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No one wants to leave the effect of your voice to chance. Choosing the voice pitch, positive or negative intonation allows us to either win people over or push them away. Voice is not only a sound - it can become a useful instrument in our daily life, in business and, of course, in marketing. Have you ever watched a video where the speaker with positive intonation motivated you to buy something or make you interested in something you didn't think about before?
You may use your voice every day and still don't recognise its full potential. For example, speaking too fast makes listeners confused. Too slow speech, in contrast, makes listeners pretty bored. Speaking too loud can make listeners angry and unfocused, but if you speak quietly you will notice how others become more focused on what you are trying to say.
In terms of voice technology and its uses in business, it has become the most disruptive force that hitted the world over the last few years since the internet became a visual medium. Based on recent research, over 20% of all searches are now voice-led. Experts predict that over 50% of global consumers having access to the internet will use voice-activated technology daily in 2023.
Using voice wisely in your daily communications, business, or marketing has also become a trend. Now people know that voice can make a difference in even the most outdated and rigid processes. As a result, small medium and biggest companies are now creating their brand books with the tone of voice as the main aspect.
With so much information about voice and its effect on daily life and business, what "voice" we mean here? And how exactly our voice is used by companies and people to translate their message to the world? Let's explore.
What is the Effect of Natural Voice?
Natural voice means the voice we use when we relax, get angry or speak about things we like. Natural voice conveys mood and emotions, allowing others to get more ideas about our feelings and thoughts. Think about someone speaking about their true love or mothers speaking about their kids. Can it be compared to a CEO describing the tasks for the team during meetings or presentations? No. Natural voice is what we are born with rather than a voice we develop based on the situation and our position at a specific moment.
Let's Move to Vocals & Their Effect
These studies show that the voice we use can greatly impact our impressions. While most may think that words are what matters, voice is the first thing people pay attention to. Depending on the key goal, voice has the power to awaken the senses, close deals, motivate employees, get what you want or land us successful job interviews.
Simply put, vocals impact our life much more than we think, both personally and professionally. Wisely using vocals also helps people become more attractive and charismatic.
Vocalics are mainly divided into three linguistic elements: stress (volume), intonation (rising and falling), and rhythm (pacing). Experts found out that combining vocals techniques with public speaking skills, which is also known as a powerful speaking style, colours what we want with the proper meaning and emotion. It helps to motivate listeners.
What Voice Pitch Means?
Voice pitch (simply say its "highness" or "lowness") is an expression of physiology instead of psychology. Sounds we hear and make are the result of minute fluctuations in air pressure. Sounds of speech are the result of patterned fluctuations that are created when we force air through the vocal tract.
The airflow is also affected by the vibration of the vocal folds (also known as vocal cords) in our larynx. The pitch simply means the speech frequency range at which the vocal folds are vibrating.
You can think of the mechanism guitar strings have. When strings are thicker and longer, they vibrate slowly and produce a lower-pitched voice. In contrast, shorter and thinner strings vibrate faster, so they produce higher-pitched voices.
What are Natural Voice Effects?
1. Breathy Voice
Breathy voice is among the top voice effects for singing. Proper breathing is what signers have to learn before starting performing - like kids learn to crawl before they walk. It allows singers to improve their breath control for long notes, creating a breathy vocal effect.
What is a Breathy Voice in Music?
Most people change their voice when they feel powerful emotions like sadness or vulnerability. Signers create this voice effect to make listeners feel closer to the words of the song, translating their emotions and feelings.
2. Falsetto
Falsetto is used by both signers and people when playing musical instruments. It gives the song needed life and naturalness.
What is Falsetto in Music?
Falsetto can be used along with a breathy voice. It is the ghostly or hooty sound we hear when singers take high notes.
3. Belting
Belting tends to give listeners goosebumps. Although you can hear belting in modern music, it is mostly used by opera singers.
What is Belting in Music?
Belting means singing the highest notes of the song with a ton of vocal power.
4. Vibrato
Have you ever wondered what is it called when a singer shakes their voice? Vibrato is extremely popular among musicians. It creates a sense of tension in music, usually before the highest note or when playing something dramatic. It can also make the song smoother and more sensual.
What is Vibrato in Music?
Vibrating vocal effect refers to the slight wiggling and wavering of the voice.
