The Opportunity Of Voice Apps…
Doing tasks with our voice is here to stay.
Why?
People don’t want to use a screen and type.
It’s far quicker to dictate or talk than it is to type or write.
It’s the same reason “TV” and movies are far more popular than reading.
Regardless if you believe that to be true or not, it’s what consumers are currently doing…
According to the 2019 Adobe Voice Technology Study (https://cmo.adobe.com/articles/2018/9/adobe-2018-consumer-voice-survey.html), 48% of consumers use voice assistants for general web search.
Yes, there is niche hipster nostalgia, but what we know about technology is once it is adopted by the majority, there is no going back-in-time for that cohort.
That same Adobe study said 16% of consumers also use voice assistants for shopping.
If you correlate that 16% with what CMO Magazine reports (https://www.cmo.com.au/article/650669/report-voice-commerce-represents-vast-untapped-market-australian-brands/):
“Voice commerce is expected to hit $40 billion in the US and UK by 2020.”
Even with 50% saturation of shopping done by voice, there is still a lot of room to move for voice shopping to dovetail with an already booming e-commerce sector!
With the advent of new technologies, there sometimes exists a large scale land grab akin to Malibu Beaches back in the 60s and 70s:
- Cheap, single-word website domains;
- A first name or generic word as a social media handle; and
- So on…
99.9% of those have now gone.
It’s supply and demand!
That same land grab opportunity also exists for voice.
This is via what is call voice “invocation phrases”.
Invocation, of course, meaning a call or request.
Each time you want to access a voice app, you need to make a call or request.
It sounds like this…
“Hey Google, talk to Being Health”.
If you control the invocation name and thus the voice app name, no one else can have it on 1 billion Google voice activated devices currently.
Let me say that again…
NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE IT ON 1 BILLION GOOGLE VOICE ACTIVATED DEVICES!!!
Think about the branding that could create and more-and-more voice devices hit the market.
It’s like buying http://health.com back in the 1990s.
Every time someone says, “Hey Google, talk to Being Health”, whoever owns the phrase Being Healthy has their app called, no one else’s.
FOREVER.
And for free -there is no cost on Google’s end to secure an invocation name.
Well, at least until the next gold rush comes and usurps voice.
Or, if Google changes its invocation rules (which I don’t see it doing, but it’s possible).
So, if you are a brand, how do you navigate this opportunity?
Once of the smartest ways is to initially secure your voice “domain name”, aka the invocation phrase, before your competitors or squatters do.
You can’t just secure it and have no voice app behind it — a voice app needs to be deployed into production.
So that leaves you a few options…
The easiest option is to build a smile voice response to someone calling it.
For example:
- User: “Hey Google, talk to Being Health”; and
- Voice Assistant: “Here are the best ways to be healthy. * lists the ways of being health.” Then exits conversation.
Yeah, it’s really ghetto, but so were websites in the 90s.
For the old people here, do you recall the fluoro coloured wallpaper and flashing text?
It’s the same.
But, voice will mature as did the web.
The only downside is that users could think it is bloatware and give it bad ratings and reviews.
However, there are big name brands deploying voice apps like this already.
If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you.
For now.
It’s important to note that you should be providing value that goes beyond just a Google search, because consumer can simply say “Hey Google, how can I be healthy?”
And, if you know anything about marketing or sales, this should not be sales channel.
Yes, it is a controlled channel, but it should focus on the know, like and trust side of the equation.
The next option could be building a voice newsletter.
Newsletter have existed in text print and digital print for a long time.
Again, that same Adobe study said that 27% of consumers are using voice to check the news.
Yes, that is mainstream news sites, but the behaviours can extend smaller, more niche voice “news”, just look at the upward consumption trend of podcasts!
The third option could be building a more interactive voice Artificial Intelligence.
If you look at the other voice tasks consumers utilising, up to 52% of them have some sort of voice Artificial Intelligence!
And the other great thing is, you can always upload a new voice app and overwrite the old one using and still secure the same invocation name.
Stupidly, I started my journey with building voice apps starting with AI and newsletters, but I really should have started squatting and building simple call/responses.
So, you should at least consider voice app as being a place where consumers will be headed more.
If you believe that to be true, you should then consider if you want to play in that space.
If you want to play in that space, you should consider securing an invocation name.
And once you have secured an invocation name, you should consider how you can deliver value, beyond just a Google search, to people who are interested in it and will call or request it:
- A simple call/response;
- A newsletter; and
- An Artificial Intelligence.
