Category: Voice Development

Today, voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa are used to fulfill basic office tasks such as document retrieval, typing and transcription. Saving even a few seconds during such common tasks can lead to significant productivity gains when taken to scale.

Voice Development Has Many Benefits for Your Marketing

One needs only look at the quickly escalating adoption of voice technology — and the laserlike focus on the development of such technology by Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, to understand the paradigm shift that’s underway. Research firm Gartner has estimated that 30-percent of our technology interactions will be voice-based by the end of 2018. As the technology matures and grows more powerful, we can expect this number to grow dramatically, as businesses and consumers seek to take advantage of the ease of use and efficiency offered by voice interactions. At some point in the not distant future, the frictionless nature of voice technology makes it destined to become the default means of tech communication — and this will transform the business landscape.

While voice may be the dominant form of technology interfacing in the near future, today it largely serves as a key supplementary technology. When deployed in appropriate areas and used within current technological limits, it can help reduce inefficiency, improve the customer experience and help businesses earn a decided competitive advantage.

Partnering with a third-party application developer is of the best ways for businesses to ensure that voice technology is leveraged to its full potential. These providers can develop industry-specific solutions that make voice technology more effective while improving the customer experience. By helping companies take full advantage of Amazon skill development and assisting with the formulation of a strategy for the deployment of voice technology, these providers serve as a trusted gateway into this exciting new business realm.

How Businesses Market Using Voice Assistants

Getting the most out of voice interactions demands a two-prong strategy. First, businesses need to play to the strength of voice assistants, they are remarkably good at what they do, yet it should still be understood that these are first-generation devices. Ensuring your dialogue with Alexa or Google Assistant has the requisite context clues and conversational relevance, for example, can make the process much more efficient.

Second, businesses will benefit from developing tailored use cases where voice technology can be effectively applied. Today, this goes well beyond simple tasks such as email dictation. Today, voice technology is used in myriad ways. For example, the Museum of Modern Art used voice technology to help visitors navigate their building by deploying Amazon Echos throughout the facility.

Visitors could ask Alexa about hours, restroom locations and even the theme or intent behind specific works of art. Voice technology is also deployed on a daily basis in more routine corporate settings, filling key tasks such as making warehouse operations more efficient by helping workers locate inventory.

The takeaway

As voice technology continues to mature — and businesses grow more creative with applications — we can expect it to grow from a key supplementary technology to a core part of business operations. Enterprises staying at the vanguard of new developments in this area are likely to reap profound competitive advantages.

At BIGEYE marketing agency, we help our corporate clients get the absolute most out of their marketing efforts every day. We provide market leading voice solutions supported by a sophisticated understanding of both the technology and our clients’ needs.

If you believe voice technology can better serve your business, please reach out for more information about how we can help.

Siri – what is Artificial Intelligence?
What was once a figment of imagination is now changing the way society thinks and conveys information. According to USA Today, more than one-quarter of smartphone owners in the U.S., 60.5 million Americans, will use a virtual assistant like Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Microsoft’s Cortana at least once a month. There are several voice assistants on the market including big names like Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Echo, and Google Home – and they are smarter than ever before. They engage machine learning algorithms making it easier to react and respond in real time. By understanding speech patterns and recording data, virtual assistants are capable of correcting spelling corrections to display the correct results. With the very premise to learn from data, analyze it, and craft algorithms, AI technology is becoming better at understanding behavior, making predictions, and finding answers.

Siri – how are marketers going to tap into AI?

AI is presenting an opportunity for marketers to utilize behavior – driving an increase in productivity and changing the way we do business. These advancements result in no longer having twenty options to choose from before finding what you need, rather one or two. It is changing the way we process information, excepting your answer almost instantly. This all has to do with the specific nature of voice search and the optimization of search sites. With this change in consumer behavior, it is important to understand the difference between typed searches and voice searches and how they influence a business. AI is also not only increasing organizational efficiency but dramatically reducing the chance of a mistake by detecting patterns like spam or fraud. While news, apps, and games are quickly switching to the world of voice; marketing budgets remain rather small, creating a cheap and easy way to compile research on the everyday consumer.

Siri – how will it affect SEO?

SEO is always changing and what used to be optional is slowly becoming a necessity, especially when you’re on a smartphone. AI does not mean the end of SEO, but rather a new way of comprehending user intent. Due to voice search becoming so popular, businesses need to make sure they are claimed and optimized to accurately appear when searched. It is essential to know exactly what users are looking for to properly optimize a site. By using lengthier sentences when talking instead of typing content incorporates more words. Adding full sentences to your keywords can even help create a person-centered approach. For example, instead of typing “weather NYC”, it is more likely for someone to say “what’s the weather like in New York City” when speaking aloud. It is smart to start brainstorming about what questions may be asked about your business, product, or service to understand what naturally spoken searches may occur. By optimizing a campaign and finding new ways to reach your audience, AI is making websites more friendly and user accessible.

