Voice Marketing: The Renaissance of Branding

Text: Irmela Schwab

When Reto Hofstetter watches TV, he sits down on his sofa and starts talking. Sometimes he calls up a show in the program, sometimes a movie on Netflix - Swisscom TV's voice control responds to his wishes.
 

Hofstetter is a professor of marketing at the University of Lucerne and is also professionally involved with the helpful voice assistants. He's not the only one who saves a few clicks on the remote control: So far, 37 percent of the Swiss population simplify their lives with voice control on smartphones, computers and speakers. This is the result of a study on the use of voice assistants by the University of Lucerne and the Farner agency. By the end of the year, the number is expected to climb to 62 percent. A new market is blossoming. 

However, most advertising companies do not yet have a strategy ready for this. That's the observation of Daniel Jörg. The partner and Head of Digital & Research at Farner worked on the study and speaks of a "paradigm shift. Voice is another user interface and another touchpoint in the customer journey. This is no trifle. Companies must prepare products and content in such a way that they can be used with voice. This can be achieved, for example, with a dedicated voice application - just as Swisscom TV does with its program selection.

There are many indications that such services are popular with the Swiss. On the one hand, this is shown by the great interest of the population: Every month, users search for services such as Google Home or Siri on Google.ch more than 7,000 times (see box). Consumers like things that save them time. Speech is one of them: People can talk four times as fast as they can type. This allows them to interact more directly with a computer or a company than via a screen - without using their hands. Whether they're on the road in the car or at home - there's a lot of added value. With a wide range of usage scenarios.

The voice trend is being driven by smart speakers. In the U.S., the number of smart speaker sales is increasing by nearly 48 percent annually, according to Emarketer. By 2020, the speakers will be used by around 77 million Americans. In Switzerland, on the other hand, the official launch of the devices is not scheduled until this year. Then the breakthrough for voice marketing should also take place in this country. Farner manager Jörg expects this to happen: "Since the smartphone, there has been no other technology that has spread as rapidly as voice-based smart assistants."

Virgin Trains is another example of what can be done with Alexa. To speed up the purchase of train tickets, the travel provider in the United Kingdom has created an Alexa Skill. Travelers can book their ticket and pay via their Amazon account by entering their voice into the smart speaker. This reduces the purchasing process from seven minutes on screen to two minutes by voice - which the company says has a very positive development on ticket sales. The simpler, the better. But added value can also be found at the core of a brand: Beauty brand Estée Lauder, for example, offers a voice service on Google Home for beauty tips. Marketers see such capabilities - or "skills" - as one of the best ways for companies to add value - and make themselves heard. There are now more than 50,000 skills for Amazon Alexa - including the "Bring" shopping service. Users can create shopping lists on their smartphone, tablet, and smartwatch, share them with others, and plan grocery shopping together. 

"Bring" was developed by the three Swiss Marco Cerqui, Sandro Strebel and Dominic Mehr, first as an app for the iPhone. It works on a similar principle with Alexa. The difference is that it is controlled by voice instead of buttons.

One challenge in the development of skills is the lack of visibility. For marketers and developers, this requires a rethink. What questions might users ask? And what should the brand answer? Marketers must also be aware that information on the screen is absorbed by the user in parallel. At a glance, he has grasped everything. The voice, on the other hand, is only audible and is processed step by step. The result: "Decisions are made faster via voice and based on less information," says marketing professor Hofstetter. This makes voice marketing particularly suitable for products that are inexpensive or less risky for consumers to buy. This also includes repeat purchases. 

Talking brands On the way to turning a visually experienced brand into a talking brand, marketers also need to consider how a brand feels as a conversational partner. "Today, brands are strongly defined by visuals," says Jörg. The Farner manager points to corporate identities and designs. Now marketers have to consider what kind of conversational wit, mischievousness or snappishness fits a brand. That's how they develop the right personality in the new voice-first world. 

The reward is a completely new closeness to the consumer. Because the voice is the most natural way to communicate, it has a strong emotional power. "Thanks to neuromarketing research, we know that the vast majority of purchase decision processes are driven by emotions and not by reason," says Jörg. If brands now become interlocutors, they have a great opportunity to enter the consumer's living room, car and other everyday moments. Says Jörg, "Brands can interact with consumers not only during their time in front of the screen, but precisely in between." A permanent touchpoint to the brand is created.

The new touchpoint changes the customer journey once again. The customer journey to the conclusion of a purchase, which has only become so complex due to the text-based Internet, is thus reduced again. And not just because voice can be used anywhere and at any time, thus shortening the purchase decision process. "Whereas a user on a computer may have ten different tabs open, the voice assistant only offers one or two options," says Andrea Iltgen, partner at digital agency Xeit. The choice is smaller, the chance of buying the suggested product greater. The difficulty now lies elsewhere: the brands must first make it to the shortlist in order to even be mentioned by the smart assistant. This can be achieved if a brand is perceived by the algorithm as an expert in a particular field - or has already built up such a good customer relationship that the user has already ordered the product more than once. Iltgen: "Then the product will make it back into the selection based on the data situation."

Iltgen cites the Tide washing powder brand from the USA as a prime example. The brand has established itself as an expert on stains. The leap into voice marketing was therefore easy. If you ask the voice assistant for a stain solution, it brings Tide's content into play. Iltgen's conclusion: "If you've already laid a good foundation in content marketing, you'll also benefit from it in voice marketing." 

Jörg speaks of a "renaissance of branding. According to the Farner manager, the most sustainable method is to get consumers to search not for a product category, but for their own brand. This cannot be accomplished through voice marketing alone, but through an interplay of all channels. Another way to place the brand at the forefront of smart speakers is a good SEO strategy. But this, too, is fed by good content about the brand and the company. To ensure that consumers get the right answers to their questions, Michael Hartwig advises high-quality and up-to-date information. As Managing Partner at digital knowledge management platform Yext, Hartwig helps companies make themselves discoverable in digital search. "The foundation of any voice search strategy, therefore, is organizing and centralizing all public facts about products, locations and employees." New or updated information must be played out to all platforms at all times.

Whoever succeeds in the game of voices also has good chances in the competition among the competitors. After all, interaction with users reveals valuable information about what customers think and want. 

The undisguised language of consumers reveals more than the - often fragmentary - analysis of user behavior on websites and apps and defined test setups of market research can. Andrea Iltgen, a partner at digital agency Xeit, recommends incorporating the resulting new insights into product development and marketing. "In the purchase decision process, suitable offers can be placed early on to shorten the path to purchase." For example, a restaurant that a user is looking for can immediately suggest a reservation.