The popularity of voice search is increasing, especially among younger generations. When your target audience starts searching by voice instead of keyboard, it affects your online marketing strategy. After all, it requires a different way of thinking. In this blog, Sebastiaan de Ruiter explores voice-search and its effect on your marketing strategy.

Voice search: not from yesterday

Voice-search has been around for a while, but especially in the beginning, the results left quite a bit to be desired. The first attempts at voice search date back to the 1990s. IBM's VoiceType recognized simple commands and numbers, but you couldn't do very much with it. Google introduced its first voice-search feature in 2002. It worked via telephone line and was not a resounding success. In 2008, Google launched a more advanced version. From then on, voice search was developed further and further and integrated into Google Assistant and Google Home, for example. Other companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Samsung followed. By now, this technology is widespread. It is widely used, especially on mobile devices and with smart speakers, and has a significant impact on online marketing and SEO strategies.

Yelling at the car

Even though I consciously witnessed the rise of voice search, I myself am not an avid user of voice search. I had very enthusiastically installed one of the first versions in my car. That didn't last long, because soon I was yelling at my car because the system didn't understand that I wanted to navigate home. My children, on the other hand, don't know any better. I can sometimes watch in amazement as they ask questions to our Google Nest Hub and get a valuable answer too. These are the first signs of a generation gap: I still prefer typing a text or pressing some buttons, while my daughter effortlessly finds a movie with voice-search and my son knows all about the largest dinosaur on earth.

First some figures

Before you think that the popularity of voice search is not that bad, let's get some statistics:

• The number of people worldwide using voice search by 2024 is estimated at 125.2 million.

• There are 4.2 billion voice assistants in use. This number will increase to double that by the end of 2024: 8.4 billion.

• Voice search assistants answer an average of 93.7% of searches.

• More than one billion voice searches take place each month.

• More than 50 percent of adults use voice searches daily.

Trends in voice search

The four emerging trends around voice search that are going to impact our marketing strategies are conversational search, the use of long-tail keywords, the focus on local search, and thinking from a voice-first design perspective.

The impact of conversational search

That voice-search is important to the younger generations, I see not only in my own home, it is also evident from literature I have read. When it works, it's also very effective. After all, everything you type in, you have first processed in your head. As a result, with voice search you actually skip a step: from thought directly to action. From a marketing perspective, you have to think more deeply about the content you offer. Visual content and text alone won't get you there, you also need to create conversational content - content that answers questions a user asks. This means that as a marketer, you need to think about answering open-ended questions. After all, a question like "Give me a quick vegan recipe for four people" is a good example; this is not a simple yes-or-no question. This requires a deeper understanding of how people communicate with this type of technology.

The power of long-tail keywords

In addition, it is important to provide your content with long-tail keywords. People are used to thinking in common keywords, but now we have to start using almost complete sentences as keywords. It's getting harder and harder to be relevant with just general head keywords. Take a furniture company. Before, as a marketer, you might have been used to tagging your content with terms like "furniture. But no person is going to say 'furniture' to their Google Nest Hub. It's more likely to say something like "I'm looking for a corner sofa made of leather in the color taupe. By starting to work with long-tail keywords like 'sustainable furniture,' 'bamboo furniture' or 'sustainable bamboo seating' you can make yourself stand out much better.

Optimize local searches

Another important aspect is that people use voice search primarily locally. For example, if you are in Amsterdam, chances are not very good that you are searching for a restaurant in New York. And if you use voice search to navigate, you undoubtedly want to do so from your current location to a desired destination. And anyone asking a question about a scenic hiking trail in the Grand Canyon is probably there at that moment. Optimizing voice search for local search is therefore of great importance

Voice-first design: a new challenge

With the rise of voice search, we need to think differently about content creation. Visual content works differently than voice-centric content. This requires a new approach in design and content strategy.

The role of Digital Asset Management (DAM) in voice search

Voice-search is not a replacement for previous search techniques, but a complement. If you want to be found as a local restaurant, you still need to have a website with a menu, but you also want to be found with voice search. That means as a marketer, you have to keep broadening your knowledge. It also means that managing your content properly becomes even more important. You will be behind the times if your content is not structured. That doesn't get any easier if you now want to add diversity to your content in order to respond to voice search.

Metadataing content, is important for your content to be found. Let alone when you also need to add long-tail keywords to serve people who use voice search. Digital Asset Management (DAM) plays a big role in storing and managing all this content, including SEO titles, SEO meta descriptions, ALT text and - yes - longtail keywords.

Stay ahead with voice search

Want to learn more about how to adapt your marketing strategy to the world of voice search? Marketingautomation offers solutions for increased efficiency, better personalization and more measurability in marketing campaigns. It enables you to communicate more and more diverse, be more personal and get more creative. Want to talk further about the benefits of marketing automation for your organization? That's always possible, of course! Give a call to (0)20 820 83 82 or email info@comrads.nl. We would love to get to know you.