With how quickly trends and behaviors can change in digital marketing, it’s often tempting to jump on the next “big thing.” But a savvy marketer must understand when emerging platforms and strategies are profitable or when they are too premature and risky.

These days, you’ll see many thought leaders championing voice search. Yes, voice search is “sexy.” It, however, hasn’t evolved as quickly as some people contend. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to research the topic or stay current with how it’s progressing.

You need to recognize that change is coming, but you don’t want to chase a shiny object that’s ill-defined and questionably effective.

Any digital marketing agency worth its salt will continue to regularly watch trends like this.

It’s just as important that they do so without sacrificing the strategies that connect your dealerships with how people are shopping now.

While we would love to tout the greatness of voice search, we have to keep our feet on the ground and perfect the strategies that fall within the current scope of what sells products and services.

Let’s take a look at a breakdown of what another industry professional has found.

Will Critchlow of Distilled on Voice Search

Will Critchlow has often been on the right side of digital marketing history. Here are a few of his observations and insights:

• - 75% of voice searches were incremental and not “real” searches.
• - They are things like, “Ok, Google, set a timer for 20 minutes.”
• - There is no intent to discover information or learn anything.
• - They are only searches because you’re Googling them.
•  

A breakdown of “search” volume from Distilled:

300 million: control actions

- Set a time

- Remind you of an event

- Play a song

- Add something to your shopping list

120 million: informational repeated queries

- What’s the weather?

- What’s my commute?

- 30-60 million: Personal requests

- Listen to [X] podcast

- Hear [news from previously listed source]

Our Findings of How Car Shoppers Search

We know that voice search isn’t a current commodity for dealerships. That’s why it’s important to understand how they do conduct searches, which is exactly the data our team analyzed from our nationwide dealer network. We already have an informative blog that details this information, but here’s the gist of it:

95% of car shopper queries consist of five or fewer words.

They are intent-based, looking for direct feedback about a model, make, or dealership. It’s important that you have the content that satisfies these searches and that you’ve streamlined the process for car shoppers to click through to SRPs and VDPs — the less friction, the better.

Let’s continue the conversation. What are your thoughts and feedback regarding voice search and car shopping behaviors?