strategy.

 

Paid promotion on Google or Social Media

Depending on the Alexa Skill that you have developed, different channels are better suited for your specific needs and audiences. As it is all quite new still, you have the first-mover advantage and will have to experiment a little too to find the best working strategy for you. Using your own and existing social media profiles to promote your Alexa Skill is a given – if it wasn’t, now it is!

 

Skill Store Optimization (SSO)

The first step in creating a successful Alexa Skill promotion is a well-developed and functional app. Having it integrated into the Skills Store in the right way will help you to be found right from the start and get these all so important reviews going. It is advised to remind your users to leave a review for the Skill in the store within the app. Paid promotion in the store can work too – it all depends on your budget.

 

Cross Promotion

This is one of the easiest ways to promote your Alexa Skill. Use all your platforms and even other Alexa Skills to let your customers know about the new options. Promoting products within your own products is free and for that reason alone, creating a wide array of Alexa Skills can be a smart choice.

If you need help bringing your ideas for Alexa Skills to life, Onlim will enable your brand to be a part of the voice enabled future – today. Click here to find out more about ways to collaborate.

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