Commentary

3 Ways B2B Marketers Can Prepare for Voice Technology

While historically thought of as a consumer tool, voice technology is being embraced by more and more B2B customers.  Nearly half of respondents to a survey conducted by Stone Temple Consulting said that they use voice search at work. Ninety percent of executives do research from their mobile devices before making a decision, and 50% use voice search at work.

It’s only a matter of time before voice upends how buyers research, consider and purchase products.  Here are three key considerations to keep in mind when preparing for this trend.

1.     Prioritize mobile as voice technology’s point-of-entry. The first step is having a mobile strategy. According to a recent Google report, “The Changing Face of B2B Marketing,” 42% of B2B customers use mobile devices during the purchasing process.

As the buying process changes, technology, such as voice, AI and M2M, is enabling B2B companies to deliver a new and more convenient buyer experience.

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The ease and convenience of ordering whenever or wherever you are is gaining momentum, and being able to do that hands-free brings further benefits.
With potential B2B buyers often on the road, convenience is key. To prepare for the growth of voice search and voice ordering on mobile, ensure that your web store and all your web pages are optimized for mobile. Offer an experience tailored to mobile search intent and the mobile use case, making browsing and shopping as streamlined as possible.

2.     Adjust your content and search strategy for conversational language. It’s not just placing online orders that makes voice powerful. Voice can also help reduce order mistakes and simplify post sales.

Whether a customer's looking to request a return or log a complaint, a voice assistant could respond and drive these actions using predetermined key words. The biggest challenge will lie in having to change your approach to search and content strategies in order to fully meet these needs and reap the benefits.

The majority of voice searches today are conversational or informal queries. This means you need to build content, like FAQs, that align with this new voice-driven conversational search and adjust your existing content so that it can be found.

3.     Keep voice’s ever-connected future top-of-mind. Someday soon, voice technology will be part of an ecosystem that simplifies and redefines the customer experience. Imagine a future where we combine voice search with search engines and external apps to personalize marketing.

This connected ecosystem of technology could be the beginning of predictive search’s domination and redefine how we measure the success and limits of personalization.

You may not be ready to take this on now, but you should keep it in mind as you lay the building blocks for your first step into a voice-enabled strategy and start thinking about how you can seamlessly and gracefully transition into that future.

1 comment about "3 Ways B2B Marketers Can Prepare for Voice Technology".
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  1. James Smith from J. R. Smith Group, March 21, 2019 at 11:39 p.m.

    Arno, liked the article.  Question: How are we going to deal with "jargon-filled" B2B conversation?  Would seem critical to have large conversational corpus of industry
    verticals to train the voice AI/ML.

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