Voice Technology and Rural Marketing - A Match Made in Heaven?

After his breakfast every morning, retired government servant Sundarlal Jain settles down in one corner of his home on the outskirts of Jaipur and starts conversing with a friend. With a substantial amount of investments made in diversified equities, he asks his friend about various movements in his portfolio. He then starts planning his trading strategy for the day.

A few hundred kilometers up north, Jaswinder Singh, a farmer, in a village near Amritsar, asks a couple of questions about the latest prices of wheat and soybean at the mandi and how high is it likely to open today.

While their professions, locations, and their questions have nothing in common, they have a common friend! No, it is not a new advisory start-up, but it is the voice assistant from Google.

While these are just two examples, a host of Indians across rural India are taking to voice marketing like a fish takes to water. They find it easier, faster, and also better at communicating rather than typing the entire thing. Also, they get to listen to the answer rather than clicking on the link and then reading it.

Welcome to the ‘IN’ thing – Voice Technology!?

From a simple technology called 'Shoebox' developed by IBM way back in 1961, Voice recognition technology has come a long way. Back then, it could understand a set of about 16 words and digits. But today, the technology in voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa can converse with you just like your human friend.?

Nokia failed to understand the power of touch and was relegated to history. Having learnt from this blunder and understood that the next disrupter was voice, most technology companies today have made voice, one of their greatest weapons for growth.

So, what exactly is Voice Technology and how does it benefit the world, especially rural India?

Simply put, your internet-connected smartphone can be used as a virtual assistant to get answers to almost every query on your mind. And the best part is typing a query has become such a passé, speaking is chic!

Before we delve deep into understanding why voice technology has become such a hit in rural India, let us look at some case studies in India which have understood the power of Voice Marketing and are using it to the fullest.

Let’s look at some Indian examples where brands have started using VM effectively:

●?????KFC allows users to place their orders through Alexa from the convenience of their homes

●?????Many small shops and retail outlets today have a Paytm speaker that announces the receipt of customer payments

●?????Through their Google Assistant, customers can chat with the Tata Altroz bot to know details of the car features and even book a test drive

●?????Kotak Mahindra Bank has voice automated its customer care number. All you need to do is say your query and the bot reverts with a relevant answer. Only after multiple failures, will the call be diverted to a human attendant.

Voice Marketing has many advantages from the user’s perspective:

●?????It is a novelty factor for new smartphone users, which are coming in majorly from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities

●?????Voice offers convenience. Instead of typing in the search bar, all the user has to do now is to utter the golden words!?

●?????Voice allows the users to communicate their ideas better thus helping the engine to fine-tune the results

●?????Today, voice search is available in vernacular too! Users simply have to speak in the language they know instead of speak or type in English. This makes the search simpler, faster and very convenient to the user.

●?????Voice search is hands-free. Hence the user can continue doing the task at hand like driving, cooking, cleaning, or simply lazing around, instead of physically lifting the phone and typing the query.

Advantages from the rural marketer’s perspective:

●?????Though it may be short-lived, VM helps the brand get an early mover advantage vis-à-vis those who haven’t moved on it yet

●?????Since most voice queries are relatively longer than the typed ones, it allows markets to include long-tail keywords/phrases, thus sharpening their SEO strategy

●?????By including long-tail keywords/phrases, brands can get the best out of their budgets by optimising their spending between the short-tail and long-tail keywords/phrases

●?????Voice Marketing works seamlessly across devices. For instance, users can use Siri or Google Assistant from their smartphones, Microsoft Cortana on their laptops or Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant from their home/office to make a query.?

?The opportunity

80% of Indians are?expected?to own a smartphone with an active connection by 2022!?But the real surprise comes from rural India.?Studies?conducted show that while YOY growth of smartphones during the period 2015-2018 in urban areas was languishing at a mere 7%, the same in rural India was galloping at 35%.

This clearly indicates that rural India is taking to the smartphone with a vengeance!

So, why is this a match made in heaven?

Let’s face it, Voice Marketing has untapped potential. Hence, marketers need to keep a few things in mind.

●?????Voice will trump type, eventually

Since the rural literacy rate may not grow as fast as the smartphone penetration rate, the bulk of search will now shift to voice instead of typing

●?????Go vernacular

Depending upon their customer concentration, brands must turn their digital assets into vernacular. This will open the floodgates for non-English customers to interact with the brand.

●?????Focus on long-tail keywords/phrases

Besides the short-tailed keywords/phrases, increase your focus on long-tail too. This will not only help you spend wisely but will also give you the advantage of optimising the spending on relevant keywords/phrases.?

●?????Include more local keywords

For instance, “where can I get fertiliser in Solapur’ will work better than simply “where can I get fertiliser”

●?????Use local words and conversational language

Instead of creating content in textbook language, use the words that your audience is likely to use in daily life because they are going to utter exactly those words while doing their voice search and not the textbook ones

●?????Become mobile-first

The smartphone will be the preferred device to access the internet. Hence it is advisable to make all your digital assets compatible with the mobile-first philosophy.

●?????Work on loading times

The problem with smartphones is that the attention span of people is falling. This effectively means that a slow loading website or a digital asset will invariably lose out to the fast loading ones. So, optimise your digital asset for faster loading.

India, especially rural India, is currently undergoing a technology-led disruption. It is quite possible that rural India may even lead urban India when it comes to the adoption of voice technology. No matter what happens, one thing is for sure - Voice Marketing is here to stay and brands who do not include it in their scheme of things will lose big-time!?

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