Holiday Shopping Trend Pop Quiz!
What was the #1 most purchased item during the 2017 holiday season? Smart Speakers.
Whether it’s an Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana or Apple’s Siri, smart speakers are everywhere. So much so in fact, that one in six Americans now has a smart speaker in their home. More specifically, the top two searched industries with smart speakers are medical information & restaurants.
If you weren’t an early adopter of the technology and don’t want a device listening to every conversation, why should you care? If your office, medical practice, business or restaurant listings are not optimized, you are losing business to competition because of voice search. It’s a stark reality.
While people are still skeptical about the public acceptance of intelligent home smart speakers, statistics prove otherwise: 72% of people who own smart speakers say that it has become a part of their daily routine to get location information, play games or be a personal assistant. A game-changer for access to information, multimodal channels again shift the paradigm for how to be found, and at an exponential speed.
Another stark reality? ComSource estimates that 50% of internet searches will be voice searches by 2020. We are just over one year from that projected growth taking over.
Two consumer profiles prove the viability of smart speakers. Millenials are the generation of instant gratification, practically born with a smart phone in hand. Their parents and grandparents are the second part of this equation. Between small screens (relatively speaking), cheater bifocal glasses and trouble hitting small keys, voice search takes the frustration out of search by simply speaking to an artificially intelligent device that can provide answers faster than they could dream of typing.
Could you guess the top four healthcare related questions through voice search?
- Where is the nearest Urgent Care?
- Where is the nearest ER?
- Where is my doctor located?
- Where can I pick up my prescription?
An audit of the healthcare industry’s digital footprint on search found that 80% of healthcare information is incorrect online. Additionally, Google reported its healthcare based voice searches are TRANSACTIONAL and LOCATION based. So where do we land? Somewhere between the wrong directory information, none at all and the hope that it’s correct somewhere on the information superhighway.
At Digital Tulip, we specialize in healthcare marketing, creating a harmony across digital platforms to deliver the best results. This data about voice search bursting into to search volumes came as a wake up call and window into opportunity.
During our research, we discovered that 50% of people who go to urgent care do not have a primary care provider. The opportunity to convert those patients, because they came to you from a voice search, provides a strategic digital marketing opportunity to not only increase patient volumes, but to also capture your specific target market segment with a high rate of return due to ease of access to correct information.
Our advice to our clients? Optimize your content with website and directory listings to compete for top position with correct information across your digital footprint. The playing field for voice search is wide open as paid search opportunities have not yet burst onto the scene.
Other best practices for voice search optimization include an FAQ section on your website calibrated with structured data and monitoring your Google analytics to watch for top search keywords.
To be competitive, learn more about and set up directory listings and website optimizations for your business, contact us today by emailing [email protected] or call 859.327.4242. Stack the deck in your favor, across platforms. It will pay dividends and we’re here to help you grow.
