TIn Australia, about half a million households currently own a smart speaker and it’s forecasted that by 2022, three million Australian households will own a smart speaker. That means that we’ll be hearing a lot more of this:
“Alexa, please order more milk.”
“Hey Google, I would like to book my flights to Singapore for May.”
But what will the rise of voice mean for modern age retailers? And what will it mean for consumers?
In the US, over half of travellers are comfortable requesting general information using voice assistance, however that drops significantly for travellers using voice for all jobs.
With companies spending thousands of dollars on Facebook or Google for us to identify and choose, what happens when we can’t see any of those ads?
Companies will need to place a stronger emphasis on building their voice technology presence, as it will soon become its own channel, with its own spend and tactics.
This in turn will lead to the formation of a host of new jobs so companies can optimise the voice channel – mirroring what happened with the boom of social media channels.
How does this affect branding?
In 2017 alone, Australians spent $21.3 billion on online shopping. The rise of voice technology will continue to nurture this, with almost half of Australians willing or enthusiastic to use virtual assistants to interact and shop with retailers.
As online shopping and searching for products relies primarily on SEO, this means that strong brands will be frontrunners for voice ahead of other businesses, despite potentially having a more appropriate product or a better price for the consumer.
Giants Google and Amazon will be locked in combat to control the retail marketplace, with smaller and local businesses struggling to compete with their supremacy in the market and amount of product and content flooding in the digital space.
How will brands stay relevant?
To compete with the likes of retailers such as Google and Amazon you need to ensure your business is creating increasingly relevant content for your target audience and generating an omnipresence across all platforms.
You need to develop as many touchpoints across the consumer journey as possible and create relevant opportunities to convert leads where you can. Having a variety of touchpoints will help increase your SEO naturally.
Always be omnipresent
Once you’ve decided what content you can produce, you need to think about the right channels to distribute it through. It’s vital to make sure you’re using an omnichannel approach in your digital strategy.
This allows you to create a presence not just across your website and blog, but also Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and any other channels that might work for your audience.
You need to make sure the content is modified for each channel as well, as there’s no one-size-fits-all method when it comes to social media. By creating customised content, you create the ideal environment for leads to convert in your target market.
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