Voice technology is changing the way businesses and consumers search for things that they desire. Technology has become the most common way of searching for items, thanks to mobile phones. The development of virtual assistants like Echo or Alexa has brought forward voice-enabled IoT (Internet of things), which has now made marketers realize that they need to use this kind of technology in advertising and marketing campaigns.
The rise of voice-assisted searches
Looking at the recent survey by Bright Local, 58% of the consumers who were surveyed have used voice to search for local business information in the last one year. Apart from searching things using voice search, consumers want to do more things like reservation making, getting product and service prices, and checking if product stock is available.
According to Search Engine statistics, 20% of searches done through mobile on Google are done through voice. In other statistics, it has been discovered that voice assistants are placed to work by half of the U.S citizens who own smartphones. Additionally, approximately 60 million U.S citizens are using Alexa to place orders and conduct searches on the internet. There is also a survey that was conducted that indicated that 87% of marketers in B2C think that chat robots and virtual assistants are going to play an important role in the interaction by consumers by the year 2021.
Why is voice changing the advertising field?
The reason why Andrew Knight New Canaan sees voice as a promising marketing disruptor is that people find it really natural because it emulates the way we communicate as human beings. Since the goal of a marketer is to formulate a good connection with the customer, voice provides the perfect opportunity for marketers to get even closer.
Present and future observations of voice searches
Andrew Knight New Canaan agrees that voice is going to be an important tool in advertising, marketing and in the media environment in various ways. For instance, there will be development on conversational and gesture user experiences that will be applied in different platforms.
The more evident part of how voice is being used was witnessed in the CES 2018 where each new device that was being presented had a Google Assistance or Alexa capability. We are going to see a rise in at-home voice searches that will help to better understand the needs of a customer, how they can be discovered by a customer through voice and how they can get to a company’s shopping list through voice.
Although there is a continued popularity of voice search, Andrew Knight New Canaan notes that there are still very many consumers who do not use voice on their smartphone devices. One of the reasons why this is evident is that most people are not confident in using the voice capability in their phones in a public setup.
As much as people are feeling embarrassed in using voice search in public, it will eventually become a norm and a utility in the near future. Companies should take this time where adoption is really low to ensure that they provide a great value to their consumers through voice touchpoints. For instance, integrating voice into different kinds of visual platforms like using a smart display will provide consumers with a much deeper experience.
Brands are going to base their AI gadgets on past data. For this to happen, data from a previous engagement with customers is going to be used by AI algorithms, bringing about the use of predictive models in the near future. The end result will translate to company’s standing out and getting on a shopping list that is built with the help of voice tech.
The founder Life Surge, Facebook Ad Agency, Andy Franco pointed out that all methods of advertising follow through this resistance curve before the industry adopts it. Just the way it is second nature to search online, the voice capability is going to be used as a multitasking tool that allows one to be hands-free.
How the challenges will be faced ahead
This is not a trend that will be received with open arms by everyone. This new way of interacting with information requires a lot to even shift the way people think about search. For instance, the content that is going to be getting will need to be useful and valuable. The content should also encourage people to engage with the tools and information even more. The most challenging part of the whole process is the use of tone to search since voice carries within itself some level of emotion.
In summary, it is an interesting journey as to how the development of new opportunities will come up, as we see how agencies and brands will be addressing the challenges; there is a lot at stake as we see the potential of voice in the advertising space.
