Voice Search- The next big thing.
Often as marketers, we think about how the industry dynamics are going to change in the future and their impact on our current strategies. Recent debates about how the power of A.I. is undeniably the next big thing in digital marketing led me to share some insights into what to expect from digital marketing in the near future.
We all have heard that consumer behaviour and attitudes are changing and as marketers, it is our responsibility to help our brands understand what our consumers need in the future and how can we adapt our strategies and campaigns so that they resonate with them.
With so much technological change over the past decade and the speedy growth of personal technology, our consumers are empowered now more than ever. With more access to information and the ability to make choices, our consumers have now become ‘smart consumers’ and we as marketers have to tune our products and strategies according to them.
Our future consumer landscape is fragmented because there are so many factors including technology, politics, privacy, generational influence and lifestyle that impacts their behaviour. With things changing at such a fast pace, nothing except for one the seismic shifts remain constant. However, these open a new gateway for marketers and allow businesses to grow faster.
Let’s see how?
Well, we have all heard about smart fridges, speakers and the continuous evolvement of IoT (Internet of Things). With the advent of voice recognition and searching, the way SEO is practised is significantly changing. With voice search on the rise, Exact match domains and other black hat SEO tactics are no longer going to help businesses cut through the clutter.
With over 65% of smart speaker owners saying they wouldn’t want to go back to life without their voice-controlled assistant with them and 40% of US adults using voice search at least once per day, it will become a necessity for businesses to adapt to voice search to improve their customer experiences and drive more traffic to their sites.
With the latest devices on the scene — Amazon Echo and Google Home, businesses can create a unique and optimized customer experience that will foster relationships and build brand loyalty. These voice assistants have the power to provide valuable insights about users which can allow businesses to create personalized messages and content, improving their ability to provide a unique customer experience. Moreover, by making interactions more natural, less time-consuming and seamless, brands can encourage retention and loyalty.
Another reason voice search is important for marketing is that voice search is driving changes in SEO best practices. By significantly changing the way people interact with search queries, marketers will now have to start using question keyword phrases to target the relevant audience as voice searches are mostly posed in the form of full questions.
Within the next 2–3 years, it’s expected that 30% of searches will be screenless which means that it will significantly change the way people interact with search queries. With voice search queries being relatively longer than text searches, marketers would have to change their strategies for keyword research and make sure that their page ranks first for a particular phrase. Why is that? I say this because unlike a search engine results page, voice searches do not present highly ranked options, they only present a top result.
Think about it: For businesses whose success depends on their digital marketing strategy, voice search inevitably affect your business as it has a direct impact on digital marketing.
It’s clear to see how much technology is advancing digital marketing’s best practice and allows newer and more exciting opportunities to flourish. But whether a firm is successful in leveraging voice search depends on its ability to adapt its marketing strategy in a way that it brings positive results.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
