Insights:Marketing Insights: Voice Search. What can marketers say?
The marketing world is always in flux. New opportunities to reach an audience are constantly being created and adding to the mediums marketers can use to promote their businesses.
Starting with business signs, changing to print publications, leaping to actual audio through radio and blowing minds with moving pictures with audio on television.
Of course, television is quickly taking a back seat to online marketing. But wait, Internet screens are everywhere and go everywhere with mobile being the most recent shining star of advertising platforms.
And while most marketers believe they’ve got the mobile approach figured out, the next big change is upon us.
Voice Search truly changes the game. It removes screens completely.
Kind of like radio, in that only an audio approach can deliver a marketing message, but chances are people won’t be accepting of a 30-second commercial before they get the information they’re looking for from Siri, Alexa, Cortana or OK Google (Note: Google’s voice is actually named “Assistant,” but that’s not what you say when accessing it).
The convenience of Voice Search is almost undoubtedly going to enhance its adoption. So the multi billion-dollar question is “how are tech companies going to monetize it without losing the trust of the consumers by stacking the search results with paid placement?”
The last thing these companies are going to want is the backlash that radio experienced in the 50s with the pay-for-play payola scandal.
At this point, it looks like the best way to find the answer is to keep asking Siri, Alexa and Cortana, because we all know Voice Search is potentially too big a marketing opportunity for these companies to ignore.
Then again, maybe virtual reality will leapfrog Voice Search and then the whole (virtual) world will be a screen ripe for marketing messages.
Have any thoughts on the best way to insert marketing messages into Voice Search? We’re all ears; visit Insight’s Facebook page to share them now.