The Voice marketing funnel is focused on creating engagement and awareness about the brand through voice technology and flash briefings. The voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Bixby by Samsung are popular names used by people. According to the Search Engine Journal, 58% of consumers use voice search to find information about the local business online. Thus it indicates how important it is to incorporate voice marketing in your digital marketing strategy.
It is high time for you to fix your SEO and marketing strategy if voice search optimization is not an integral part of it.
Is voice search marketing a hype that would fade away, or is it here to stay for longer?
Voice marketing funnel- OBERLO Stats
60% of people say that smart voice devices are essential to their lives, and they cannot imagine going back. And, more than half of the owners of smart speakers use their devices daily.
Around 1/3 rd of the US population use voice search features (Emarketer, 2019). It means that there are 111.8 million people in the US who use voice search features.
Not only is voice search limited to informational searches, but around 51% of all online shoppers in the US use the voice assistant to help them research products. These numbers can’t be ignored, and from a marketing perspective, it indicates how vital area voice marketing takes in a pie.
The best part about voice marketing is that you can reach people even in the kitchen or in the car, which was earlier impossible. Many marketers and researchers believe that voice marketing will increase in leaps and bounds in the coming time. And, there is a high probability that your target audience might already be using voice search to find products, search for local businesses, or get their query answered.
Voice Search Optimization as a part of brand awareness
Voice marketing directly affects your brand
Voice search is all about the rapid exchange of information; hence, branding might suffer as there is no enforcement of on-screen marketing. However, if you effectively used your brand name and inserted it in the possible search queries of the target audience, you might get a good brand awareness with voice search.
When you ask a query from Google Assistant, it comes up with an answer like, “According to {Website Name}, XYZ is ABC, etc.”
But, in the case of Siri, it generally comes up with something like, “Here is what I found on the web.” In the case of Siri, there is a chance of Click Through Rate if your page appeared in the result, and in the case of Google Assistant, your website name gets read aloud. Thus, your content marketing efforts for lead nurturing get the fruits with voice search optimization.
5 tips for building a voice marketing funnel
1. Focus on the website design to make it SEO and voice search friendly
Your website should be mobile-friendly as web responsiveness is one factor that highly affects your ranking in SERP results. Having a mobile first approach while designing the website is often suggested, and Google has already announced that mobile experience directly impacts the website ranking. And, around 3/4 of voice results rank in the top three positions for a particular question. You could test the mobile-friendliness of your website with the Google responsiveness test.
Ensure that your website loads fast. The purpose behind voice search is the quick exchange of information for the direct questions by the users. The crawlers get information from these web pages ranking on SERP results. If your website does not load fast, you might lose many chances of appearing in the voice search results. A slow-loading website also enhances the bounce rate, which means your ranking might get affected, as the user experience is not up to the mark.
Also, look up the Google Search Console to know whether your pages are crawled or not. An inconsistent robots.txt might stop the Google(or another search engine) spiders from crawling your website. In such a case, the entire purpose of your blog fails.
2. Focus on local search optimization to be called by voice assistants for local and “Near Me” keywords
Create “Google My Business” and “Bing Local” pages. Follow the steps on this hyperlink to list your business on Google My Business. Be vigilant in providing the details.
- Accurate NAP(Name, Address, and Phone Number) is a necessity for your local ranking as it increases your relevancy in the eyes of Google.
- If your potential customers ask for your opening and closing hours from Alexa, then the voice assistants must be able to scrape the information from your listing. It means that you should provide all the relevant information like your working days, working hours, exact services, acceptable payment methods, location, etc.
- To appear for local keywords, you could use Google Keyword Planner to know about the trending keywords in a given region.
- If your business has more than one location, you must use location pages or location-specific “about us” pages.
- List your website on the online business directories to improve your visibility and relevance in the eyes of Google. These websites help you boost your local SEO because you get a backlink from a high DA website. Ensure that you maintain consistent NAP and a thorough description of your website.
- Focusing on acquiring backlinks from other prominent websites is crucial for your SEO strategy. Google would scrap information from your website and use it for voice search, only if your website has authority.
3. Including Schema Markup in your strategy improves your content’s relevance and help voice assistants in scrapping the right information
Schema markup is the structured data markup that helps crawlers understand the relevancy of content. When you add schema markup for the “how to” sections in your blog, there is a high probability of earning rich snippets, which directly helps Google read your content in case of a voice query. Increasing relevancy only means helping the search engines understand the intent and relevancy of the content.
The algorithm is smart, but if you google things, you would see that many areas still need improvement. Google is also working on improving the NLP(Natural Language Processing), which means it is wise to take action from our side. Schemas directly impact SEO and voice search devices such as Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, Cortana, etc. You can use a variety of encoding, including RDFa, microdata, and JSON–LD.
4. Include FAQ section in your website to cover the important questions that your target audience might have while a voice search
“Who, What, When, Why, How, etc.” are the words with which voice searches generally begin. According to researchers, most people use and say the complete question while performing a voice search. They might also use many filler words in the query, which is part of natural human behavior. You could take inspiration from the “People also ask” box for your FAQ section; available on the SERP page, every time you search your target keyword.
Keep your answer in a conversational tone to appeal to the audience and the voice assistants. Your website must have a navigational and informational structure to make it easy for crawlers to find particular information on your page. Your webpage must load fast, and the answers must be written to solve the search query.
5. Keep your content concise and conversational.
Content is king
People tend to talk more naturally in voice searches than when typing a query into the search engines. To excel in voice search optimization and include it in your marketing strategy, you need to create content that matches the conversational tone people ask questions to voice assistance. The algorithms are smart enough to recognize the content with the best user experience and solve the audience’s query. Thus, focus on creating valuable content.
You must give people quick information to their voice searches in the natural and conversational language to achieve this goal. If you are adding answers to frequently asked questions related to your blog, try to keep it in 30 words; otherwise, if complex, try to be under 50 words at maximum.
Conclusion
Voice search optimization is crucial to growing in this new era of voice queries. Voice searches have become a prominent part of many humans life as it is simpler and faster than typing the entire query into the search engines. The figures and statistics show how prominent voice searches have become in the marketing world. To succeed in this competitive atmosphere, you must follow all the tips mentioned above to excel.
About the author:
We are Codedesign – a multi cultural, technology, award-winning digital marketing agency. We can be define as a result-led, innovative digital marketing agency specializing in Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, Online Sales, Amazon Sales with a team of experts in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click Strategy and Campaigns, Social Media, Content Marketing, Data Analytics, Ecommerce development, Software development, CRM integrations.
