Marketing through a world of voices

Voice-activated assistants are brilliant. Gone are the days of rolling over in your bed to glance at the clock - now, we just shout “Hey, Siri, what is the time?” and a voice from the dark chirps back “the time is 8 o'clock.” You barely have to move a muscle.

Voice assistants’ uses are multiple. Utter a few words and they will tell the time, tell the height of the Eiffel Tower, and even buy curtains online. More and more people, including almost 36 million Americans, are using voice assistants to carry out these simple tasks.

As voice assistants become a central component of life in the office, at home or on the go, advertisers and marketers will have to deploy the best SEO and branding strategies to get their clients’ results at the top of the list. Here are some suggestions for your agency’s first step of the thousand-step journey with voice marketing.

Mobile first

Right now, we can’t assume everyone will have an Amazon Echo or Google Home in their kitchen, so it makes sense to direct our efforts towards voice search on mobile phones. Half of all searches go through mobile phones so making online content specifically for mobile access is a must.

While every voice query will receive a spoken response, landing pages still need to be usable and interesting. The design, loading speed and ad placement on the landing page are just a few elements to consider when making mobile search your focus. Even putting larger buttons on the page will mean content is easily accessible and clickable. The number of times I’ve used my nose to click a link while I was wearing gloves would surprise you (maybe 30-40).

Know your devices

As voice assistants become the primary method of search, more people will embrace the technology and find themselves with a specialised voice-activated device in their homes.

Bing-powered Amazon Echo (“Alexa…”), Google-powered Google Home (“Okay, Google…”), Microsoft’s Cortana on Invoke speakers (“Hey, Cortana…”), and the upcoming Apple HomePod featuring the wise-cracking Siri (“Hey, Siri…”) are set to be the big four, and the top voice assistants already have an accuracy of 92% for matching search terms to results, a figure which will only increase. This means that competition in the voice assistant market is already well established and each device has its own tricks and, let’s say, knowledge.

By adapting search results to each voice assistant’s search engine, user experience and accessibility could be improved, and some search queries might even present opportunities for sponsored ads to speak before or after the result is announced. Just don’t be too forceful.

Collaborate and listen!

If you’re managing a massive global brand or developing a new app and you’ve got some influence, you might consider striking a deal with a major voice assistant. I don’t mean declaring “Alexa, let’s team up and sell some stuff.”

Early in 2017, National Public Radio (NPR) joined forces with Amazon to promote the NPR One app, based on the company’s streaming service. Americans with an Echo device shout a command and NPR’s broadcast will stream through the speakers. As NPR One learns more about its users’ preferences, more appropriate content will stream through the Echo, combining voice search and artificial intelligence.

Marketers and creative agencies will have an important role to play as competition heats up on voice platforms. With the convenience of an ultra short list of search results for every query, brands and websites will jostle for pole position.