Marketers Need to Know This About the Future of Voice & Audio in 2019

Voice search has disrupted the marketing industry. Organizations have begun adopting and prioritizing voice technology and will continue to do so. CMOs and business leaders are convinced about the opportunities voice and conversational AI offer and are implementing them into their marketing strategies. Let’s dive into the world of voice and understand audio marketing and its impact on the customer experience.

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The rise in popularity and spike in sales of smart home devices and digital assistants has led to the adoption of voice technology on a wide scale across industries. Voice technology trends have become a given in the marketing and, subsequently, SEO space, with the overwhelming use of voice search. Let’s start with a basic introduction into this technological trend and find out how to excel at it and measure its success.

Alexa, what is voice search?

The technology that allows users to literally ask queries to a virtual assistant, instead of typing in text or uploading images is the trend that’s taken the world by storm. Voice search is a voice recognition technology that enables users to receive answers from the internet through an AI-driven assistant.

Voice technology trends gave rise to voice marketing and revived audio marketing. Although audio marketing began way back when radio stations first came into action, it got side-tracked when TVs and computers took over. Audio marketing has resurfaced for a second shot. Now with the paradigm shift to virtual assistants, voice search, sonic brands, podcasts, and so on, audio is the fastest growing trend as we approach 2020.

Also Read: Are You Prepared for Voice-Based Marketing?

How will Voice Search Impact Marketing?

Voice search trends are already making it clear that effective, customized SEO plays a vital role in getting your content featured. Optimizing your site and content for voice search is step one in the transformation to voice marketing. Consider all things audio and how they translate when broadcast on an audio channel.

Speaking exclusively to MarTech Advisor, Tom Livne, CEO of Verbit says:

“Our voice recognition technology is about 90 percent accurate, but in order to push 99% accuracy, we incorporate a dual-process review of human transcribers to correct any mistakes. All of these edits then flow back into the model, which works to improve Verbit’s machine learning over time.

The most common performance metric is called the ‘word error rate.’ Such a performance is computed by comparing a reference transcription with the transcription output by the speech recognizer. From this comparison, you can then compute the number of errors in voice recognition accuracy.

This metric, used to measure accuracy in AI-powered transcription, differs from other sorts of metrics applied to general text content. These metrics often take the form of readability scores, SEO analysis, traffic count and the amount of engagement.”

Also Read: Talking About Using Your ‘Voice’ Effectively for Marketing Success

3 Voice Marketing Strategies to Try in 2019

Voice-based marketing brings with it big opportunities for marketers to effectively utilize voice search by optimizing their strategies to fit the future of marketing. We ideate strategies to help you start your voice AI marketing right.

1. Optimize for smart speakers and voice technology devices. Voice recognition and AI are at the core of all voice tech — smart way to begin your voice marketing strategy is to update your website content to echo natural language — ‘I want to know’, ‘how can I’, ‘where can I’ — that customers are likely to use when asking AI assistants something. This way, AI-driven algorithms can pick up your content easily over competitors’ content.

2. Predict user queries relevant to your industry and answer them effectively. Understand how Google’s algorithm sorts voice search results and accordingly create content for the most searched queries thus also filling content gaps. Instead of using ‘coffee shop’ as a keyword, consider what a searcher would say, something like “ok google where can I get some good coffee in San Francisco?” This will get your content high voice search engine rankings — the only way to ensure consumers hear what you have to say.

3. Create audio content for optimal consumption. Podcasts are on the rise, one clear sign is that Spotify has been snapping up acquisitions to expand their podcast business. Repurpose older content that worked well into podcast and videos to give your customers maximum value. An audio newsletter is the next upgrade to email marketing — making this a priority is sure to reap benefits.

Conclusion

Voice can impact customer experience is a big way. Being an early brand to make the transformation will surely get you recognition and brownie points for trying. But to succeed, it’s going to take a consistent effort. Let’s conclude, in the words of Tom Livne, CEO of Verbit,

“With more people integrating digital assistants into their everyday lives, marketers can now leverage the technology in voice app development in order to raise brand awareness and create new, personalized experiences. This can then allow them to adapt their online presence for this shift in consumer behavior.

One brand that quickly seized the opportunity for voice is Domino’s. In the U.S., Domino’s has introduced a one-click ‘Easy Orders’ option, which they made available through Alexa. And according to Nick Dutch, head of digital for Domino’s UK, 20% of customers with Easy Orders had used Alexa for this service just two months after launching. This clearly demonstrates how the adoption of voice technology is being driven by convenience, and consumers are eager to jump on the trend.”

Have you transformed to voice technology yet? Tell us your tips and struggles on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook; we’re always listening.