In both B2B and B2C marketing, the featured snippet is a convenient way to get your company’s name out there and to provide potential customers with solutions to their problems.

Whether you’re using voice marketing to advertise directly to customers or to other businesses that could use your services, you’ll need to figure out the best way to get your desired audience’s attention.

Advertising on voice technology is a convenient way to reach your audience because it’s accessible both at home and in the office, and it provides users with a quick, hands-free way to respond. When a user asks a question of a voice-activated device, the answer comes from the search engine’s results, and, usually, a piece of the result called the featured snippet is presented from the top result.

If you’re serious about using voice to market your business, you need to learn as much as possible about featured snippets and make them a significant part of your website design.

Here’s what you need to know to get your snippets featured on search engine results pages (SERPs) so B2B and B2C consumers can find you via voice.

What are featured snippets?

Have you ever typed a question into Google and received a direct answer at the top of the page? That is the featured snippet, and it’s the best place to be on a search engine because anyone who asks the same question will see that response and end up, at the very least, reading some content from your website.

Currently, around 14 million search terms have a featured snippet, a number that is sure to grow as voice search becomes more common.

If you can rank for a featured snippet, your placement is usually even better than what you would have for a paid search ad. And you don’t have to be a well-established company to get the featured snippet — so long as Google’s algorithm decides your snippets give the best concise answer, you can be at the top of the SERP page and get instant credibility.

The featured snippet space is particularly important when it comes to voice search because when Alexa or Google are asked a question, that is usually where the answer originates.

Putting effort into attaining the featured snippet, sometimes called “rank zero,” for a particular question or query is worth it for B2B and B2C advertisers because it gets your company’s name out there to people who will find your services relevant.

For example, if some decision-makers within an organization are sitting in an office discussing a solution to a problem, they might ask a specific question to a voice-activated device. After all, the Boston Consulting Group states that 80% of B2B buyers use mobile devices at work, so voice usage is on the rise in that setting, as well.

If your website answers this question and has become Google’s featured snippet on the topic, it gets your company’s name in the ears of these decision-makers, putting you on their radar for future business.

Before you can take advantage of the benefits of featured snippets, however, you’ll have to figure out how to get your website featured in the first place.

How to rank your snippets on Google

The problem with featured snippets is that there’s no surefire formula for earning one. Google has an algorithm that chooses featured snippets for particular search terms, but no one seems to know exactly how to get there. And just because you get the position, doesn’t mean you’ll keep it indefinitely.

So, what do you do?

For starters, you’ll want to create high-quality content on your website. Google loves to find relevant content and deliver it to its users, so if your company is solving a problem for a particular type of client, make sure the problem and solution are clearly outlined.

You’ll also want to create content that is easy to put in a featured snippet section. Whenever you see snippets on Google, they’re usually a list in point form or a short paragraph that directly and clearly answers a question. If your content fits this format, it becomes more likely that Google will choose your snippet for its SERP.

You should also note that over 99% of snippets come from websites featured on the first page of the search engine rankings for the term, so taking care of your SEO as a whole is vital.

Creating snippets on your websites

In reality, you won’t directly create snippets on your website, as it is all done by the search engine. What you will do is write content that is easy to snip into small, easily digestible sections that will fit at the top of the Google rankings.

To get ideas, type a search phrase into Google and see what the featured snippet says and how it is laid out. You can then use this content as inspiration and improve on it, hopefully leading to Google using your website instead.

Once Google picks up on your content, your website will be featured on voice search results for that term, putting you on the radar of both B2B and B2C prospects.

Another way to use voice

Ranking for a featured snippet is the most common way to use voice-activated technology to market yourself to a variety of customers, but is it necessarily the best? After all, it’s a lot of work, and there are no guarantees that you’ll even get there.

Respond Fast provides technology that allows you to combine offline marketing with Voice Activated Call to Action technology that makes your business accessible to anyone pretty much anywhere with a few spoken words. Whether you’re marketing towards individual consumers or companies in a particular field, your target audience will be able to access exclusive offers in seconds through this technology. Contact us for more information on how our Voice Activated Call to Action can improve your advertising efforts and drive results.