Best Of SEJ Summit: Duane Forrester on the Future of Voice Search

PRESENTED TO: PRESENTED BY:DATE:

Duane Forrester
VP, Industry Insights | Yext
Your Presenter

Agenda
• The current voice landscape
• Successful optimization
• Components of a voice optimization strategy
• Google Actions and Amazon Alexa Skills
• Voice Search Check List for success

The current voice search landscape
• There is no paid option in voice today
• No one really has a lead as it’s so new
• Not much sexy here other than the interface – the work is already known
• The age of shortcuts ended several years ago
• Building for voice search and building Actions and Skills are very different activities
• Branding now must include a persona for your business
• Success comes from a combined investment across areas

Voice is another touchpoint of the customer journey

What does it mean to optimize your brand
for voice search?
Can help rank higher in SERP
Improve brand engagement & recognition
Improve customer experience

A successful voice optimization strategy includes:
• Understanding your customer deeply
• Preparing content
• Preparing technically
• Developing Actions & Skills
• Developing a persona for your business

Preparing Content
“Hey Alexa,
let’s chat…”
• Adopt a long tail/conversational phrase approach when producing content
• Keep the actual answers short
• Content should read like a conversation

• Build out answers to common and uncommon questions
• Think of the customer as they try to solve the problem
● How does this product or service ﬁt into their life?
● What beneﬁts does the customer receive?
● Anything else they should be aware of?
• Look for opportunities to be more useful and helpful than your competitors
Content should be useful and thoughtful
“Alexa, is that sweater true to size?”

Understand the technical aspects of voice
• Spatial locations: Knowing a person’s location
deepens contextual understanding - even inside
a room
• Disambiguation of phrases: Understanding
and differentiating between slight phrasing
difference enhances accuracy of answers
• Utterance: what a human being says
• Intent: what a human actual means when they
say something

Preparing technically: Structured data
• Implementing structured data is no longer optional
• We’re starting to see Google build Actions for
Google Assistant
• Auto-build voice action areas at Google:
● Podcasts
● Recipes
● News

Preparing technically: Speed matters
“A one second delay in mobile load times can
impact mobile conversions by
MORE THAN 20%”
– Think With Google

Preparing technically: Be secure
“If people have a negative experience with
you on mobile, they are
62% LESS LIKELY
to purchase from you in the future.”
– Think With Google
• Being secure requires technical and detailed work
• Search engines are looking at websites that are secure

Preparing technically:
Be trustworthy and authoritative
• Keep your website up-to-date; manage your basic SEO
• Connect the dots between your site and official social media accounts
• Engage with customers in a meaningful way on social media accounts

Developing Actions and Skills for your brand
Alexa Skill example:
Google Action example:
“Hey Google, talk to the Wall Street Journal”, which reads news
snippets from the source mentioned.
Actions (Google) and Skills (Amazon Alexa) are programs you build in each
ecosystem that enable you to create a curated space where your data is available for
customers. The customer accesses your Action or Skill and asks questions which the
system (powered by Google or Amazon) answers with your data.
"Hey Alexa, open Ambient Sounds: Thunderstorm Sounds”"

Analyze user feedback
& optimize skill
Innovate for
Customers
What’s Your Core
Functionality?
Trafﬁc Skill Example
Give an estimated time of
arrival from home to work
Craw
l Expand Capabilities
& Features
Include accidents, construction
and closures on route
Walk
Evolve over Time
Proactively alert user to
delays and provide
alternate routes
Run
1 2 3

Build a broad voice footprint for your brand
What does this mean for your brand?
• How does this impact existing customers &
the acquisition of new customers?
• Alexa becomes another touchpoint for your
brand to support customers
• Build your voice footprint to increase brand
interactions, awareness and perception

Personas
One of the most critical areas of investment in Voice
Developing a brand persona:
• What has our brand always been about?
• What have we done over the past 10 years?
• If we were a person, who would we be?
• Don’t want to upset customers, but need to be unique
and engaging
3 types of Personas today:
• Customer personas
• Business personas
• AI persona
“Alexa, Google, Microsoft and
Apple have invested a lot in
building unique personas for their
digital assistants for a reason.”

Checklist: Optimize your brand for voice search
• Create content in a conversational manner
• Implement structured data
• Be mobile friendly
• Be secure
• Build with page speed in mind
• Manage ratings and reviews proactively
• Manage your overall data footprint
• Build a unique persona
What The Systems Listen For:
• Information Satisfaction
• Length
• Formulation
• Elocution

Next steps for voice assistants
AI will get to know your digital self and eventually, it will know:
• What NOT to expose you to
• The WAY you want information conveyed to you
• HOW you want information explained
Humans are an emotional species.
Eventually, AI will get to the point where they will be able to sense changes in mood
Seamless interactions
Doesn’t matter the device or manufacturer, your assistant can work with all to execute your
command

There are no shortcuts to success in Voice Search.
Data integrity, cleanliness and deployment
matter more than ever.

Best Of SEJ Summit: Duane Forrester on the Future of Voice Search

Best Of SEJ Summit: Duane Forrester on the Future of Voice Search

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Best Of SEJ Summit: Duane Forrester on the Future of Voice Search