5. Vocal Fry
Vocal fry techniques allow singers to easily add more emotion to their songs. You may have already heard these sounds from Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry's speaking voice. Although it may be someone's speaking voice, vocal fry usually doesn't just happen occasionally. It is a useful singing vocal effect which can be easily learned even by new singers.
What is Vocal Fry in Music?
Vocal fry is a froggy, creaky voice which is also known as lazy.
Vocal Techniques Definitions & Types
Vocal techniques are different ways to help signers achieve various voice effects. These techniques apply to both psychical and emotional efforts, from how the singers stand on the stage to how they express the song and what they have to tell the audience through the song.
There are 8 key types of vocal techniques today
1. Perfecting the Singing Posture
The way you stand affects the singing voice and voice effects. Correcting the pose and finding the perfect one for you can be a real game changer. Start by keeping your head level, chest and shoulders high while also keeping your abdomen flat. Relax your hands, legs, and reduce tension in the body. Try to make your body as natural and comfortable as you can - signing is natural.
2. Search for Your Volume
Finding the proper volume for you can help you master even the hardest songs. Otherwise, signers risk plucking some notes or singing too softly. Start by singing a few notes at a comfy volume that is loud enough for your neighbours to hear, yet do not yell or whisper, then change the volume until you feel the most comfortable with your voice.
3. Warm Up Before Singing
The same rule applies to any activity - whether it is your yoga session, a dancing class or a signing. Singers that underestimate the power of warming up the risk of getting a cracking voice or not having enough breath for long notes. Start by practising simple vocal exercises.
4. Try the Thyroid Tilt Technique
It is a complex technique that is mainly used by experienced and famous singers. It allows signers to improve their voice without causing unwanted straining that makes the voice crack. It is the method where the signer tries to tilt the thyroid gland at a 45-degree angle.
5. Relax Your Jaw and Lips
Relaxing the jaw and lips during the song allows singing singers to get most of their lungs. Tension in the face prevents signers from achieving full lung capacity while also making it harder to use vocal effects.
6. Sing From the Diaphragm
Mastering a deep voice also involves learning how to use your diaphragm. For that, signers have to learn how to feel their diaphragm muscles and then practise breathing into their diaphragm.
7. Speak-Sign Technique
Signing is like speaking. Since your voice is relaxed when you speak calmly, the same should happen when you sign. Again, it is a natural process that doesn't involve tension. The more comfortable you get in talk-signing, the easier the song will come to you.
8. Cool Down Your Voice
Cooling your voice down is as important as warming it up. You can cool down the voice by finishing with a few humming or lighter exercises. This helps to strengthen your voice and make it smoother for the next time you will sing.
Voice Technology & its Modern Uses
When talking about voice technology, it is almost impossible not to think about modern-day voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, or Samsung's Bixby. Known as 'intelligent assistants,' these devices have already taken their place on the market and in people's day-to-day lives. They are used for playing music, setting up schedules for smart homes, making shopping lists, answering questions, setting up alarms, and even playing with kids.
Even Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, is too excited when it comes to voice technology and its effect on the modern world. In fact, he is already testing "Jarvis AI" in his home, where the voice of the device was recorded by Morgan Freeman.
Companies Use Voice Assistance for Internal Benefits
It would be strange for modern companies to ignore the value voice technology can bring. For example, a cloud software company has recently launched its Einstein Voice, which has become a useful extension of its existing Einstein AI platform.
This is a popular digital assistant used by sales managers. It allows specialists to operate cloud services and dictate memos even without touching a screen or writing a line. This digital assistant can be easily integrated with other technologies to help sales teams efficiently deliver pipeline updates, and calendar bookings and cover other tasks.
Voice Assistance in Digital Shopping
Discussing the effect of voice assistance on digital shopping, Adobe Analytics Report suggests that not all small speaker users place orders through devices; they still have a great impact on informed buying decisions (47%). In addition, people now use voice technology to compare product prices (32%) as well as digitally add items to the shopping cart (43%) while being busy with other tasks.
The voice shopping market was estimated at $2 bn in 2019, so there is no surprise the number has already grown to 22bn by the end of 2022. Not only small companies use voice technology to boost the shopping experience - market giants like Domino's, Johnnie Walker, and Nestlé are implementing voice assistance into their marketing strategies to improve connection with their customers.
