Google’s Daniel Waisberg and Omri Weisman share three tips to improve both online and offline marketing strategies. They explain how to leverage Google Trends search data to make better product decisions, optimize strategies, understand consumer behavior, and focus marketing efforts for higher ROI.
Google offers three tips:
- How to benchmark against competitors
- Analysis of Brand Awareness
- Forecasting product demand
How to benchmark against competitors
Google’s Daniel Waisberg showed that one way to research competitors is to do a direct comparison of search terms for your company against competitors by entering your company name or domain name in one panel of Google Trends and your competitor’s in the other. . He suggests choosing a topic from the “categories” drop-down menu, which allows for more specific segmentation of user intent, where a user is looking for results in a specific niche or topic. Waisberg comments that it is okay not to choose a category if one does not exist.
Although he doesn’t mention it, there is an additional way to segment users by search type (web search, image search, Google shopping, and YouTube search). This is an available option that can help you see how people are searching (images, videos, etc.) compared to the competition.
Step 1: Choose a category
Google Trends displays a trend line indicating how often users search for both business names. The trend line shows whether a company is trending up over time, whether it is experiencing a downward trajectory, or whether customer demand is at a stable level. Spikes can be signs of seasonality, but sharp spikes can be a sign that a marketing effort or promotion is paying off.
Waisberg encourages users to scroll down to inspect search trends by subregion, metro area and city. While Waisberg suggests it is one way to determine the demand for opening a store, the way I use the information is to determine geographic areas where demand is higher and focus online marketing efforts there to maximize ROI. This can be done for link building, PPC, email, whatever your method is.
Step 2: Analyze subregions
Daniel Waisberg begins his explanation at 03:11 minutes:
“When you look at the results, you can see how well your competitor is doing relative to you over time. …when you scroll down, you can compare how strong you are for each of the available sub-regions, metropolitan areas and cities, and these can help you gather data when deciding where to open a new store.”
2. Analysis of Brand Awareness
Waisberg explains that Google Trends can be used to track brand awareness by filtering results over time to identify what people are saying about the brand. He recommends setting the time range to the past 30 or 90 days.
Related search terms that are trending or are top terms provide insight into how consumers perceive your brand, including what they associate the brand with. The same method can be used to analyze YouTube search trends related to brand by selecting YouTube Search from the Categories drop-down menu at the top of the Google Trends page.
Google’s Omri Weisman explains from 4:37 minutes:
“To monitor what people are saying about you, you should check your brand name using Google Trends… Scroll down the page to see the related search terms map. Go through both the ascending and the top terms in the list and make sure Paginating using the arrows below the table will give you a good idea of what terms people are using in connection with your brand.”
3. Forecasting product demand
An easy way to predict product demand with Google Trends is to identify which products are most searched for and then zero in on how demand changes over time. It is suggested to be aware of seasonal trends and adjust product inventory accordingly.
Waisberg explains how to do that around the 6:44 minute mark by examining cheese. In his example, he notes the seasonality, but then takes the analysis one step further by scrolling down and exploring related terms that may suggest related products with higher search demand that you might want to start selling or reviewing.
He explains:
“If you scroll down, you’ll find the related topics and the related inquiry cards. Here you can check out the top topics to find ideas about what’s already gathered a lot of interest, and also the rising topics to get a sense of what that has received more attention lately, don’t forget to look further through the pagination.
Notice how charcuterie appears on both lists. Add this expression to your analysis. You will see that it has significantly more interest than cheese platters. Perhaps you should consider parsing this expression further and potentially diversifying.”
Google Trends for Successful Online Marketing
Google’s Daniel Waisberg and Omri Weisman demonstrated how to use Google Trends to improve online marketing, competitor research, brand research and better understanding of customer preferences and behavior. It can also be used to identify which products to focus on and at which times of the year. These tips are useful for both online and offline marketing strategies.
Watch the Google Search Central video:
Google Trends for marketing and sales
Featured image by Shutterstock/MR Gao