• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 14, 2018

Morgan Chemij, director II of marketing and CRM for the Americas at HP.com, championed voice search on Friday at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit and shared some information on HP’s voice strategy, but mostly shared curated data on the media in general.

Hewlett-Packard began earlier this year to integrate voice technology into HP products, but most recently linked the technology with its Tango line of printers that now connected directly to Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Microsoft Cortana. Voice-activated printing originally launched in January 2018.

“The main goal was to highlight that voice search, while still early in its life cycle, represents an increasing influential role in the consumer journey,” Chemij told Search Marketing Daily. “Brands need to be increasingly aware of voice and start to build it into their medium-term marketing and strategic planning.”

One reason to get involved with voice search, per Chemij, is that the cost is low to implement. Most search results are personalized. When a consumer shops for toilet paper on Google Home, the query also returns prices from Walmart and Target. If the consumer repeats an order from Walmart, the results will stop serving up Target’s prices.

From HP.com, most consumers will buy low “consideration products,” such as ink, rather than higher priced items like laptops, Chemij said. He pointed to post-purchase products like ink and coffee filters as the next big opportunity for voice, as well as cross-sold products based on the original items sold.

Brands should enter the market early to establish preference with that user, he said.

Mike Grehan, CMO at Acronym, said voice search is all about “task completion.” The consumer makes a request through voice search or an assistant and the machine completes the task without a click.

About 500 million machines have voice-enabled services, according to Adobe. During the holidays, Adobe estimates, 30% of the consumers will use voice search to make purchases.

About 47% of people use voice search to research and search for products they are interested in purchasing. Some 43% use voice search to create shipping lists, 32% use voice search to compare prices, 28% research store information, and 27% check for deals and promotions.