Voice marketing: a brief introduction

We’re sure that some of you remember the first time you saw somebody talking on a cellphone. Many of us can also recall the first time they thought a stranger was striking up a conversation, only to see their Bluetooth earpiece as they walked by. We hope this post can create a similar moment: the first time you genuinely considered how voice marketing would work within your business’ marketing strategy.

Marketers are taking note of the rise in smart speakers like Google Home and Amazon Alexa and working the reasons the devices are so successful into what they do. Our brief introduction aims to get the ball rolling for you to do the same.

To begin, we’ll explain how these devices work. They can be seen as working in lieu of a laptop or smartphone keyboard that does the communicating with a search engine on the user’s behalf. The user would verbalize a search query like one of these (thanks, AdWeek):

The vocalization of everything after “Alexa” or “Google” is known as a search query. The device will respond to the user by playing back the highest ranked response for that search query. Voice marketing, then, can be seen as a facet of SEO.

Note that we said SEO rather than PPC. This is because voice search remains organic. This is due to a lack platform for advertising at this time. The keyword here is “at this time.” There’s only a matter of time before this starts up. For now, start optimizing.

When optimizing for search engines, marketers craft content that aims to inspire searchers to head to their webpage. A lot that has to do with anticipating search queries and crafting desirable content. The same principles can be applied to voice marketing. Except in this case, the medium has changed.

As AdWeek puts it, “with voice replacing fingertips, search is ground zero right now when it comes to brands.” So, what can you do? The easiest way is to keep generating content that helps your costumers but think about how those customers’ needs change when they are spoken rather than typed.

While you have your customers in mind, this is the perfect time to think about how you can deliver a voice experience to them. That’s right, being a facilitator of voice marketing isn’t reserved for the Googles or the Amazons of the world. You can do it too.

This concept is the voice marketing application of a blog post we wrote earlier this year to introduce AI for business. In that post, we highlighted the burgeoning field of AI and though it may seem daunting, we urged businesses to work it into their marketing strategy.

The same can be said for voice marketing. Think about the facets of your business where voice can be integrated to help customers on their journey of engaging with your business. Got that in mind? Now, read up on a few best practices courtesy of VentureBeat that can help you hone your vocal offering.

Overall, voice marketing is in relative infancy. You will more than likely be a trailblazer among your competitors. Get started now so you can get a leg tongue up on them.