Voice Search is a speech recognition technology that allows user to search a term, a word or a sentence directly using a voice command. This technology has been launched by Google in 2009 and, year after year, new services and applications have been added. Nowadays, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft (just to cite the principal players) are competing for offering the best voice search technology and, as consumers, we are more and more used to talk both with our smartphones and with smart speakers and voice assistants.
But did you ever wonder on how voice search works? Moreover, how does voice search impact on your Marketing Strategy? In this article, let us try to clarify these points.
How does Voice Search works
Technically speaking, the Voice Search technology needs big computational power (normally accessible through Cloud Computing) in order to process vocal spectrograms. Once the speech has been converted in text, the algorithms of Natural Language Processing – enhanced by Artificial Intelligence – allows the machine to interpret the Natural Language.
To interpret the language is extremely difficult for a computer. Speeches are made of different components and layers. First of all, logical reasoning (which is the simplest part for a machine), semantics, syntax and morphology. But then, the machine has to be able to analyze phonetics and intonation and each word must be contextualized. All this work is just the first part, actually. The machine has also the task of answering in the most coherent way.
Voice queries are different from written ones. Let’s think of an example. If you need information about a recipe, you will write on Google: “recipe first course friends”. If you have a vocal assistant, you will probably say: “Ok Google, I would like to prepare a first course to eat with friends tonight”. These queries are more natural, more similar to common language (as we were talking with a friend, after all) and less standard.
Do consumers appreciate voice search? Totally yes! The smart speaker market revenue worldwide was estimated for 15.6 billion U.S. dollars, in 2020 (Statista). Projections suggest that in 2025 it could account for over 35.5 billion. According to the Narvar Consumer Report 2018, 43% of middle-age people who has a vocal assistant uses it in the purchasing process. Moreover, the Voice Search Insight Report (Google) says that 27% of global online population uses voice search on mobile.
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Voice Search impacts: SEO & Digital Strategy
How does Voice Search works from a company point of view? How can companies get ready for this revolution? Companies should incorporate a Voice Strategy into their digital marketing plans, i.e. implement all the actions needed to perform well in voice search activities. This decision can improve the customer experience and make the company gain competitive advantage.
Let’s go through three focal points:
- Voice Search Optimization (VSO) on your website: all the activities needed to offer uses effective vocal answers. The main idea of a VSO strategy is to create content able to answer users’ questions. To this aim, it could be useful to have a FAQ section on the website or to structure your content. You should create some brief, clear and exhaustive answers and to organize them well through tags.
- Voice Search Optimization on other digital assets: a well-filled Google MyBusiness tab, a well-manage Youtube channel or a social network page… all these parts of a digital marketing strategy can be optimized for voice search.
- Voice Apps: Google or Amazon give the possibility to developers to create their own voice applications. Brands that are using voice apps brilliantly are, for instance, the well-known fast food chain Domino’s or Starbucks. Each of these applications has some specific characteristics, you can create an application for collecting orders or a system to give suggestions or information.
How to optimize Voice Search – PaperLit solution
PaperLit can help magazine publishers and brands to launch their own voice app. To build your own voice app in-house would be extremely difficult, only a limited number of companies have the skills to do it in reasonable time. Another option is to collaborate with a digital publishing solution provider, PaperLit is one of them.
VoiceLit, our service dedicate to VoiceApp, gives you the possibility to build an app that works both on Google and Amazon. We propose you three templates, according to the needs you have. For instance, you can create a voice app just to give some information about your own brand. Alternatively, you can create an app that follows the customer in the purchasing process or an app that offers promotions or coupons.
Using VoiceLit, you can share your input info with us (input can be text RSS feed, audio, storage) through database, API or simply shared folder or docs and we can help you to build the application. Do you want to try? We wait for you!
