Taking Advantage of Voice Search

“OK, Google”. How can I incorporate Voice Search into my marketing strategy?

“Hey, Siri” and “OK, Google” have now become a normal, everyday part of our lives. While they may have not functioned as well as some would have expected when they launched back in 2011, they have become more accurate and useful.

From the iPhone’s voice assistant Siri to the Amazon Echo, they now can easily understand human instructions and deliver relevant information. As a result of this, voice search is on the rise, but what actually is voice search? According to a voice search, voice search can be defined as:

“Voice search, also called voice-enabled, allows the user to use a voice command to search the Internet, or a portable device”.

In other words, by combining natural language processing and text-to-speech technology, certain devices like the Amazon Echo can understand a user’s search request and provide a relevant answer. For example:

Me: “OK, Google, can you help me find X?”

Google: “Hi Andy, is Y what you’re looking for?”

Me: “No.”

Google: “What about X?”

Me: “Yes” (to which Google proceeds to read out the information).

How Popular Is Voice?

As you would expect, voice search is more popular and publicised than ever before. For example, a survey found that in 2017, voice commerce sales generated $0.2bn in the UK and analysts have predicted it will rise to $5bn by 2022.  In addition, according to Alpine Ai, there have been an estimated one billion voice searches per month so far in 2018.

Naturally then, as you would expect, there are a lot of opportunities for brands to make use of voice search. How, then, can you take advantage of all these searches and use them to benefit your marketing campaign?

Optimising for Voice

According to Google, you should follow these guidelines if you’re looking to optimise for voice search:

• Your content should have concise headlines and summaries that provide people with useful, easy to understand information.
• You should adjust your copy so it reads more clearly for text to speech (TTS).
• In order to ensure an optimal user experience, have 20 – 30 seconds of content per section of speakable structure data.

In essence, don’t stuff your content with as many head keywords, just write how you would speak. By doing this, you’ll naturally optimise for keyword phrases popular in voice search that users will likely search for without realising it.

While voice search is starting to change the marketing industry, it has created significant opportunities. If you’re adaptive, you can use it to your advantage and win.