How voice search is changing search engine marketing

Voice search is shifting the goalposts for search engine marketing. Where once the challenge was to get a website to appear in a search engine’s top 10 text results, now the aim is to make a brand the top voice result, according to KPMG Senior Advisor, Customer, Brand and Marketing Advisory Andrew Baxter.

In a recent survey, Global Web Index found that voice search use is on the rise, with 42% of internet users saying they conducted a voice search in the month leading up to the survey — up 31% from the first half of 2017.

Often, these users will only get one result and many will trust that result. In fact, a survey by Digitas in the US found that 85% of people had chosen the voice assistant’s first option instead of the brand they specifically requested on at least one occasion. This means brands that don’t show up first could be left out of the decision entirely.

Another consideration for marketers is that most voice assistant users will search via category rather than brand, Baxter said. So if you were to ask Alexa to ‘add batteries’ to your Amazon shopping cart, Alexa is at liberty to choose the brand of batteries it adds. While Amazon does sell major brands such as Energizer, it also has stocks its own brand, Amazon Basic.

“The fact that five of the six top-selling battery brands on Amazon at the moment are the Amazon Basic brand is no doubt a testament to Alexa,” Baxter said.

As a result, Baxter believes marketers’ challenge now is to figure out how to pander to the voice assistants’ algorithms as well as consumers.

Fortunately, “The voice assistant’s AI capabilities mean that it can analyse far more information around a multitude of brands before making a choice. So there’s an opportunity for lesser brands to be part of the consideration set when a generic category search is done,” Baxter concluded. 

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