“Siri, show me websites for CNC bed mills”
“Alexa, show me instructions for vibration analysis for my large electric motors”
“OK Google, where can I find a used Falk speed reducer near me”
I am sure you have used voice search to find the “nearest pizza joint”, “fine Italian dining”, or “green outdoor sling chairs”.
Have you tried voice search for your industrial products or services? Go ahead, pull out your smart device and ask about your own industrial products and services.
According to Google’s CEO 20% of all queries from mobile devices are voice activated. According to independent studies, 95% of voice recognition searches are accurate.
Nothing new here that you don’t already know.
The question is, how do I prepare my business for voice search? In three, top-level, strategies here are the basics to ensure your information is available when a new prospect searches for your industrial products, either text or voice search.
STEP ONE: Don’t be tardy to the party.
If you are not familiar with the concept of content marketing, get up-to-speed fast. Because your competitors will be right behind you.
Developing a fresh website that is designed around a great content strategy will be the foundation for showing up in the search engine results page (SERP). As younger prospects become more dependent the web and voice search for sourcing, what you do now will have a tremendous affect on your brand years from now, either negative or positive.
Think long-term.
Assuming my knowledge…guided by 15 years’ experience & research…is accurate most of our industrial friends in the mid-size market are far behind when it comes to executing great content marketing.
So…you will be well on your way to voice search “visibility” if you have started down the content marketing road.
The challenge is…as I have said on hundreds of occasions & peppered my blog site, developing sustainable and quality content is a foreign skill set for most industrial marketers. However, market realities demand that you either hire this done or find an employee that is a content marketing EVANGELIST.
OK…let’s say you have developed a content strategy and you are well on your way to creating a fresh website with content such as blog posts, webinars, white papers, how-to guides, etc.
Congratulations, because you are way ahead of your competitors.
Now, for STEP TWO.
If you have taken the time to develop a content strategy and have started to execute that strategy by either rebuilding your current site or building a new site from the ground up, take some extra time and learn about Schema Markup. Schema Markup is a specific way to “tag” your data so that search engines can easily find your data. Schema Markup are specific HTML tags developed by every major search engine company in America that helps them find information about your products.
Most web developers will know how to do this. If they are not aware of Schema Markup they can easily learn. As owner or market guru you should demand that ALL your products are enhanced by Schema Markup. This ensures that the voice recognition component of the search will recognize your products quicker and give your industrial company a decided advantage.
STEP THREE is similar to Step Two…simply an enhancement to your HTML code on each product page.
To explain…have you noticed when you search for certain answers in Google, many times a box, table, bulleted list,etc. pops up that makes you say, “That was easy. That is exactly what I was looking for. How did they do that?”
Again, thank Google and “featured snippets” for “organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful”. (i.e. Google’s Mission Statement)
Marketing data from many resources tell us that the click-through rate (CTR) for featured snippets is substantially better than the typical first position in the search engine return page.
Now…before you get to excited you do need to be in the top 10 positions of Google’s return page. If you have developed STEP ONE, then many of your products should be available for featured snippet royalty…that is, in the one of the top ten positions.
With the lack of content saturation by most mid-size industrial companies, I don’t believe it will be that difficult to grab the featured snippet position, resulting in lots of brand exposure and lead generation. Basically, your web developer will have to do the following to grab that featured snippet top-spot.
The industrial marketer that follows the three steps outlined above, in my opinion, will build a digital moat around his business for sustainable top-of-mind awareness, lead generation and sales.
OK…now pull out your smart device and do a voice search for industrial for your company’s products.
Or…give me a call at 269-3745-0349
For more info on what The Repp Group can do for your industrial marketing & lead generation…CLICK BELOW