Brands need a voice search strategy in India | WARC | The Feed

Brands need a voice search strategy in India

With the number of voice search queries increasing rapidly across the country and Google expanding this function to cover more Indian languages and dialects, brands need to think seriously about developing a voice search strategy.

The numbers

• The adoption of voice search in India is twice the world average.
• A recent study concluded that the number of voice searches just on Google increased 78% from 2021 to 2022. 
• Last month, Google linked up with the Indian Institute of Science for Project Vaani to collect and analyse voice samples to train its voice search.
• Ultimately, this project aims to include any language spoken by at least 100,000 people.

The audiences 

• Observers see a trend of semi-educated audiences with writing and reading limitations leveraging Google search using voice, and then relying on the position zero result Google narrates to them.
• Gen Z also makes widespread use of voice, whether sending messages or searching online; elderly consumers also find it easier to use voice than to type.
• Regions that are more remote and/or have had less online penetration are leapfrogging straight to voice. 

The response 

• People searching by voice tend to use a more conversational tone, so marketers devising a voice search strategy need to think about phrases rather than keywords.
• “Featured snippets, which take priority and are read out during the voice search, are the most important real estate,” says Nakul Dutt, National Strategy Director, FoxyMoron, Zoo Media. That makes website content hugely important.
• Simplifying the user experience can attract more customers: Starbucks’ voice-activated ordering system and KFC’s voice-based chatbot, which explains menu items and offers, are examples of this.
• Consider how voice search results could align with the local information a Google search pulls up.

Key quote

“I should not learn how to interact with technology. Rather, technology should learn how I like to interact” – Puneesh Kumar, general manager of search at Google India. 

Sourced from Economic Times, Business World, e4m