Voice Revolution will Start from Voice
Studies show that over one billion voice searches happen every month. Another research states that 40% of adults and 55% of teens use voice search daily. Therefore, no one would be surprised to know that content marketers should develop short-form content products that provide quick and valuable answers to keep customers engaged.
In terms of SEO and voice technology, marketing teams should also explore new Google updates and SEO guidelines that were specially designed for spoken word search behaviors and data needs. If you are able to make your content appear as a featured snippet on Google, it has a chance to be fetched by voice assistants like Siri, Cortana, and others.
Voice as a Business Instrument
Voice isn't just about speaking or signing. It can be used as a powerful business instrument. While it has long been an addition to business and marketing campaigns, the voice of the brand has become a key aspect of the modern digital reality.
Take time to write 250-500 words about how you see your brand and how you communicate with your existing clients. You will also want to identify the position you have at the market and your customers' vision of your brand. This will be a starting point for you to generate the proper vision of where to move.
Voice of brand is essential if your company wants to attract relevant clients and keep retention rates high. It also helps in promoting brand visibility. It makes customers feel more connected and related to the company's products and processes. Other benefits of creating your brand voice include:
- Draw in new fans and followers by the way you write, attract and talk;
- Gather a community around your brand;
- Gain more trust and become more like a mentor and even a friend to your customers and followers.
Voice in Marketing
Considering the rise of smartphone use, the popularity of TikTok and other social media platforms and global digitalisation, you won't be surprised to know that videos are the key instrument in modern marketing today. But you can't just create fun videos hoping clients will be obsessed with them and buy from you. It also relates to any content creators using videos as a way to speak with the audience - not only companies and brands.
Whether you run a podcast, stream videos or a Youtube channel, you have to understand what your voice is and how to use it to your advantage. Voice marketing is a marketing technique that uses voice recognition to deliver the message to the target audience in a more natural and effective way.
Reasons to Use Voice in Marketing
1. Reach People's Day-to-Day Lives
Regardless of what type of video content you create, you get closer to people's lives and minds. Because people's lives are now busier than ever before, managing to take some space from these lives is a great opportunity.
And this can be achieved easier and more effectively through voice. It was proven that listening to someone's voice creates a sense of connection and proximity that is difficult to match with any other alternative.
2. Overcome Competitors
When you have a good sense of what your potential customers are looking for through voice commands, it can help you construct the brand’s strategy to overcome competitors. Voice technology used in marketing is used to make customer interactions more natural, useful and humanly offering a speedy verbal response from voice recognition AI talking robots. By appearing in Google search with voice assistance you prevent customers from finding your competitors first.
3. Create a Community
Speaking allows you to reach the user's ear, but you can also reach millions of people using your voice. Videos take less time and money for content creators of all kinds and brands to create a community since they don't need to duplicate content and place it on millions of platforms.
In fact, the market offers a wide range of tools for anyone looking to use voice as a marketing instrument, for speech recognition or translation. For example, Rask AI - is the leading localisation tool allowing you to translate any videos into 60+ languages quickly and place them on needed platforms. Regardless of the language you speak, Rask AI allows you to create a worldwide community by using its new feature - keep your voice when dubbing in eight different languages.
4. Drives Higher Web Traffic
Let’s imagine you have a wellness brand and have a website that sells different supplements. Your potential customer may ask a voice assistant to find a supplement for gut health. A voice assistant responds to a query, offering the user with a direct website link from which the product was pulled.
It is highly unlikely for users to search for other products when they already saw your product that suits their needs based on description. That is why companies that incorporate voice-optimised SEO easily boost the traffic to their websites, appearing at the top of search results used for voice responses.
5. Effective Motivation Though Voice
The feeling of connection and proximity arising when listening to the voice makes users more motivated to perform an action that the speaker wants them to. You can apply it to test this idea and see how your conversion rates are growing.
6. Benefits for Users with Disabilities
Again, a voice in marketing and business allows companies and consent creators to gather various people - regardless of location and other factors. The same applies here since voice can help you gather those with visual or mobility problems to understand your message.
Wrapping up
With all that being said above, we can be sure that voice plays a great role in our lives. Besides helping us speak and ask, it is also a powerful instrument in this digital world. Luckily, there are many tools and platforms powered by AI and machine learning that we can use to reach people's minds, create communities or share our stories.
