Waching daily Oct 1 2018

What is 'Voice Technology'? According to search group Tech Target, voice or speaker recognition is

the ability of a machine or program to receive and interpret dictation or to

understand and carry out spoken commands. Thank You Google! voice technology there

Voice Technology. There can be no doubting that voice technology has changed the way we live

our lives, but how has it changed the way that we search online, and how are

digital marketers going to be able to keep up with this new trend. So what is

Voice Technology? Well it may be a smartphone, it may be a device that uses

voice recognition to perform commands such as opening an app or perhaps search

for something online. Most of us use it everyday if not at

some point during the week. The smartphone or device can interpret

diction which allows them to carry out spoken commands. So we see the first two

examples of mainstream voice technology being used in Siri on the iPhone and

Google Assistant on the Android devices, and in recent years we've seen the

introduction of home devices such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home which are

purely for interpreting and obeying voice commands. Some of these are so

advanced we can control our home security, our lights, our kettle just from

a simple voice command on a device in the corner of the room. And it's actually

estimated that in 2018 alone there will be over fifty million devices sold

worldwide. But how is this going to change marketing or more specifically

search marketing? What is traditionally a marketing format that is based on

someone typing in something to their computer to search for it on a search

engine, can now be done by someone speaking to a device, and while currently

only 20% of google searches are done by voice

this is estimated to rise to 50 percent by 2020. That's a huge

shake-up to an industry that's been, let's be honest, pretty stagnant without

many major changes for a few years. Number one we're going to see longer

search terms. So where as someone who is searching using their tablet or their

phone or their computer will normally only use around two or three words, we've seen

in current data that someone who's using voice technology to search will

generally use a whole phrase. Take the example of red shoes. If I was looking for a

pair of red shoes and I was searching on my computer, I would probably just type

in red shoes, perhaps the size, whereas someone who is using voice technology

would say 'Where can I find red shoes, size six' Now this is absolutely amazing

because one of the problems we encounter as digital marketers is finding out the

intent of the person who is searching so if they're using two or three words such as

red shoes, do they want pictures of red shoes, do they want high-heeled red shoes

are they a man or a woman, are they looking for a certain size, do they want

to buy them in store, do they want to buy them online? There are whole host of

different questions that we as digital marketers have to figure out the answers to.

Whereas if someone's using full phrases in voice search such as 'Where

can I find the red shoes in London, size six?' That allows us to eliminate a lot of

search results that aren't going to be relevant to that user, and it's great for

for the user because it means we can give them more relevant answers. Point two is

about speed. We found in current trends so far that someone who is using voice technology

to search generally wants results there and then. It could be that they're looking

for a restaurant booking, or they want to find a particular store or a particular

number. We've seen that after receiving the results the searcher is likely to

take action very soon after. So whereas with traditional

search marketing, you may be tracking someone for several days or several

months to see if that person turns into a conversion, with voice search it seems

that person's going to take action lot quicker. The third point is about the

intent of the person who is searching. The recent data suggests that people

that are using voice recognition for their searching are far more specific in

what they search for and therefore likely to have a better idea of what

they want. They're much less likely to just be browsing on their lunch break or

looking up stuff while they're watching TV. So this point kind of crosses over

with number one and number two in that you're generally gonna see it along with

query length, and it's going to be someone that wants results fast. They

know what they want, they're going to tell you what it is with quite a lot of

detail and they're gonna act on those results pretty soon afterwards. Point

four is all about questions. So people using voice technology to search are

much more likely to use questions in their searches. So go back to my red shoe

example, say someone's looking to purchase red shoes from a certain store

they'll use as question such as 'Do bla bla store sell ref shoes?' This is the

perfect opportunity for the marketing agency looking after that store to be

there with the answer. So marketers and advertisers need to be thinking more

about question based phrases rather than simple key words. What are the questions

that your company has the answers to? And those are the sort of questions you need

to be thinking about when you're looking at voice search marketing. Final point,

point number five is all about thinking locally. So when a searcher is

out about, they are three times more likely to use voice technology to do their

searching than just typing in on their phone. So for example someone asks their

device 'Find a great coffee shop near me'. So it's really important for businesses

to make sure that your search marketing is set up for

local intent. By this I mean if people are using keywords such as landmarks near

your business, or the town your business is in, you need to make sure you're

coming to the top of the results, particularly if you run something like a retail

or food business. So as a digital agency we're actually really excited about the

shake-up that's happening with the introduction of voice technology to

search marketing. Exactly where it's going to lead, we don't precisely know

yet. But certainly as more and more people start to adopt voice technology

and devices such as the Google Home or the Amazon Echo are in more and more

homes, we're going to see a shift in how it changes digital marketing. Those are

just five of the ways we think is going to change search marketing, we'd love to

hear your opinions too, so please do get in touch with us and let us

know your thoughts. And as always, if you have any more questions or queries do

not hesitate to get in touch with us. But I hope this has been really, really

helpful to you. See you again, bye guys.