Are You Getting the Most Out of Voice Recognition Technologies?

With the rise of consumers utilizing voice assistants, marketers must learn to tailor their content to better suit these types of search queries.

By Frederick A. Hasney IV

In recent years, there has been a massive surge among consumers of all demographics who are now using at least one form of voice assistant technology. Whether it is Siri on Apple products or the newly added “voice commands” on certain Tesla vehicles, the incorporation of this trending communication tool provides a major area of growth for marketers, advertisers, and other media sectors alike. The act of conversing or having a dialogue tends to feel more natural and comfortable for consumers, especially when the messages are personalized to the individual. Rather than attempting simple, concise queries as is typical on web and mobile platforms, marketers have found that users provide clear information about what they are looking for and what they are thinking about when making these searches on voice assistant platforms. Since voice recognition technology is still in its infancy and involves a wide range of use cases, this blog post will cover some of the key attributes and areas of concern that marketers should be aware of when trying to harness the potential of this revolutionizing tool.

Where and When do consumers use voice assistants?

As with every type of technology platform, there is a time and a place that it becomes a valuable asset to the general public. Based on the conducted research, voice and speech assistants are primarily used as a hands-free means to allow for searching for information while being busy with other tasks. Consumers showed interest in using these tools while in a car, in the kitchen, and in a living room; however, places like in an office and in a public space scored much lower among consumers. These results can be beneficial for marketers who are looking to determine when and why users are searching for their products. Using a voice search in a car as an example, small businesses can take advantage of knowing the context of a user’s search by understanding that they will be making common queries, such as “near me,” to find results based on their location data. With this in mind, a business can target advertising and marketing strategies towards consumers whose navigational data and pathing leads through or directly to the general areas that their business is located. Having an understanding of when and where consumers use voice assistants will be vital for crafting content specifically for the needs of these users.

Voice Assistants within a Home

The technology behind voice assistants has become quite sophisticated over the last few years. Features like answering to user-defined names and control capabilities over other smart-home products have developed the speech recognition products, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home Assistant, into some of the most innovative on the market. For marketers specifically, the feature of the voice assistant being able to delineate between various peoples’ voices is an important part of how messages can be tailored to a certain individual. By way of usage patterns and brand preferences, the data collected on the individual consumer can play a significant role for marketers looking to create campaigns focused on a particular person within a household. While traditional ads, such as on television and radio, have had to blanket their messaging across channels and households, marketing campaigns on speech assistants can be triggered by the interaction with a specific voice of a family member.

Investment Value and Practical Implementation

The success many companies and businesses are finding on voice assistant platforms can be very enticing for a smaller business trying to stand out against the competitive landscape, but as with any new technology, it is important to not overextend into a market that isn’t fully backed by investments yet, even for larger businesses. There is a potential for rewards coming from the risk, yet implementation is going to heavily rely on your business’ technical capabilities and consumer needs. Based on data collected by Voicebot.ai in 2019, nearly 49% of marketing firms and groups had “no current plans” for developing voice apps. While it can be assumed that this percentage is only going to further decrease over time with regard to the consumer usage rates for voice assistants, it is still important to consider your business first and foremost before diving into technological trends.

Criteria for good content integration for voice assistants

1.) Create “speakable” metadata

When creating your metadata descriptions, be sure to write them in a manner that will allow them to be read aloud by voice assistants like Google Home Assistant and Amazon Alexa. These platforms will seek out resources online based on the user’s query and speak out loud the source name if it is properly placed in the metadata.

2.) Focus on personalization

As mention before, voice assistants can now recognize individual voices with Google even working to create individual voiceprint identification across all of their devices and software. This level of individualism provides marketers an enormous opportunity to gather further data and context on the consumers that are searching for their products or websites

3.) Develop voice “skills” for your business

When we use the term “skills” here, it is not exactly referring to your marketing abilities, rather this is the term that is applied to the functionality commands that can be created for your brand or company. Take Dominoes as an example. Here we can see that the company has developed a feature for Amazon Alexa to make for a simpler user experience based on customer usage patterns and feedback.

For more information about “skills” and “actions” on voice assistant platforms, check out this great article by What’s New In Publishing:
https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/race-publishers-voice-assistant-skills/

Sources:

Understanding Voice Assistant Technology for Marketing