Why Audio Marketing Should Be Considered in Your Marketing Strategy

While the use of audio within marketing has been around for years, the advancement of technology has meant that it’s developed a considerable amount in recent years. 2 of the main areas where audio now has the biggest impact in our lives is through the production of content and voice activated technology such as Siri.

With the 2 of these playing such as large role in our day to day lives, and one that’s set to continue to grow, we’ve looked at what you should consider in order to make the most of it.

Audio content

Content marketing in general has seen itself grow in prominence over the past few years. A great onus was initially placed on blogs, which then made its way to visual content in the form of photography and video, and now that’s spread to audio. One of the most successful pieces of audio content have proven to be podcasts. Yes, they’ve been around for a while but they seemingly took some time to become truly mainstream. However, with the continued growth of portable devices such as smartphones, podcasts have become increasingly accessible and the ideal alternative to music and radio, whether it’s for the commute to work, at the gym, or simply while relaxing at home.

The increased level of consumption of podcasts now means that more and more businesses are using them to engage with their customers. They make for a great means of starting conversations around issues relating your industry sector and can also help your brand appear as a thought leader. This added level of authority can prove invaluable when you take into account the impact it’s likely to have on how your brand is perceived.

There are a number of ways you can go about putting together audio content. It can consist of a monologue where you deliver insight into what your customers will find of interest. It can also involve holding an interview with an industry expert or even a general discussion on a certain matter between colleagues. How you go about it will ultimately be dependent on the resources you have available to you – just be sure to create content that’ll sit well and make for easy listening for your target audience.

Voice activated devices

Voice activated devices have well and truly crept into our everyday lives. While Apple might have initially been one of the main developers to persist with their implementation of voice activation with Siri, it felt more like a fad than something that would take-off. However, a few short years later we now have voice controlled tech creeping into out lives, and more importantly our living rooms. From Sky Q and Apple’s voice controlled remote controls, to Amazon’s Echo and Google Home devices, voice control looks like it’s not only set to stay, but also potentially take over. In fact, it’s predicted that by 2020 nearly 50% of all searches will be voice searches, which shouldn’t be too surprising when you consider that Android phones are as well equipped as iPhones to cater for voice command searches.

But how does this impact your business? Well with more people using voice command, search queries are now far more conversational, so whereas people may have previously searched for “restaurant Manchester”, the same search query is likely to be spoken as “what’s the best restaurant in Manchester?”. Spoken search queries are more detailed by their very nature, as it’s easier to talk a few extra words and it’s also what naturally comes out. Queries are also likely to be geared towards asking direct questions, something that should be noted as this can be taken advantage of when creating content.

Final words

If you haven’t considered the impact of audio then now is certainly the time to do so with it having a growing influence on the way in which content is being consumed and searched for. While there might be some technical barriers in learning how to create audio content, it’s certainly a skill that can be learnt relatively quickly.

Hopefully this quick look at the impact audio may have on your marketing has opened your eyes to new ways of marketing your business moving forward.