LISTEN UP: WHY AUDIO BRANDING IS A SOUND STRATEGY IN 2019
“Alexa play the top 10 best hip hop songs of all time!”, “Siri — what is the latest news from today’s papers?”, “Google what train should I catch to London to get to my meeting by 10 am?”. All everyday requests that take place in my life at friends houses, my sister’s and many homes across the UK. Friends of mine have bought their 10-year-old daughters an Alexa for their room for their latest birthday. Podcasts are the daily dose of wisdom I use to motivate myself for my daily exercise. Voice and audio are becoming an integral part of family life as morning news readouts replace the radio bulletins.
Lo and Barnard cited some compelling statistics to illustrate the accelerating momentum of voice search. In the UK alone, 42% of the population uses voice search on a daily basis, up from 25% four years ago. Even more notably, the engagement with digital assistants Alexa and Cortana has seen a fourfold increase in the past year. So what does this mean for brands and their content strategies?
- Embrace audio branding
Close your eyes, and you’ll know it’s an Intel ad from its famous chimes. “I’m Lovin’ It” is synonymous with McDonald’s. And we all know what the “Green Giant” sings. These are iconic audio sounds and with the increase in how we consume content through audio channels how your brand sounds is only going to become more important is being distinctive. Audio is just one of the core sensory & semantic cues that make it easier for consumers to identify your brand and recall the associations related to it. Having something that distinguishes you on podcasts, YouTube or specific songs on Instagram or Facebook will be key to standing out amongst the crowd.
With audio branding, you can influence the powerful sense of hearing while your competitors aren’t looking. The process is neither difficult nor expensive. MediaVillage estimates that the audio marketing expenditure in the US is expected to exceed $20 billion by 2020.
2. Leverage neuroscience to create stand out experiences through audio
As audio touchpoints proliferate, once-silent magazines, newspapers and brochures wouldn’t be caught dead without music and video. Even sales reps’ flipcharts have become multimedia-enabled apps. But few marketers have rolled out a strategic approach to sound and music. Remember It doesn’t have to be a fully-fledged music strategy just yet (though it’s worth noting even MPs are creating playlists).
Your customers may be WhatsApping, Snapping or creating a story while they’re “watching” your commercial or video. Often, the eyes are averted in these days of “Continuous Partial Attention.”
How can your brand say, “Here I am,” when your customer’s eyes are distracted by another screen. The sense of hearing can come to the rescue and help cause that all important ‘thumb-stopping’ moment. Brands must find a distinctive audio universe that crystalizes their brand essence and that sets them apart from the competition. And they must infuse it into all their audio touch points.
This requires a new type of strategic knowledge that brings a balance of branding expertise and sound and music design experience.
3. Voice Search Creating Answer Engines Over Search Engines
Voice search is one of the key content marketing trends for 2019 — smart speaker sales are the fastest-growing consumer technology market: nine million devices were sold in Q1 2018 versus 2.9 million in 2017.
The rise of voice search is transforming search engines into “answer engines”, which require a different strategy and set of ingredients for success. This strategy has come to be known as AEO, or “answer engine optimization”.
So how does AEO differ from the time-tested discipline of SEO? Why is it important? And how can SEOs go about optimizing for answer engines?
Google has fundamentally shifted its strategy towards providing one, definitive answer to searches. Innovations like featured snippets and Knowledge Graph have contributed to Google’s aim of providing the answer to a search query without requiring a user to click through to another website.
Voice search accentuates this shift, with the vast majority of voice searches receiving a single answer read out by a digital assistant. On mobile, some voice searches will display a results page if there isn’t a definitive answer to be found, but for smart home hub devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home which rarely have screens, this isn’t an option.
Therefore, the search engine needs to be able to provide a single answer, or none at all. if Google is to give a specific answer, it needs very specific, detailed information in order to present it. For example, if somebody says, ‘I would like the cheapest pizza in the area’, Google needs to know what the prices of the pizzas are in the shops around. If they say, ‘I want pepperoni pizza’, it would be really helpful if Google knew the menu.
If you ask for a pepperoni pizza, and Google knows that one pizzeria does it but isn’t sure if the other one does, it will present the one it knows offers pepperoni pizza. That’s the idea of specifics.”
AEO is not going to replace SEO, but it is becoming increasingly important for marketers to learn how to optimize for answer engines as well as search engines due to (all together now…) the rise of voice search.
4. Alexa Skills
An Alexa Skill is a voice-enabled app that can complete specific functions such as playing music, hosting game nights, controlling a thermostat, and doing a roundup of today’s latest news. Third-party developers have already created over 30,000 Alexa Skills, and you can expect that number to keep growing in 2019.
Longer storytelling audio content works effectively with Alexa at home [or in the office], as people spend more time in these environments and seek audience experience that have storytelling in them. Brands such as Uber, LEGO, GE, Shopify, Slack and the BBC are investing heavily in creating Alexa skills that bind them to the voice interface more intuitively.
5. Podcasting
I’ve mentioned podcasting many times before but as an avid user, I have to keep banging the podcast drum. According to Activate Tech & Media Outlook 2018, podcasting has been projected to double its reach to 112 million people and produce over 15 billion hours of content by 2021. Furthermore, podcast listeners tend to be affluent, well educated, committed to technology and have multiple voice-powered touch points already set up in the home. There are many different types of successful podcasts out there but think primarily about how the content is designed for voice-enabled products. If you want to target people on the go or looking for quick information — up to five minutes should be the sweet spot.
So what’s the future for audio? More and more we will see brands invest significant time and effort in how they sound and what unique musical brand they have online and beyond. Further, becoming part of that single answer engine result will be paramount for brands wanting to be successful in localised search and services. It’s an exciting time and I for one can’t wait to see what the future will bring us. As always please share your thoughts and insights on what you are seeing and doing for your company or brands. I’d love to hear your point of view.
