This session was presented at the LSA18 event in Chicago, April 30 - May 2, 2018.

1. Can You
Hear Me
Now?
Henry Bianco, Microsoft
Optimizing for a
conversational and AI-
driven world

4. Technology that can perceive, learn, reason,
assist in decision-making, and act
to help us solve problems.
What is AI?
Vision Language Speech Search Knowledge

5. Technology is learning and adapting to us

6. Create seamless customer experiences

7. Consumers don’t think in terms of
channels

8. The focus is on their EXPERIENCE

9. 1. Based on comScore 1 (custom), June 2017. U.S., PC The Bing Network includes Microsoft Core Search sites, Yahoo (Bing Powered) sites and AOL Core Search sites in the U.S.
2. Microsoft Internal, Q4 2017. All Devices

10. Search is changing
* in the Windows 10 task bar. 1. "IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2016 Predictions — Leading Digital Transformation to Scale", Nov 2015, IDC FutureScape,
https://www.idc.com/research/viewtoc.jsp?containerId=259850. 2. “Internet Trends 2016 - Code Conference”, KPCB, 1 June 2016, http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends. 3.
“Gartner Customer 360 Summit 2011”, Gartner, Mar-Apr 2011, https://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/na/customer-360/C360_2011_brochure_FINAL.pdf, 4. "SMX
EAST RECAP: Catalyst partners with Bing to study search in the media mix, search + other channels", Bing Ads, 18 Nov 2016, https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-
us/blog/post/november-2016/smx-east-recap-catalyst-partners-with-bing-to-study-search-in-the-media-mix,-search-other-channel. 5. "Gartner Says 6.4 Billion Connected
"Things" Will Be in Use in 2016, Up 30 Percent From 2015", Gartner, 10 Nov 2015, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317.
Cortana has over
148M
monthly active users across
13 markets with
18B
questions asked to date

11. Bing is the largest application of AI at Microsoft
Algorithms
Data Processing
Personalization
Paid Ads

12. What
you
know
today
The missed opportunity.
Using AI tools and
technology to gain a
deeper understanding of
your audience.

13. What’s a
digital
assistant?
“
“
It’s a thing on
my kitchen counter
that I talk to,
that searches the web and
plays songs
when I ask it to.
Framework by Peter Francis - @pfrncs

14. What’s a
digital
assistant?
“
“
It’s a thing on
my kitchen counter
that I talk to,
that searches the web and
plays songs
when I ask it to.
Framework by Peter Francis - @pfrncs

15. This is an insane time for technology and search

18. amazing
customer
experiences,
marketers must
have a deep
understanding of
their audience and
cutting-edge
technologies.

19. Create personalized
rich results based on a
users preferences and
personal context.

21. Voice Search Local Search Visual Search Chatbots

22. of search will come from
voice and images by 2020*50%
SOURCE: Andrew Ng, Baidu

23. Voice queries
are becoming
more
conversational
in nature

24. Queries are
becoming
longer and
more
conversational
in tone

25. Include
QUESTION
words and
phrases in your
paid search
keywords and in
organic on-site
content

26. People are
increasing their
usage of voice
for simple tasks.
We need skills
and bots to help
make complex
processes easier
through voice.

27. @ChristiJOlson #HeroConf

33. What questions make
the most sense based
on your business,
products, and services?

35. Images
Text
Video

38. Does the
answer make
sense when
spoken aloud?

40. Include
QUESTION
words and
phrases in your
paid search
keywords and in
organic on-site
content
Voice queries
are 3X more
likely to be local
in nature

41. Include your
business listings
on Bing Places
to make sure
they are
discoverable
through digital
assistants

42. Check and
update your
citation data
regularly.
Think NAP
• Name
• Address
• Phone Number

43. How to: Paid Campaigns for Voice Queries
1 • Identify the Questions
2 • Check your Negatives
3 • Use the right Match Types
4 • Device Targeting
5 • Ad Copy & Extensions

44. Getting Voice
Right.
How you can
start taking
advantage of
voice today in
paid search:
What Voice Queries exist today?
• Pull a search term report
• Analyze the long tail queries, in order to understand how your audience is
using natural language.
• Analyze what questions your audience is asking, and how.
Optimize your Campaigns
• Create new campaigns/ad groups based on the conversational queries
• Use Broad, Broad Modified and Phrase Match
Be Prepared for your Audiences Questions
• Understand the device and the situational context by device. Evaluate using
mobile bid modifiers to target based on device

