Author’s note: before you start reading, I suggest you press play above to have the experience of listening to this audio post, which is precisely one of the most successful Audio Marketing methodologies and one that is encouraged by Google.
If there’s one thing that everyone would like to have more of, it’s time.
Our time is so limited that we don’t have enough of it to watch, listen or read everything that we would like to.
Since we are faced with so many types of content available on the internet, creating practical and accessible ways to consume them has become a necessity for companies.
Audio Marketing is a sustainable strategy that emerges to supply this need for quick and practical consumption of information that interests the user.
Podcasts, audio posts, audiobooks, traditional radio, Skype and the traditional phone call are different audio content formats that are naturally integrated in companies’ Content Marketing strategies.
A 2020 report found that 43% of the 13+ U.S. population listen daily to audio content, which includes podcasts, news, sports, talk radio and audiobooks.
To better understand how Audio Marketing has been consolidating itself in the current Marketing scenario, continue reading this article.
The power of the human voice
Automating actions has always been a goal of developers and a dream for consumers who just wanted to use voice commands and see everything happen.
And that future has come faster than expected.
Audible, Amazon’s audiobook platform, is super consolidated in the United States market.
Alexa is another tool developed by Amazon. The system was created to operate on the smart speakers of the brand’s Echo line and works as an intelligent virtual assistant with the ability to:
- offer voice controls;
- play musics;
- make task lists;
- configure alarms;
- integrate applications;
- provide information on traffic, temperature, etc;
- control connected systems and devices.
Other companies like Google – with the Google Home system – and Apple – with their Apple HomePod – are also options in the market for intelligent speakers with voice controls.
And it is not only in the USA that this type of technology is becoming more popular. According to a study published by PwC, more than half of Brazilian and Chinese consumers would be interested in buying some type of smart speaker like Google Home or Amazon Echo and around a quarter US, France and UK consumers would also be interested in it.
The voice also gained prominence in the digital market, used as a commercial resource.
Lots of news websites already have robotic narration resources in their publications. But you may not have noticed this feature on these sites yet, as robotic narration is not so attractive.
Robotic narration is good for services like Waze or Google Maps, but it’s not pleasant to hear an article for a few minutes. The technology is evolving, but it is still a long way from having variations of diction, intonation, emotion, etc.
And that is why many other news websites already invest in human narrations for their prime content.
Podcasts have also proven to be an excellent format for advertising purposes. According to data from the Apple Podcast Analytics report, listeners consume an average of 90% of the length of the episodes and few are the ones who skip the infomercials. Moreover, according to the study, it is a highly loyal audience.
Time and Audio Posts
Who doesn’t want to have more time? However, the catch is not just quantity, but quality.
We went to the streets and found that 83% of people don’t read everything they would like to on the internet. After all, the amount of content available is huge.
Companies that are investing in Audio Marketing are already managing to improve the engagement of readers.
Rock Content, for example, increased their blog average time on page by 10% with the introduction of audio players in their blog posts – some articles saw a 43% increase in engagement time. With rich content that requires user attention, the company’s materials serve as a source of study for many people. And audio helps to optimize the learning dynamics and the user experience.
Check out what one of Rock Content’s main Content Marketing and SEO specialists have to say about this audio post strategy:
“The result was impressive, in addition to helping to increase our Time on Page (one of the main SEO factors), the value it generated with our audience was very relevant. We received countless incredible feedbacks that proved the value of having the audio version on our blog. ”
Advantages of applying the Audio Marketing strategy in your blog
Generating more leads
If your goal is to generate more leads, an Audio Marketing strategy is an excellent way to step away from the common strategies (forms, landing pages, pop-ups), using an innovative way to capture your visitors’ attention and contact information.
RD Station invested in Audio Marketing to achieve its goal of generating leads. The company implemented audio posts on their blog articles and increased the lead generation of the blog by more than 21%.
