5 TRENDS FOR VOICE SEARCH — THE NEXT BIG DISRUPTION IN 2020
By: Shraddha Jain
Tags: Google, Siri, B2B, Voice Search, SEO

As the terms ‘Ok Google’ and ‘Hey Siri’ become more prominent, marketers need to catch-up to the next big content disruption i.e. voice search marketing. The world is preparing to dive head-first into a new decade, and recent stats show that voice search adaptation across the US is growing through the roof. To get the products they need, more people are actually talking to their devices rather than typing or speaking to a representative through them.

A recent report by eMarketer states that approx 111.8 million people in the US used voice search at least monthly in 2019. This constitutes about 40% of the U.S population. Furthermore, this number is expected to reach 122.7 million by 2021. Marketing predictions also show that half of all searches will be made through voice by 2020.

Keeping that in mind, let’s look at voice search trends that marketing enterprises can expect in the future.

1. WEBSITE AND ONLINE CONTENT WILL NEED TO BE VOICE OPTIMIZED

Since voice search will be used in a basic conversational tone, the content will have to be natural sounding and use native expressions. For example, instead of keyword search terms like “ best marketing practices to get gain leads”, article and blogs can be edited to answer long-tail searches like “What are the best marketing practices to gain leads”. When it comes to voice results, Google declares one resource as the expert, this is the featured snippet which it reads out loud. Cracking the SEO here will give the winner huge gains in terms of traffic, authority and traction for that specific query.

2. INTENT-BASED VOICE MARKETING

Deciphering user-intent marketing will be a crucial development for marketers if they want to gain an edge. Use of AI and machine learning technologies to understand search intent will help to create content that is more accurate and relatable for the target audience. Depending on your industry, this could give you a huge advantage and increase your revenue over time.

3. SEO FOR VOICE SEARCHES

People respond to voice-related queries differently than that to text queries. While normal text queries often return multiple pages of links, voice search narrows the results down to a few or a single option. The results of voice searches display only the topmost relevant content and hence are much more competitive in terms of ranking. From an SEO specialist perspective, it’s an all-or-nothing game. Marketing enterprises will have to revise their FAQs and promotional content to answer the exact questions that the prospective client may have.

4. RE-EMERGENCE OF CHAT BOXES

Recently Oracle reported that 80 % of marketing professionals already use or plan to use chatbots by 2020. Voice search is just exemplifying the need for a virtual AI assistant. Through machine learning, the database of virtual assistants is currently capable of handling end-to-end queries from visitors. Chat boxes can only text back, for now! It’s not far away when voice-based assistants will be prevalent for various B2B and B2C websites.

5. VOICE SEARCH WILL CREATE NEW CHANNELS FOR ADVERTISING

Promoting products and services by building content particularly for various AI devices is just the start. Industry-leading devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo aren’t allowing paid advertising yet, but as the world adopts these technologies, businesses who act first will hugely benefit. Different voice-enabled devices might have a market of their own, the current leaders Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft may not be the only players for long. This means that marketers will have to stay ahead of the curve by expanding their omnichannel spectrum.

FINAL SAY

The enterprises that act first will be way ahead of the rest when the voice revolution finally normalizes. Stumbling blocks like privacy concerns and invasive technologies may prove to be a hindrance but stricter cybersecurity developments and governing policies similar to that of GDPR may address that issue. B2B brands are not excluded from voice search’s relevance and will have to improvise in order to adapt. There’s a tremendous opportunity for marketers to grow their market share and position their marketing strategy for the future. Soon, voice search marketing will no longer be a long term game.