Smart Speakers Are in 40 Million Homes
Alexa, what is the biggest trend in marketing? You don’t really need to ask Alexa. The trend taking center stage is voice search.
Voice search is like magic. You ask a speaker to play a song, and it plays your song. You want the lights dimmed? You just ask in the air, and they dim. You want to order sushi from your favorite restaurant? Done and done.
If you are going to join the cohort of people ready to be voice activists, you need to think of your content differently. You need to create content that answers a question or solves a problem. It is estimated that 50% of all searches will be voice searches by the year 2020. So preparing for voice marketing muscle memory is not far off.
This is not like the latest social media craze. This is learning and then optimizing to a new medium. It’s just like taking your message and distilling it down to fewer than eight words for a billboard (including your logo words).
An important thing to know is that people ask queries for voice media differently than they type queries into a phone. Voice queries tend to be longer and ask who, what and where. The voice queries are more conversational and personal. For now, make sure your SEO is optimized and updated and begin thinking about how this voice sea change is going to disrupt the art of search. Google Assistant received 70 percent of queries in natural language, just like users would ask a question of a person.
That means your content should be more personal and conversational.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.