But, of course, you need the right technology to achieve this kind of results. The technology in case is an exclusive audio player from VOOOZER. The player itself has a form field that is shown when the visitor clicks on play. The user then must fill in their email to allow access to the narration of the post.
“At RD Station we use (Audio Marketing) in two ways: in the narration of posts and in audiobooks. In addition to improving the user experience, giving them a new option to consume the content, we are also generating many Leads with the strategy. ” – Flaubi Farias, Head of Content at RD Station.
After achieving great results with this methodology, they also tried providing the audio posts without the gateway email.
They did a multivariate analysis and found out that if the audios were offered without the email gateway, the higher number of people listening to the content would more than compensate for the fact that no email was filled in the player, since people who listened to the content would simply convert in other forms in the blog.
In other words, the great experience provided by the audio would engage people with the blog, making them interested in getting more content from RD Station, hence, filling in other forms to unlock other contents.
Improving user experience
The main feedback that users give regarding audio posts is the ease of consuming the content.
The audio allows the audience to listen anywhere and during other activities. That’s why, according to the report that we quoted, 43% of the 13+ U.S. population listen daily to audio content.
And companies that provide the additional consumption experience via audio posts take the lead. It’s simple math: if you provide content in text + audio you will get more engagement and results than if you would only provide the text version of your content.
More engagement with the content
Agendor invested in Audio Marketing to bring more digital engagement to their target audience and also to facilitate the use of content by their own team.
As Fernanda Balieiro, Content Marketing Analyst at Agendor, tells us.
“Audio Marketing arrived at the most opportune moment for us, when we were raising information about what would be the best material formats for our customers and blog visitors to consume content.”
And she carries on:
“The routine of sales professionals (our audience) is very dynamic, always commuting, on the road or on a visit. So it is very common that they don’t get time to catch up on reading. When we started our audio strategy with VOOOZER, we had:
- access to different narrators;
- possibility to request editions in the narrations;
- approval of each recording;
- insertion of the player embed code on the post page, directly on the blog.
Everything is very simple! After that, we started to receive extremely positive returns, which motivated us to invest in new actions, such as special audio content, in addition to audiobooks. What are the results of all this? An increasingly engaged and informed base on our scenario. ”
Attracting readers’ attention
One of the great enemies of reading is the constant distractions. And the audio catches the readers’ attention on the task being performed.
Data from VOOOZER’s audio platform showed that when a person starts listening to an audio post, in 33% of the cases people hear the entire content. On average, audio engages visitors for 40% to 60% of their length time
Listening while doing other things
Another advantage that the Audio Marketing strategy brings is the fact that it makes people gain time by performing simultaneous activities.
Some real life examples are people who listen to content while driving, cooking, walking, tiding up their homes and even while practicing physical activities.
To recap
The Audio Marketing strategy reinforces the Content Marketing strategy:
- Helping those who have difficulty reading;
- Engaging people who don’t have time to read;
- Increasing the average time on page and strengthening SEO
- Bringing the brand and the audience closer to each other;
- Allowing the consumption of content simultaneously with other activities, such as driving and working;
- Making the content more humane;
- Generating leads.
Innovating is part of every marketing professional. You have to constantly reinvent yourself for the whole funnel of your company to work properly and reach your goals at the end of the month!
For this reason, the Audio Marketing strategy is one of the strategies that is here to stay and cannot stay out of your planning. It is easy to implement this initiative through VOOOZER, as it does not involve other specialists such as programmers, designers or copywriters and it has an excellent cost benefit. So it is something that is worth experimenting and including in your innovative actions as soon as possible, since it’s wise to invest in strategies that are solid and underrated
Companies that are a reference in Content Marketing, such as Rock Content and RD Station, are already investing in VOOOZER to increase the engagement of their blogs and achieve their Inbound goals.
To achieve greater results with your blog and raise the level of results of your Content and Inbound Marketing strategies, get in touch with our Audio Marketing experts.
