We’ve all been there: hands deep in marinade and we remember that we have to make a dinner reservation for tomorrow night or else there will be trouble with a capital T. These days, Australian consumers are increasingly comfortable saying “OK Google”, or “Hey Alexa” or “Siri” in order to find the restaurant, make the call and avoid Trouble.
The issue is that Australian businesses aren’t keeping pace with consumer use of voice search technology.
Google recently revealed 20 per cent of searches through the Android Google App are now voice searches, and voice search recognition is now at a point of 95 per cent accuracy. In the US, two in five adults in the US* now use voice search at least once per day. It is estimated that by next year half of all searches will have shifted from the keyboard to the microphone.
It has been found that 80 per cent of answers delivered by Google’s voice assistant came from the top three results in existing search engine results pages. Further, due to its growing use, search engines such as Google are placing a higher emphasis on voice search optimisation. This has big implications for marketers in relation to SERP placement, site speed and content.
From a content perspective, the general trend is that voice searches are framed in a longer format but require shorter answers; it seems consumers are using voice search for “need it now” content and using keyboard searches for longer, more in-depth information.
But the biggest implication for marketers is in using data.
Understanding the data coming back from online voice search habits is critical; marketers need to collect, unify, clean, and enrich customer data in order to understand purchasing intent as result of both voice and keyboard searches. The higher quality your dataset, the highly quality the targeting on acquisition campaigns.
Higher quality targeting means that you’ll have a clearer brief for lead list purchases, better use of digital marketing budgets and a likely better overall ROI.
One of the keys to success will be enhanced lead scoring and marketing automation. Integrating all of marketing channels provides consumers with a seamless experience and this now includes the difference between voice and keyboard searches as well as email, social, mobile, and content marketing engagement. By accurately scoring leads using integrated data as an input to marketing automation systems also provides a consistent user experience across multiple devices.
So Australian businesses the challenge is thrown down: adapt and embrace voice search or there could be trouble with a capital T.
*Source: SEMrush
About the Author
Martin Soley is Group General Manager Data Services and has over a decades experience across data quality, analytics and related technology in ANZ and abroad. Martin’s strategic insight and expertise drives commercial outcomes for DCA’s varied clients.