52. 1 • Identify a simple question (informational queries)
2 • Choose how to structure your answer (paragraph, table, list)
3 • Provide a straight forward answer that adds value
4 • Write the answers so it sounds natural when spoken aloud
5 • Think about character count – does it fit on a mobile screen?
6 • Make it easy to find – SEO best practices + Schema

53. ROBOTS.TXT, Page Status Codes, Canonical Tag
<REL=FOLLOW>, <REL=NOFOLLOW>

55. Getting Voice
Right.
How you can
start taking
advantage of
voice today for
SEO:
Use structured data & schema mark-up
• Use schema to provide context around your content
Structure content appropriately – Optimize
snippet content for voice
• Evaluate where to compete, start with queries ranking on pages 1-2
• Do your Research. Mine search suggestions people also ask.
• Compete for the featured snippets – ones feature 3 lines of text
• Evaluate the type of content – tables vs text
Write in conversational natural language
• Write content so that it sounds natural when read aloud.
• Think about keeping it conversational in tone and nature.
Create useful and valuable content
• Don’t create single paragraph gateway pages in attempt to optimize for
voice search.
• Think about user experience and make it easy for the user to read and
understand. It may be useful to make it easy for search engines and the
users to understand that content is the answer to a specific question.

56. 44%
Source: Bing Ads Future of Retail Survey, 2018

57. of brands will use chatbots for
customer interactions by 202080%
SOURCE: “The Past, Present and Future of AI in Marketing,” Marketing News, December 2016. “AI-Ready or Not,” a report commissioned by Weber Shandwick and conducted by KRC Research
in June 2016. “The Rise of the Machine: Are Robots After Your Job?,” Marketing Week, January 2017. “Neural Networks and Modern BI Platforms Will Evolve Data and Analytics,” Gartner Group,
January 16, 2017. Survey by Tata Consultancy Services, 2017.

58. Consumers Will Expect
Conversations With
Your Brand On Every
Channel, 24/7/365

59. You aren’t building a bot.
You are creating a relationship.

60. BOTs can be the “AI” Face of your brand

61. Bing Bots
Makes finding and
chatting with bots more
discoverable on Bing
Bing Business Bot:
A virtual employee for your business that
can answer most of your customers’
questions on your behalf and helps
efficiently manage customer
communication.
Live Demo: El Gaucho Bellevue

62. Chatbot Extensions
Ad extensions that make
search more conversational
Increase user engagement and drive
more clicks through real time
interactions with your business.
Better informed
customers:
Users can ask questions and gain answers
quicker to make an more informed
decision about your offering.
Increased Visibility:
Stand out from your competitors by
giving customers an opportunity to
interact with your brand in real time.

63. Bot Services
Azure Bot Service enables you to build chatbots that can scale new
services and help you provide better support to your customers.
Bot Framework
Bot Framework provides developers with the tools to create
intelligent bots that interact with users in a natural way.
Leverage Cognitive Services
Cognitive Services enable your bot to see, hear, interpret, and
interact in more human ways.
Connect cross platform
The Connector will have your bot talking in full fidelity on the most
popular conversation experiences, including Skype, Slack, Facebook
Messenger, Kik, Cortana, Bing, Teams, web chat, email, and many
more channels.
Bot Services
Provide better service and support

65. Use Bots to:
• Answer questions
• Automateprocesses
• Get customers from questions to actions
• Connectdigital assistantsto your services
• Pull in customerdata from CRM systems
Infuse bots with
intelligence – use the
cognitive services APIs to
make them smarter.
QNAMAKER.AI
FromFAQ to Botsin under 20 minutes

66. Getting chatbots
right.
Questions to ask
as you build
your bot.
So you want to build a chatbot. Awesome. Before you start developing
your bot, ask your self the following questions:
1. Why do you want a bot? More to the point – what will it do? What
problems will it solve?
2. How will people engage with your chatbot? In which channels?
Which bot framework are you going to use to develop the bot? (I
recommend the Microsoft Bot Framework)
3. Who is going to your bot? (Why would they?)
4. How will people find your bot?
5. How will you measure success for your bot?
Get the full context and read the supporting article: http://bit.ly/bot-qs

67. Getting chatbots
right.
5 Tips for
adding EQ as
well as IQ into
your chatbot.
Myers-Briggs test
1. Accommodate the user, not the chatbot.
2. Diagram conversation flows to understand responses and
interactions
3. Make it quick and simple for the user to get to the answer or
action they are trying to do
4. Maintain context in the conversation
5. Inject personality
Get the full context and read the supporting article: http://bit.ly/eq-
iq