As voice searches become more prevalent and an increasing number of homes are equipped with smart speakers, marketers will have to identify new ways of improving their brand’s voice marketing.

Getting the most from your brand’s voice marketing is essential to your overall success. After all, Amazon has sold over 100 million Alexa-equipped devices, while Google Assistant is available on nearly 1 billion devices globally. That’s a massive audience, and if you aren’t maximizing your voice marketing strategy, you’re missing out.

The question that remains, however, is how do you improve your brand’s voice marketing?

The answer involves learning how your content sounds when it’s read, making your content easier to find, and using voice marketing in new ways. As you tie more of your marketing efforts to voice, your brand will become more visible through the medium.

Think of the literal voice

How does the content on your website sound when it’s read out loud? It might seem like a simple thing, but words and phrases sound different when read out loud than they do when reading in your head.

Also, consider that the default voice used by Alexa, Google, or Apple will likely read your content to the user. This voice could become your brand’s voice — although we are seeing a demand for alternate voices on these devices). Alexa, for example, now allows users to exchange the default voice for that of Samuel L. Jackson, and you can expect more celebrities to come on board in the future. How would your content sound being read by Sam Jackson?

From a marketer’s standpoint, implementing a few small changes to your written content, like shorter sentences and simpler words, could make it easier for listeners to understand. Test your website content to see how it sounds when it’s being read by Alexa to see what consumers are experiencing and alter it accordingly. If you’re not sure how to have Alexa read your content, try a website reader skill, or build your own skill.

Build an Alexa skill

One way to build your brand directly through voice marketing is to create an Alexa skill. These skills are essentially apps that you deploy to Amazon’s marketplace for Alexa users to interact with.

Much like mobile users can download apps to their phones through the Play Store or App Store, large brands can create skills that do a job or provide information to users. The key is to create a skill that people actually want to use because it makes their lives easier.

You’ll want to market the launch of your skill heavily to increase awareness because the more people who use it, the more effective your voice marketing becomes.

Advertise with My Day and Flash Briefing

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant famously don’t allow you to advertise through them. There is a way around this policy, however, through a couple of features they offer to users.

Flash Briefing on Amazon and My Day on Google Home narrate news and other information that users want to hear every day. While you can’t advertise directly through these channels, you can place ads on the news sources, podcasts, radio stations, and streaming sites where these services get their content. For example, CNBC sells advertising on its Flash Briefing stream.

This advertising method not only helps you get your brand’s name out there on voice channels. but it also helps build you as an authority on the subject. Becoming an authority is vital in the grand scheme of search engine optimization because Google and Bing will put you higher in their results if you know your stuff.

Rank in voice search results

Reaching customers organically through their smart speakers involves voice search optimization. The gist is that you want to include terms on your website that people use when searching for related products or services.

Research by Adobe Analytics reports that 53% of voice search users ask questions, while 47% conduct online searches. You have to reach these people if you want to take full advantage of the technology.

One solution is to answer some frequently asked questions on your website. That way, the next time someone asks their smart speaker a similar question, there’s a higher chance of your answer showing up.

As your brand becomes a go-to for answers to questions within your industry, you’ll become known as an authority.

Combine offline marketing with voice marketing

With all the attention paid to online marketing, some brands seem to forget that offline marketing remains highly impactful. One problem with offline marketing is that it can take dozens of impressions before you get engagement from a potential customer.

New technology is breaking this barrier down, however, by combining offline and voice marketing.

Respond Fast uses a system where a consumer sees your advertisement and is presented with an offer code that is accessed through a smart speaker or voice assistant. When this Voice Activated Call to Action is verbally entered into the speaker, information is sent to the user’s mobile phone for later use.

This technology not only helps advertisers get results from consumers with fewer impressions but is also trackable because you’ll see which offers are attracting them.

Contact Respond Fast for more information on this new technology and to start your first voice response campaign for free.