Claim Your Keywords — Why Brands Should be on Smart Speakers Now

Smart speaker sales have shown aggressive growth recently. A new study by Strategy Analytics shows that nearly 24 million devices have been sold this year, compared to 6 million in 2016. The surge in popularity of voice-first devices, and rapidly improving technology behind them, makes it clear that smart speakers are here to stay.

It’s crucial for brands to build experiences in the voice ecosystem now to reap the dividends later. Here’s why.

Discoverability in Alexa

A great Voice experience is habitual and natural for the user — and the first step in creating a strong experience is to choose a memorable name. On Alexa devices, a name can only be used once, and right now, building a Voice app (or “skill” as Amazon calls it) is the only way for brands to claim their name. Amazon doesn’t sell these, so creating a Voice app now ensures brands are able to obtain the most natural names for their category.

Imagine a food blog or review site wanted to create an app to provide users with restaurant ratings. Names like “Restaurant Ratings” are usually the first to go, which forces brands to adapt their name to something like “Restaurant Ratings by [XYZ brand]”. Not only is the latter less natural to ask for, but it also reminds users that the content they are about to hear is sponsored, potentially decreasing trust.

When a user asks Alexa a simple request — “give me restaurant ratings” or “what’s a recipe for lasagna?” or “play rain sounds” — the keywords restaurant ratings, recipe, and rain sounds represent the most natural potential app names. Instead of using branding in the app name, companies should look to assert themselves tastefully inside the actual Voice experience.

Here’s an example we noticed recently — when searching for rain sounds we came across “Thunderstorm Sounds” and “Tahitian Thunder.” Both of these apps provide soothing storm sounds, but it’s clear that the creators of “Thunderstorm Sounds” were the first as it’s the most memorable and natural name to ask for.

Discoverability in Google Home

Google Home devices operate differently than Amazon in terms of discoverability; Google allows multiple creators to use the same app name, but pulls information from only the most relevant apps. Relevancy is determined through Google’s “special sauce”, so brands can’t hack their way to becoming the top result. They should instead focus on creating an experience that will provide the most value for their listeners — something we’ll get into in one of our upcoming posts.

Conclusion

Smart speakers are still new, so there are plenty of memorable names available. On Alexa-powered devices, building an experience is the only way to claim your keywords and app name. On Google devices, discoverability is determined in part by the quality of the experience. It’s clear that brands that hold back risk losing their keywords and app names to competitors. So our advice is to start now, claim keywords, get feedback, and work out the kinks to build an awesome and habitual experience for your audience.