Voice and Chat

Bauer Media has started integrating voice technology into the company’s marketing strategies. With voice search forecast to account for 50 percent of all searches by 2020, according to ComScore data, an increasing number of Bauer brands are looking at innovations in voice activation. Sales of voice-enabled devices, such as the Amazon Echo, are growing, creating a bigger audience and user base for voice search marketing. Data from Radiocentre showed Amazon Echo will be in 40 percent of homes by early 2018. 

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In a survey of over 1,000 U.S. consumers last month, RichRelevance found that 86 percent of shoppers preferred typical search functions such as search bars over voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. Moreover, 72 percent of participants said they would leave the website if it lacked a ‘strong’ search tool, while 80 percent confirmed that they use the search bar exclusively when shopping online. Consumer focus on traditional search also points to the slow integration of voice aides in retailers’ websites. In fact, 70 percent of participants have not used voice assistants yet, with 63 percent of consumers saying that they don’t have faith in industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. “With many retailers looking to go beyond last-generation keyword-based search, brands and retailers would be best served by focusing on personalization and image search while positioning themselves to win with any developments in voice-based search,” added Mike Ni, chief marketing officer of RichRelevance. Results also show that the Millennials and Generation Z are more familiar with voice aides:  43 percent of younger people have used them compared to just 30 percent of older people.[Image Credit: © Andres Urena]

Drum Agency chief strategy officer, Dave Randolph, is skeptical virtual assistants will quickly have a massive impact on shopping. He claims technology, notably AI and bandwidth, are too inadequate for consumers to meaningfully interact with voice-activated devices. He also points out that many of the worries raised about voice-shopping – loss of visual cues, ability of Amazon to promote its own products, importance of ratings – are all factors already faced online. He suggests that marketers do not need to ‘fully dive in’ until voice technology advances greatly, becomes more ubiquitous and offers much more significant benefits to consumers.[Image Credit: © Thomas Kolnowski]

Consumers mostly use voice-shopping for products in groceries, clothing, electronics, and entertainment but analysts expect voice-activated shopping to grow rapidly as consumers use it to buy a wider range of goods. Currently shoppers typically buy “low-consideration goods” and products customers have bought before, but Capgemini executive vice president Mark Taylor believes consumers will buy “high-consideration” items in the future as they become more comfortable with voice shopping. eMarketer found that 36 percent of consumers in the US like the idea of voice shopping and Capgemini expects it to be the “dominant” mode of making online purchases in a few years. OC&C Strategy Consultants projects that in the US the voice-shopping market will grow from $2 billion today to $40 billion by 2022.[Image Credit: © Thomas Kolnowski]

According to digital marketing agency QueryClick, 53 percent of retailers and brands said they are planning to invest in voice search in the next 12 months. Data from the survey “The CMO Performance Report 2018,” published by the company, revealed 75 percent of CMO respondents said their brand plans to adapt their SEO strategy to ensure it comes out in voice search results. Among all respondents, 43 percent said they plan to implement this in the next 12 months, with 32 percent saying they intend to adopt voice search in over 12 months.[Image Credit: © Gerd Altmann]

Ecommerce and advances in retail-related technologies are prompting retailers to transform their physical stores into a component of the omni-channel customer experience. Retailers are turning their physical stores into a fulfillment center for customers who demand the omni-channel experience. Also, stores are becoming a destination that supports the customer’s online experience with the brand. Although stores no longer need to carry huge inventories, retailers can use virtual technology to “display” huge collections of products. Digital technology has equipped customers with increased knowledge about products and services, prompting retailers to empower store associates with skills and capabilities beyond selling. 

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Artificial intelligence holds great potential for understanding and attracting consumers yet many marketers are still unable to capitalize on it. Some 85% of executives say AI could give their company a competitive edge yet only 5% of companies have extensively integrated AI into their processes. The gap between the hope and the reality is due the lack of clarity about what AI can do for their business, underlined by the fact that 61% of companies say they do not have an AI strategy in place. Some of the uncertainty surrounding AI can be attributed to AI vendors who, instead of delivering ready-to-action insights, are developing products to solve problems.[Image Credit: © Gerd Altmann]

There are three reasons why audio will soon become the most important element of social media marketing. First, audio is the most intimate kind of content, as can be seen in the rapid growth of podcasting. Podcast consumers feel like they are part of the process and are more likely to recommend a podcast to a friend. Also, audio is a type of content that “can be consumed passively.” Latest research shows 69 percent of podcast listeners can engage with the content while doing some other things. Leading social networks, such as Facebook, are adopting audio content and adding it to their platforms. Facebook Stories, for example, plans to introduce a feature designed to let users share a voice message if they do not like to have a video of themselves. [Image Credit: © Gerd Altmann]

Voice search technology can help marketers and advertisers regain the trust of consumers. Recent studies, such as the one by ExpressVPN, have revealed that consumers do not trust how brands and tech companies collect and use user data. To regain user trust, marketers should adopt a conversational approach, which is increasingly becoming possible as consumers become more at ease with using their voice to interact with their devices. Voice search allows consumers to actively search for what they want instead of “being fed” by a non-voice system. 

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AI-based voice communication is popular for accessing information, playing music and podcasts, but has yet to become ubiquitous for shopping. Professor Rahul Kapoor and Ron Adner suggests looking at the entire ecosystem of a new technology – device, voice AI, apps, personal data… - to understand how benefits are delivered and where bottlenecks lie. Denise Dahlhoff points out that while there is an extensive array of devices that support voice-assisted shopping, software components remain undeveloped. With Amazon’s solution so aligned with its core business, Dahlhoff recommends that retailers work with Google Assistant, just as Target, Walmart, Ultra Beauty and others have already done. Through mitigating shopping chores by leveraging personal data and using screens with voice to make shopping easier, Dahlhoff believes voice shopping will take off. [Image Credit: © Sebastian Bednarek]