Commentary

172 Million Wrist Wearables Prime For Voice Searching

According to a new report from Chief Marketer, posted by Irv Shapiro, most businesses have no viable marketing strategy for wearable technology. Not unusual, says the report, as the year after the iPhone made its debut, no one had a marketing strategy for mobile either.

However, a forecast by CCS Insight estimates sales of wearables will reach 172 million units in three years, which is significant enough for marketers to take notice, concludes the report. Though wearable technology is in its infancy, there are still lessons marketers can glean from the growing pains of mobile marketing to begin to build a framework for how to leverage wearables.

Consider search, says the report, as Smartphones and tablets have come to dominate search suggesting the possibilities of what search marketing on wearables could one day become. Wearable technology has all the convenience and immediacy of mobile and more. It is on your wrist, in plain sight, making their case 24/7 to be the device of choice to run a quick search for the closest pharmacy or pizza shop.

The report suggests that, when crafting a marketing strategy for wearable search, these four tips are paramount:

  • Wearables are “hands-free” devices, since there’s no room for a keyboard, and all searches are voice searches. According to a study by Mizuho Securities, currently 7% of searches on smartphones are voice searches, where consumers speak commands to virtual assistants such as Siri or Google. To tap into this market, it will be important that marketers optimize local SEO and paid search programs for long-tail keywords that are more in-line with how people talk when they search.
  • Because wearable searches are hands-free voice searches, and because many wearables are also phones, calls are the natural conversion path for wearable advertising. People searching for local businesses on their watches, for example, will engage the business by calling, just as they do now with smartphone searches. Measuring these calls and tying them back to searches and ads will be one of the two most important ways marketers will measure return on ad spend from wearables, with in-store visits and purchases being the other.
  • Callers will expect a personalized call experience when calling on wearables, says the report. They will be your most impatient caller, and will hang up quickly if kept on hold or forced to interact with a lengthy and multi-layered interactive voice response (IVR) phone menu. Callers should be routed to the most relevant agent, store, dealership, or call center right away based on where that caller is located.
  • Beacons, alerts that pop up on the wearable when physically close to or inside a business, are the other big advertising channel for targeting wearables, says the report. , Beacons should be more effective on wearables than on smartphones because it’s on your wrist and within easy view all the time, not hidden in a pocket. Marketers will be able to combine beacon technology with search to show alerts based on past searches.

Ultimately, says the report, consumer adoption and technological innovation will determine if wearables are the next battlefield for marketers. Irv Shapiro, CEO of DialogTech, suggests that wearables will be the next smartphone and dominate marketing in the decade to come, and the sooner marketing begins to formulate a strategy, the more likely it will win.

For additional information from Chief Marketer, please visit here.

 

1 comment about "172 Million Wrist Wearables Prime For Voice Searching".
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  1. Michael Elling from IVP Capital, LLC, February 3, 2016 at 6:55 a.m.

    Funny, but the more things change the more they seem to be the same.  How many online companies have robust CRM and call attendant systems for this time of "old" interactivity?

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