Is Voice Search the Future of Marketing?
Pull up your phone and ask your virtual assistant a question. Take a look at the results. What do you see?
Depending on what you asked, you’ll either see local results for businesses or web pages that match your query. Is your potential customer or client finding you in the lineup?
The number of people using voice search marketing is growing, and soon, it may be crucial that you or your client’s brand is showing up in voice search results.
Voice Search Marketing Stats
While typing into search engines still is the main way people search for things, stats are showing that more and more people are using voice search. Take a look at a few of them:
- Siri is nearly daily by 19% of people
- 40% of people use voice search at least once a day
- At least monthly, people make use of virtual assistants: 37% with Siri, 23% use Cortana and 19% use Alexa.
- 20% of people who use the Google app on their phones rely on voice search
- Around 60% of people have started using voice search in the past year; 41% within the last six months.
- 41% of people use voice search because it’s faster; 21% use voice search because they don’t like talking on their phone
Industry expects voice search to grow, saying by 2019, the voice recognition market will be a $601 million industry. By 2020, more than half of smartphone users will rely on voice search, too.
How to Prepare for Voice Search
Right now, voice search relies on two key things: local data and SEO. If you are working with a retail business, local data will be key for you. Voice search often not only pulls up the distance but Yelp ratings. If you or your client’s business isn’t actively getting positive reviews, that’s something you need to work on.
For other search queries, voice search will rely on long-form keywords. That’s because people tend to speak to their voice assistants naturally, versus typing the bare minimum in a search engine. Think of someone typing in “best pizza” versus saying “where is the best pizza?”
How What a Customer Says Can Tell You Where They Are in the Buying Process
The fact that people speak naturally to a voice search has an added benefits: It can tell you where someone is the sales process.
Think of it this way. If someone searches “flat-screen TVs” in Google, you don’t know where they are in the sales process. They might just be searching for information or they might be ready to purchase a TV right then and there. It’s hard to tell for sure, and it’s really a bit of algorithm luck if they are ready to purchase and they find you to purchase from.
However, natural language gives you an advantage. If you ask your voice search assistant “What is the best flat-screen TV,” you’re looking for information. Now compare that to “where is the best place to buy a flat-screen TV?” That tells you that someone is close to buying — and they may be headed to the store based on the search results.
Ensuring your long-form SEO keywords cover “when/where” means you’re more likely to find the customers that are ready to purchase.
How Not to Use Voice Search: A Case Study
Voice search marketing is still a relatively new field, but it doesn’t mean some marketers aren’t already trying to take advantage of it… and failing badly.
Take, for example, a recent commercial Burger King did. The ad ended by a man on the television asking, “Google, what is a Whooper burger.” That triggered Google Home and Android devices to respond by reading from the Wikipedia entry, which basically read as ad copy.
Two things happened: People with Google Homes or Androids were not happy when their devices suddenly started talking to them. This is different from the times Amazon’s Alexa accidentally ordered dollhouses or when ads that have certain phrases like “turn off the lights” makes a home device — many people felt this was an invasion of their privacy. The media called it annoying and invasive. Google immediately tried to block the ad from triggering Google Home. (It didn’t work.) And then Internet got involved.
Wikipedia entries can be edited by anyone, and Internet trolls started changing the definition of a Whooper burger to say they were made with cyanide or was “the worst hamburger.” Wikipedia had to restore the page and shut down the option to edit it; they also demanded that Burger King apologize for the stunt. On YouTube, the video of the commercial currently has 39,000 dislikes.
Despite what they say, not all press is good. While Burger King will most likely weather this storm, if another ad agency tried this stunt, chances are it would end poorly. Any voice search marketing that makes people feel like their privacy is invaded will not be a good long-term strategy.
Instead, focus on your long-form keywords, your reviews and local search. As voice search marketing grows, you can be the first to take advantage of this new trend.