Hey Alexa, Why is NLP Revolutionizing Marketing?
Utilize natural language processing (NLP) to increase your overall ROI by partnering with a digital marketing agency ASAP. Remember the first iteration of Siri on the iPhone 4s? She was charming but clunky – and ended up being more of a curiosity rather than a real voice assistant. Today, however, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are both powerful and deeply integrated into our daily lives, thanks to advances in natural language processing (NLP). If you’re a brand or a digital marketing agency, these advances in NLP can also be used to help create more effective and engaging campaigns. The evolution of NLP Natural language processing draws on computer science, linguistics, machine learning, sophisticated language modeling, and analysis to allow computers to generate and understand human language. In essence, it’s the technology that allows computers to finally interact with us in an intuitive, seamless — and human sounding — fashion. The introduction of smartphones and other mobile devices made communicating, working and performing basic life tasks easier and more efficient. Smart speakers and other NLP-equipped devices are taking things a step further. Instead of mediating interactions through a keyboard, we can navigate with simple voice commands to a sophisticated AI-based voice assistant. As you might expect, this is not an easy endeavor, as language is deeply complex; until the last few years, NLP-equipped devices were limited in functionality and were largely unable to have advanced, human-like conversations. Humans pick up complex language because we are naturally hardwired to understand it; machines, however, have no such innate advantage. Today, NLP technology has taken a quantum leap forward and is now being used in smart speakers, chatbots, and predictive text suggestions — the kind you see in search engines, email, and smartphones. It also has an important role to play in another human endeavor with digital marketing agencies. How NLP is transforming the way we live, work and sell The business of marketing has become incredibly data-driven in recent years. In order to effectively market and sell products and services, businesses need to target the right audiences. In order to do that, they need a way to identify who they mean to target — and that’s where data analysis enters the equation. There’s still one significant challenge, however: More than 90% of the data that’s generated online falls into the category of “unstructured data.” This includes emails, reviews, social media posts, etc. Because this information is not classified or structured — and because enormous amounts exist and are being continually generated — it’s difficult for marketers or anyone else to make sense of it, let alone derive actionable insights. Which is where a digital marketing agency & NLP come together. NLP offers one solution to this problem. One recent example: EssayPro, an online service that helps students become better writers, uses NLP to analyze unstructured data in an effort to better understand the problems students have when composing their papers. It then applies these insights to its marketing strategies, targeting students with specific solutions to the precise problems with which they are dealing with. Businesses can also use NLP to conduct sentiment analysis and identify propensity signals on social media. By analyzing this data, brands can learn — almost in real time — how audiences are responding to goods, services, and marketing messages. NLP can also be used to help businesses that gather high volumes of customer feedback through chats, emails, voicemails, and social media posts. By applying NLP to this data, businesses can unlock deeper insights into customer experience, and make any necessary adjustments to their marketing strategies. The takeaway We believe great campaigns require more than compelling creative work — they also need to be supported by a sophisticated understanding of the latest technological tools. If you’d like to learn more about how NLP can help you improve your marketing efforts, please contact us today.
