It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time when asking your phone “Siri, where’s the nearest Starbucks?” wouldn’t get you anything other than disbelieving stares, and a dial-tone as a response from your phone.
How times have changed! Nowadays you can find the nearest coffee shop, navigate to it, and walk out with your Pumpkin Spice Frappucino (hey, it’s fall, we don’t judge) while barely looking at your phone’s screen.
It’s a growing share of search marketing as well: according to eMarketer, 35 million people used voice search at least once a month in 2016, and it’s projected to grow in 2017 to over 70 million.
So why isn’t every legal firm isn’t going full steam ahead into marketing for voice search and digital assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa? Optimizing for voice search and digital assistant technology definitely has its advantages for some businesses, but it may not be a magical method of getting potential claimants to become new clients.
What’s the Deal With Voice Search?
The major advantage of voice search is that there are no competing entries for your prospective client’s consideration, where in a traditional search engine results page, you’d be competing with paid ads and organic search results.
Let’s say you’re a Social Security disability attorney in California, and you own the domain “californiadisability.info.” If a potential Social Security claimant uses voice search to ask, “When can I file a claim for disability in California,” it’s possible that voice search will return something along the lines of:
“According to californiadisability.info, you can file a claim for disability if your condition is severe enough to leave you out of work for a year or more.”
What could be better for a lawyer looking to drive traffic to their website? When someone finds answers from voice search for that query, you get visitors who have some interest in the disability application process, if not an intent to apply.
Depending on your area of law, voice search may not yield much traffic to your website. Older demographics, namely Gen X and Baby Boomers, use digital assistants for voice search at a far lower rate than Millennials, according to eMarketer.
Where 23.3 million Millennials used a digital assistant in 2016, only 13.4 million Gen X users and 8.6 million Baby Boomers did, and that gap is projected to widen, with nearly 40 million Millennials predicted to use digital assistant technology by 2019 as compared to a modest increase to 17.2 million Gen-X users and 10.1 million Baby Boomers adopting the technology in the same time frame.
Is Optimizing for Voice Search Enough?
Social Security disability firms in particular may not want to bother with voice search optimization at all. Given that older claimants are more desirable for disability firms due to a higher likelihood of approval, it follows that a disability firm’s marketing efforts would be focused on pursuing older clients.
Statistically speaking, voice search has not taken off with older demographics.
In this way, voice search may not be a major pillar of a long-term marketing strategy for all attorneys. This doesn’t mean it’s not a useful avenue for finding clients in other practice areas–People of all ages can have a pursuable personal injury or workers’ compensation claim.
Regardless of your area of law, relying on just search marketing may not give your firm the competitive edge it needs. If you’re looking to sign more cases quickly, it may be a good idea to supplement your own marketing efforts with high-quality leads from eGenerationMarketing.
Whether it’s Social Security disability, personal injury, workers’ comp, or employment law, we focus on providing the highest-quality leads to help grow your firm’s caseload.
*Numbers taken from: https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Alexa-Say-What-Voice-Enabled-Speaker-Usage-Grow-Nearly-130-This-Year/1015812