In business you need to be able to find and capitalize on hidden opportunities before anyone else does. Google offers a great tool called Google Insights for Search that allows you to find hidden opportunities. Google Insights for Search shows you what people are searching for, where they are searching and when. This lets you spot trends and find out what people around the world are interested in. For example, you may be a surf board manufacturer and you’re interested in finding out where surfing is most popular? With this tool you can see what geographies top the list for the search term “surfing” so you can target your marketing dollars to those locations.
Google has some great videos in YouTube that go into more detail about this tool. That is where I learned about Google Insights for Search and where I got most of the information for this post. Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 500 company, this tool is useful in finding great business opportunities. We use it all the time at Bundlecity.com to find new trends. We also use it to forecast how much inventory we think we’re going to need for certain products based on the seasonal trends we can dig up with this tool.
In general, Google Insights for Search is useful in the following types of activities:
- Creating relevant advertising messages.
- Evaluating brands.
- Analyzing and measuring the impact of marketing activities on search interests.
- Visualizing how awareness for something new grows over time.
- Keeping an eye on the most popular search terms.
Create relevant advertising messages.
Web search volume is a great way to see what people are interested in. It lets you see what people are searching for and when they are searching for it. You can customize your ad text based on these interests to create relevant advertising messages. For example, in Google’s YouTube video, they use an example of a car manufacturer. If you are a car manufacturer, should your ad message focus on safety or fuel efficiency? In Google Insights for Search, you can compare the keywords “car safety” against “fuel efficiency” in the United States over the last year.
This will enable you to see when search queries related to safety were more or less prevalent related to fuel efficiency. You can also see where one search query is more relevant than the other. For example, you may find that in the UK car safety is more important than fuel efficiency while in the US the opposite is true. This way you can tailor your ad differently in these different locations. This allows you to capitalize on search trends by building relevant advertising messages.
Evaluating Brands
Google Insights for Search is a powerful tool for identifying brands competing with your product. Use the information you uncover with this tool to compare competing brands to your own brand to see how you stack up. Understanding other brands associated with your product is a great way to identify competitors.
For example, you may want find the top brands related to digital cameras. Simply look up the search term “digital camera” in Google Insights for Search. Your search will uncover two useful types of search results: “Top Searches” and “Rising Searches.” Look at these two sections to see what brands surface. Once you identify some top surfacing brands in the search results, do a more detailed search to compare those brands to see how search interest levels in those brands change over time and over geographies. Find some rising stars by noticing that a particular brand’s search interest is rising over time. If you’re a retailer, use this information to manage inventory and decide what brands to stock. If you’re a manufacturer, identify other brands competing with your brand and compare them to see how your brand stacks up.
Measuring Campaign Impact
Google Insights for Search also enables you to measure the impact of your marketing activities by people’s ability to recall and search for your brand. In other words, analyse and measure the effect of your marketing activities on search interests. According to Google, branding searches are a great indicator of peoples ability to recall your brand. You can test to see how searches for your brand changed after running a campaign. This helps you determine the impact of your marketing activities on online searches and maybe improve your budgeting plans for the future. For example, test to see if your ads (from tv, radio, magazine, online or wherever) where effective in triggering more online search interest in your brand.
To perform this exercise, perform a search for some relevant keywords associated with your advertising campaign. Then look at the Top Searches and Rising Searches sections to see if your brand is prevalent in the search results. If your brand is frequently shown in the search results, then brand association and recall were very high for your particular campaign. Therefore, if you’re running an integrated marketing campaign, you will be able to determine how effective the campaign was at driving online search interest and how strongly the campaign was associated to your brand.
Visualizing How Awareness for Something New Grows Over Time.
Use the tool to see the trending of a search term on a graph and watch how the awareness of that search term has grown over time around the world. If you begin to see patterns emerging, then you may have uncovered new business opportunities that you can capitalize on.
Keep An Eye on The Most Popular Search Terms
Google Insights for Search is great for finding or keeping up with the most popular search terms. The more you know about the terms people are searching on, the more you will be aware of current events and potential opportunities. One good way to do this is by selecting the news filter to uncover the most recent rising news searches.
Conclusion
Finding new business opportunities is critical for business success. Having the right tools to find these opportunities is essential. Google Insights for Search has proven to be an effective tool for our business. We have used it in the past and will continue to use it to find those hidden gems.
