Yes, I went there! I had to go all the way back to 1998 to
remind you about that weird, quirky site that introduced us all to the idea of “Search”.
Way back in the less inquisitive 90’s when the insatiable thirst for instant information
of encyclopedic proportions was in its infancy, Ask Jeeves was my first
love.
Why, you ask? Well, as a teenager, waiting to start college,
I had to keep busy, so I took up a job at a family-owned computer company and moonlighted
as a computer teacher, showing my 50-something year-old uncle how to use his
new super-desktop for something other than writing emails. We always ended up
on Ask
Jeeves when his questions stumped me or I couldn’t find the right
description for a clip art or needed to find some interesting tit-bit to keep
him entertained (his attention span was/is worse than mine). God bless all
teachers!
But I digress…..where was I? Ah, Ask Jeeves! In 1998, Ask
Jeeves was to me, what Google Search was in 2015……enter Siri,
with my first iPhone (yes, I am a late, late, late adopter who did not feel the
need to get out of bed at 1 am to camp out in the streets for 24hrs to buy a
phone – my trusty, Blackberry worked just fine, thank you – still miss you,
buddy). Since Siri, the world has now also been introduced to Echo
(2016, I think) and only heaven knows what next! Well, maybe not heaven, more
like Silicon Valley knows what next.
So, what has changed in the world of search? (I keep
resisting the urge to write “googling” every time I use the word search). The
most symbolic shift in search has been the shift to voice search driven
primarily by the shift in focus to dynamic (read, mobile) search on
smartphones, vs. the laptop, which itself has been as a result of the shift
from laptops to smartphones, which has been a result of a shift in strategy
from placing a laptop or iPad in every arm to an equally powerful smartphone in
every palm (up next, the “smartthing” that fits around your middle finger – not
to stop you from using it as a demonstration of frustration to the other
driver, but maybe to use as a microphone when searching for your destination
while navigating tourists in NYC)! Which in turn…..oh wait, never mind, I am
out of which-in turns.
Ok, where was I again….yes, Siri, Echo,
etc. In today’s world of digital marketing, the marketer (be it the in-house brain
trust of corporations like P&G or Mars – congrats on your new jobs and job
titles - or the Ad Agency smarty-pants at Ogilvy) have a new and interesting
challenge. That challenge centers around how to effectively deploy the current digital
marketing strategies used in computers, on voice-driven search with the same
level of sophistication and measurability of effectiveness. In other words, how
do you track, target, measure and interpret useful results from voice-based
search advertising associated with Siri and Echo?
To get to that answer, I think there is still a lot of work
to do. The voice-based search market still needs to refine the technology, for
starters. Then the marketing folks and IT folks, need to get together on a
retreat in the mountains somewhere to figure out how to ensure that the
technology works with the natural human pattern of speech and search thought
process (good luck folks, we are counting on you for this phase of the journey).
Most importantly, however, is the need to understand how to embed ads, and ad
metrics into the result, tracking/measurement and data analytics process.
Without a mouse or mousepad to measure a click on a link, it becomes a bit
fuzzier to measure click-through rates, costs-per-click or derive pay-per-click
rates. How are we ever going to then determine a customer acquisition cost
without knowing our marketing cost per customer (or is it
cost-per-action/acquisition? I forget).
What Happens to
Digital Marketing Trends in the Era of Voice Search?
While I am sure the geniuses in Silicon Valley have figured out
how this is all going to play-out for the marketing and finance department at
Google, Amazon (and in last place, Microsoft), my very smart professor of
marketing at Columbia and his equally brilliant TA (yes, I am totally and
shamelessly sucking up for grade favor here), have not imparted that secret wisdom
onto me just yet. As an honorary millennial (when you have one in the family,
that entitled thing eventually infects you too) I demand to be spoon-fed the
answer to this conundrum about solving digital marketing trends in the era of voice
search.
My sense is that the only way to track this will
be through a tracking of the eventual action of the voice-behind-the-search.
Did I end up ordering that pizza after I asked Siri or Echo for the nearest
pizza place? If I did, then that becomes my conversion and maybe we can somehow
claim a conversion rate off that process? Who knows. As I said earlier, this
quasi-millennial would appreciate thoughts on this…..That’s all folks!
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