Using Audio in Marketing

Have you ever listened to a podcast? An online radio station? Used GPS or voice assistants such as Siri or Google Home? If so, you’ve experienced the unique advantage that audio can offer in marketing.

We’ve discussed the importance of optimizing for voice search in today’s increasingly audio-centric marketing world. Podcast listenership in the United States has gone up, despite the disappearance of the namesake iPods themselves. Search assistants, such as Siri, Google Home, and Alexa, help people find what they’re looking for and do it all through the guidance of voice commands. Smart speakers and other wearable technology are audio-enabled as well, so these products are appearing in vehicles and anywhere else you can imagine—they integrate into our lives almost seamlessly.

So what are some ways that you’ll see audio utilized in marketing strategies in 2019? Let’s take a look at a few of the most promising trends that business owners should be aware of.

Voice Search Optimization

Yes, it was so important that we brought it up again! (For tips on optimization, check out our article about it here.) Businesses should be optimizing their pages on Google and Amazon to get a jump on the competition. When people use smart speakers and voice assistants to aid in their search for a specific product, they “converse” with the speakers and utilize common search phrases. The way someone uses voice search is different from how someone types. This is why it’s essential for you to understand how to optimize for both types of queries.

Podcasts

According to a recent Activate Tech & Media Outlook SlideShare presentation, podcasts are projected to reach 112 million people by 2021. How does this matter for a local business? Well, if you want to reach customers in a way your competitors might not be, a podcast can be a great idea. Those who listen to podcasts tend to be responsive to ads and promotions, and they are more likely to consider making a purchase of these products. If you have a lot of advice to offer, stories to tell, or people you enjoy chatting with (and your customers would enjoy listening to you chat with them), then a podcast might be right for you.

Alexa Skills

As mentioned above, these are useful for voice search optimization, as people use voice-activated search devices frequently. However, have you heard of Alexa Skills? You can download skills and apply them to Alexa so that you can access specific types of content—whether you want Alexa to play music, open a trivia app, or read the news to you, there’s likely a skill you can download to make it happen. By putting your own skills out there, customers who use Alexa can speak directly to the smart speaker and interact with your own content. That’s pretty cool.

Audiograms

If you really don’t want to invest the time and effort into some of these audio adventures (admittedly, they do take skill, dedication, and effort), then you might want to try what some marketers call “audiograms.” These are still images with audio applied to them. You can publish them on social media or your website, and people can simply press the play button like they would on any other video to hear the voiceover. Essentially, it’s a video with a still image instead of moving pictures. This saves you the trouble of having to make a professional quality video, but still gives you the benefit of video content with audio quality.

Do you have any other ideas about how to use audio in marketing? Let us know!

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