Research into digital marketing trends for 2025 led to a Forbes Council Post by member and contributor Deepak Bansal, a post dedicated to his thoughts on emerging trends for next year. One of the trends mentioned was a greater emphasis on both voice search and voice commerce.
As a digital marketing agency, we are intimately interested in how people search for products and services. We want to know how people go about shopping. So if using one’s voice is taking the place of typing on a keyboard, we want to know about it. Our research indicates that voice search is here to stay. It would make sense that voice commerce is as well.
The Voice Instead of Typing
It’s hard to know exactly where we stand with voice search adoption because hard data goes no further than 2022. But here are some interesting statistics indicating that voice search and shopping could be as strong today as they have ever been:
- 62% of American adults use voice assistant on some device
- 57% of voice adopters users use it daily
- 35% of American adults own a smart speaker
- 48% of smart speaker owners report having heard ads on their devices
- 53% report they are more likely to respond to smart speaker ads
The data is clear: people are using smart assistants on a variety of devices. And they are doing so on a regular basis. What does this have to do with voice search and shopping? Everything.
Running a Typical Search
Imagine a business owner in Salt Lake City wanting to hook up with a digital marketing agency. He might type ‘digital marketing, Salt Lake City’ into the search bar. But what if he were using voice assistant on a smartphone or smart speaker? He would probably ask a question like, “Where can I find digital marketing near me?“
People speak differently compared to how they type. Research indicates that they are more likely to ask questions when speaking. Not only that, but they also ask questions in a conversational style. In other words, they speak to their phones or smart speakers the same way they would speak to another human being.
A business owner searching for ‘digital marketing near me‘ would literally converse with his phone or smart speaker. Meanwhile, there is no conversation with a computer and a search engine. Most of that interaction is one-sided.
Marketing Must Be Conversational
Heading into 2025, digital marketing agencies would do well to put more emphasis on voice search and shopping. We’re ultimately headed for that point in time when keyboards are no longer used. People will interact with their devices exclusively through voice and listening. So why not get ahead of the game now?
The key to gaining an advantage is making marketing conversational. Doing so starts with understanding the basics of natural language processing (NLP) and its relationship to keywords.
A clear understanding of NLP reveals the importance of longtail keywords and actual questions in search. How do people normally speak? How do they normally converse? That’s how we market in a world slowly being taken over by voice search and shopping.
Figure Out How Your Customers Search
The customers we want to target are searching for things like ‘digital marketing near me’. What types of things are your customers searching for? Once you know that, you can move on to figuring out how they actually search for your products and services.
Assume they will be searching conversationally. Assume they will be using voice search and shopping. Focus on voice and everything else takes care of itself.