As consumers change the ways they search for information, marketers have to make sure to focus on a more natural approach. If they want their products and services found through voice queries, it is essential to focus on improving your SEO by tailoring it to contain keywords and phrases from a natural “who, what, when and how” communication level. This doesn’t mean you need to change your site content or entire SEO strategy, but it does mean it’s time for some changes to make AI beneficial. Voice search is creating a tremendous shift in how marketers approach their CPC as well as triggering faster answers in the SERPs. Adding in natural language on your site will help achieve the success with voice search results that you’re looking for. When considering the intent behind a voice search and the consumer’s end-goal, brainstorm questions that could be asked in relation to the business. As voice recognition becomes more accurate, the capabilities will continue to expand.

Siri – how will society evolve?

Virtual assistants are now becoming a part of everyday life – making it easier to turn a light on, locate the nearest carwash, or find a recipe. A perfect example is Google Home, creating an assistant reflecting a consumers needs. Think about Alexa, bringing voice to the everyday consumer by actually living in their home.  A benefit of using voice search is that it’s hands-free. Not having to use your hands allows people to multi-task whether you’re asking for directions, making a phone call, or trying to find the best Chinese in your area. Voice search makes it simpler by removing the number of actions a person has to make and creates a more time-effective solution for an on-the-go situation. Faster answers lead to faster actions, creating an ideal way to communicate more efficiently. These changes are providing more ways to create opportunities for exposure and connect with customers better.

At BIGEYE, we can help move and improve your business, one voice at a time. If you haven’t started uniting your work with the uprising world of artificial voice, you are missing out on potential business. Learn more by exploring our services and sign up for a free consultation to see how we can incorporate voice into your business strategy.

Let’s start by putting a few things in perspective. Although less than 20% of all searches are conducted using voice search, we’ve seen a 3400% increase in voice search since 2008. The dramatic increase in voice search over the last few years can be attributed to the growing capabilities and accuracy of this technology. Most voice search users, especially those searching with a digital assistant such as Siri, indicate they have only started using voice search in the last six months.
Okay, so if the only people using voice search are early adopters and super-nerds, why should your business care? The reason is: voice search is about to hit the mainstream and it is going to change everything you thought you knew about search engine marketing. We can help.

Natural language searches provide engagement cues

Unlike typical search strategy that focuses on groups of keywords (i.e., “dog stain remover carpet”), voice search hinges entirely on natural language search (i.e.,” what’s the best product to remove dog stains from my antique carpet?”). This growing shift will have SEM impacts that your business can’t afford to ignore.

Primarily, it will change keyword rankings. Because voice is still new, we don’t know exactly how search engines will begin crawling for natural language searches or segmenting voice traffic from browser traffic … but it’s safe to assume it will happen. Because natural language searches often provide more specific insight into what customers are looking for, we predict rich content will play a large role in search ranking.

Natural language searches also reveal customers’ intent and their level of engagement. Continuing with the pet stain example: a voice search for, “What’s the best product to remove dog stains?” reveals a much different intent than either, “Siri, add the best carpet pet stain remover to my shopping list” or “How can I make the best DIY pet stain remover at home?” Having additional context about why a consumer is searching for something or what they are searching for increases the likelihood that when potential customers click your link, they will actually purchase – because you are exactly what the are looking for.

Local businesses benefit most from voice search

Knowing exactly what prospects are looking for is especially beneficial to local businesses. Voice search combines intent with urgency and serves up solutions that are nearby. Whether you have a brick and mortar store or local e-commerce site, voice search could be serving you up first if your local base is in proximity to relevant search queries. That is why making sure your geo-targeting is on, local business information is up to date, and storefront is searchable is mission critical.

Local businesses also benefit from voice search because one of the most common use cases for voice search occurs while people are driving or actively in the shopping process. Voice search allows you to meet your prospective customers’ needs when they need you most by serving local content and map results first.

As the age of the digital personal assistants arrives (hello Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and more), geography and content will become two of the increasingly important drivers that enable them to do their job … which is enabling your customers to find you. Voice search may be a new technology, but once it is perfected, it will make multi-channel distribution and product discovery much more easy and impactful.

Prepping your content and creative assets to support this advent is a lot easier than you think and can build from work you’ve already done. Click here to learn more about the types of multi- channel campaigns and content strategies we’ve employed for businesses like you or contact us today to prepare for one of 2017’s biggest trends.