Why you’re missing out by not investing in vector graphics
If your business isn’t investing in vector graphics, it should be. And we’re going to tell you why. Some advertising agencies don’t want to share why vector images are so powerful because they are concerned of having less work for their creative team if businesses learn to self-serve. We know the value of any agency partnership should extend far beyond campaign churning and burning so we’re not worried about giving this information out. We’re here to talk about vector graphics. WHAT ARE VECTOR GRAPHICS: Vector graphics are perfectly scalable, mathematically-based images and designs that create pictures and logos based on layered shapes, gradients, and patterns. Designers (or business owners), can make images that can be shrunk or enlarged for any print or digital work imaginable. The file sizes tend to be smaller and cleaner than enhanced images making sharing, editing, and updating a breeze. AS OPPOSED TO WHAT: You’ve probably seen vector graphics hundreds of times but didn’t realize it; They look as good as any picture or Photoshop project you can imagine. In fact, many designers work exclusively in vectors since they are much easier to edit than photographic images. This is especially true for logo and icon work. Vectors are created using tools such as Adobe Illustrator (or the free-based Vector software). Unlike photography, vector graphics allow you to create pictures that can be duplicated, recolored, and manipulated with no limitations. Check out some ways we’ve helped local businesses do just that. WHO CARES: This is important for several reasons. First, it creates seamless brand consistency. Need to change your logo to appear on a dark background versus a light background ? It covers that. Need to adjust the size of your logo to fit on a business card? No problem. Need a web icon that will appear across the site? It’s got you covered. Typical image edits a business needs to make on a day-to-day basis are easy to implement using vector graphics. What might take an hour or two on Photoshop usually only takes a few minutes using vectors. Because vectors are easy to edit and scale, you don’t need to worry about accidentally going off brand or radically skewing your image. Every aspect of the image can be easily duplicated or edited down to the very layer. Vectors are also easy to create. You don’t need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a high-end photoshoot when you can create beautiful images from the comfort of your laptop. It also means you can rely less on generic stock images and more on the creative vision you have for your team. Once you invest in a few great vector graphics, you can repurpose them and edit them for a wide variety of needs giving you the best bang for your buck. Vector images can be customized to your exact liking so you never have to worry about seeing your images on a competitive website or campaign unlike stock photography. And unlike customized photoshoots or artwork, you can cut cost without cutting quality. And we can help. WHEN TO CALL THE PROS: Once you have a foundation of vector images to use, edits are easy. We’re confident any business owner or designer can extend the life and relevancy of your vector graphics across channels and creative needs. But, it’s best to leave that foundation to the pros. If you’re unsure what types of vectors would be most useful, give us a call. We’ll help you determine how you plan to use your vectors, what types of edits might be most common to your business, and what your key assets should be. We can build the start of our creative foundation together to use for your brand guidelines, campaign needs, and beyond.
Instagram in the OR: Using social media to bring comfort to others
I never thought when making the switch from nursing school student to an advertising major in college that I would have the opportunity to witness an open-heart surgery on a small child. But that is exactly the experience I had last month. BIGEYE had the honor to be asked by our client, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, to produce a video about their cardiology program. As part of that video, our crew was graciously allowed in the operating room to witness an amazing surgical team, lead by Dr. William DeCampli, repair little 3-year-old Emily Stone’s heart.We literally got to participate in history being made. The hospital broke ground by trying something relatively unheard of in healthcare: using social media to share a live surgical operation with the entire world. The hospital posted images and updates of the surgery every 10 minutes through the photo sharing application Instagram, pushing the updates out via their Twitter and Facebook profiles, as well as their blog. For me, it definitely brought new meaning to a photo app that I primarily use to apply artistic filters to pictures of my food. The response was overwhelming as the world watched and cheered on little Emily with amazing words of encouragement. It was awesome, in the truest sense of the word, to be so openly allowed into a world that is usually very closed off to the public. Pushing the envelope will always bring on a slew of questions: Why did they do this? Does social media go too far? What role can social media play in healthcare? The very nature of social media encourages debate and provides a portal for honest discussions. Mike Schmidt, director of digital media at Arnold Palmer Hospital, said it best: “Healthcare is behind the rest of the world in being able to tell stories well through social media. There are thousands of amazing things that happen here at the hospital each and every day, and we want to share that with our community.” Advertising, taglines, slogans and pictures of happy patients all have their place in healthcare. They play a role in communicating to the public a hospital’s message: who they are and what they stand for. But what about showing, not just telling, what really goes on? There may not be anything “pretty” about surgical procedures, but they are real, raw, and honest. We’re talking about humans saving other human’s lives. Arnold Palmer Hospital and Emily’s family were ready to take that leap by sharing this life-saving procedure with the world. The fact is, surgeons and healthcare professionals alike live and breathe this every day, and that’s what has a true impact on their patient’s lives. Social media is here to stay and will continue to evolve and change. Yes, seeing pictures of a beating heart on your Facebook timeline may not be for everyone, but I do commend the hospital on using a tool that we are all familiar with in a new and interesting way in order to keep people informed of what’s going on behind the curtain. It breaks down barriers and can remove the mystery of the “unknown” for families that may be going through something very scary, hearing their child has congenital heart disease. On a very important side note, Emily is doing well. It was a joy to get to know her and her family throughout this process. She’s a brave little girl! You can see how the story unfolded on the hospitals blog, Illuminate. Warning: some of the pictures are graphic in nature. Written by, Laura Adams, BIGEYE Creative Account Manager
