Adding voice technology to your multichannel marketing strategy can make it more efficient by giving potential customers additional ways to access your brand

With consulting firm, PwC reporting that 65% of consumers between ages 25 and 49 use voice-activated devices on a daily basis, developing your voice-related brand presence is becoming increasingly important.

It’s clear that brands are listening, too. Digiday Research finds that 43% of businesses are now investing in voice marketing technology. Many of those brands say they don’t yet consider it a high priority, but they recognize the opportunity to connect with multichannel customers.

Even if you already have a diverse multi-channel marketing plan in place, integrating voice into your strategy is an excellent way to encourage even more consumers to interact with your brand. It also prevents you from falling behind competitors who are using voice technology to cater to potential customers.

Here are some ways to incorporate voice into your multichannel marketing strategy to increase your brand exposure and grow your business.

1. Using voice to create interaction with your brand

Providing a voice assistant or other voice-activated interface for your company can make it easier for consumers to communicate with your brand.

The idea is that when customers call your business, they can speak with a virtual assistant who will guide them through the buying or information-gathering process.

In the survey by PwC, customers reported that it is easier, faster, and more convenient to speak with a voice assistant than it is with a human being. The customers also prefer speaking with a voice assistant to texting the brand on their phones.

At the same time, 64% of consumers would rather visit a physical store, and 76% would choose shopping online through their computers or mobile devices instead of using a voice assistant to shop.

These numbers indicate that consumers are using voice to develop their relationships with brands, but still require a visit to a website or storefront to make their purchases.

By setting up voice technology to build a relationship with your customers, you can encourage users to take the next step in the buying process through one of your other channels.

2. Combining voice and SEO

The way that you write your online content goes a long way towards its visibility.

Search engines have complicated algorithms that rank your website based on its relevancy to the term that a user types. Integrating voice marketing strategy into your SEO is essential at this point because about 25% of consumers regularly use voice search on their phones. That number will increase significantly in the coming years as the technology becomes more natural to use and more mainstream.

You have to remember, however, that people search differently through voice, and search engines rank the results differently, too.

When conducting a voice search, consumers tend to use more conversational language. So, if you want to show up in the search results, you may have to change the way you write your content.

It’s also important to recognize that a voice assistant will often relay information from the featured snippet, which is a unique search result at the top of the page. The featured snippet, also called position zero, exposes customers directly to your brand, making it the ideal location to reach on a search engine.

Being rewarded with the featured snippet takes a lot of work and a bit of luck, but it is well worth the effort because your brand can become the unofficial answer to a voice query.

By optimizing your website content for voice, you can make the technology a greater part of your multichannel strategy without sacrificing your other marketing methods.

3. Adding an Alexa Skill

One voice-specific marketing method that you could use to increase customer engagement is developing an Alexa Skill. A Skill is essentially an app that is activated on a smart speaker, allowing the consumer to interact directly with your brand via voice.

Your Skill should provide a service or information that is relevant to your industry while encouraging consumers to order your products or services.

For example, if you have a grocery store, your Skill might provide recipes and helping customers either order the necessary ingredients online or create a list to access at your retail location or through another channel. From there, customers can pick up their orders or use their list to search for the needed ingredients.

If your Skill is useful, you can create brand loyalty by integrating the technology with your flyers and other offline collateral.

4. Bringing voice and offline marketing together

Speaking of bringing offline marketing content together with voice-activated devices, Respond Fast provides an even faster way to accomplish this through our Voice Activated Call to Action technology (VACTA).

With Respond Fast, you can present customers with offers through your various marketing channels, and they can use a unique code to access your products through any smart speaker or voice assistant. It doesn’t matter if you’re using direct mail, radio ads, podcast spots, or even billboards to advertise, the Respond Fast VACTA is easy to combine with any form of offline marketing.

Visit RespondFast.com for more information on how we can help you make voice a part of your multichannel marketing strategy by setting up your Voice Activated Call to Action. You can start your first campaign for free, so don’t wait — contact us today.