The explosion of voice search. An upsurge in podcasting. The emergence of chatbots. Many pundits saw 2017 as the year of voice in marketing. And that shows no signs of abating in 2018.
With audio becoming a key component of the digital marketing mix, brand marketers will need to stay on top of the trends taking place in voice markets. Each year, Voices.com, a global online marketplace for voiceover talent, identifies what’s been happening in audio, based on insights from its internal data and input from nearly a thousand creative professionals. Here are the key findings from its 2018 Trends Report.
Approachable experts
Marketers want an “approachable expert” to represent their brands with target demographics, driven by the selection of authentic and “just like me” voice actors. This approach relies on a voice that sounds like a friendly, confident peer of the target audience. Marketers want to increase audience trust in their brands, with 92 percent of respondents indicating creating “emotional connection” is their number one consideration when selecting voice talent.
The accent on global
The world is getting smaller and advertisers want voices that sound like their audiences. Demand for languages and specific accents grew, as marketers want to create more relatable and engaging connections to audiences. Demand for non-English speaking voices grew 60 percent year-over-year. The most in-demand non-English voices were Latin American Spanish, Spanish (no dialect specified), and German. Voices.com predicts that in 2018, requests for English with accents will continue to rise.
Youth is served
No surprise here. Marketers are hyperfocused on millennials. But Gen X is an even bigger market. Respondents said 39 percent of their efforts were focused on millennial audiences and 54 percent on Gen X. Meaningfully, 78 percent also said they choose voiceover actors who sound the same age as their target audience. Voices.com predicts the requests for senior voices to continue to grow in 2018, but won’t come close to demand for these two generations.
Forget robots
Open the podcast doors Hal? Not yet. Natural, human-recorded voices are preferred over artificial or synthetic voice. While robots might be taking over other industries, voiceover jobs aren’t going away any time soon; 93 percent of respondents say human voices are more powerful than computer-generated ones.
The future is female
Postings calling for female voices grew by 24 percent, while those for males increased just 16 percent. This is a trend that has been tracking for the last four years. At this rate, the number of job postings for female voices will exceed that of males by 2025.
