From expanding your reach and increasing sales to validating your product ideas, Google trends can help you grow your business.
Google Trends is a service that shows people’s searching behaviour in the form of trends. So if Google tells us that a person’s name is trending now, it is actually using the data from people’s real searches.
The data provided by Google Trends is actually a gold mine in itself. What demography is bigger that all Google users, and what insights on human behaviour are more relevant than their real time interests? A study published on NYtimes used the data from Google Trends to find out that people are “two and a half” times more likely to say “Is my son gifted?” than “is my daughter gifted?”
You too can take advantage of Google Trends to grow your business. Here are four ways Google trends can help you:
1- Google trends helps you expand your reach
One of the most popular uses of Google trends for your business is understanding you or your competitors’ reach and influence in particular regions and time spans. You can easily enter a brand’s name or the name of a particular product in the Explore section and select your preferences for region, period of time, category, and the kind of search (web search, image search, news search, Youtube search). Then see the brand’s or the product’s influence based on the metrics you’ve just determined.
Here is the map that shows Tesla’s reach and popularity in different States in that last month.
How does this help you?
Well, for one thing, you know which states are interested in you and which aren’t. You can then spend more time and money on raising awareness in the regions you’re not popular in.
Of course, this helps if your brand or product gets enough search volume in Google. But once you know have the data about your reach and influence of you or your particular brands, you can easily expand your reach.
When doing social media marketing or using ad networks try to target people from the areas you are not popular in. Do some market research by finding out what’s been trending in particular regions and use the data in your marketing campaigns. If you don’t know what to look for when doing the market research and how to use the data, consider talking to an expert consultant.
2- Google trends helps you up your SEO
Google trends is a good place to find valuable keywords. Although it does not give an exact search volume, it’s a great place to find out trendy keywords and check them out with other keyword tools such as Ahrefs. You’ll be able to predict the popularity of some keywords in different times of the year by following the graph finding a pattern in the peaks shown in the graph.
Another way to up your SEO, aside from doing keyword research, is creating content based on the recent popular trends. Just open Google trends and select your category and region. You’ll then see the most trending searches in your specified region and category. Click on them to see the most trending stories and related keywords.
Producing content based on the recent trends enables you to participate in the trend and drive a portion of traffic to your website. What’s more is that you can take advantage of the trending topics in other categories and relate them to your niche. The “Entertainment” category probably contains the most searched topics in it. How about writing an article about what business or marketing lessons we can learn from Dwayn Johnson as he is the top trending topic in the “Entertainment” category right now?
3- Google trends improves your advertising ROI
Knowing the trends is a good way to get more clicks and engagement from your social media ads. “Top Charts” section is full of the most searched names in any category and any region. Just hop in there, do a little digging to find a related trendy topic, person, or thing, and start producing social media ads about them.
The data you can extract from the trends in different regions is a goldmine. It’s a good idea to research the trending topics for specific regions and target those people with specific ads.
The “Youtube Search” from the “Explore” section is specifically amazing for improving the ROI of Youtube advertising.
From ad copy to your landing page and offers, your content could be intriguing for people if it is in any way related to the trending topics.
4- Google Trends helps you with product launch
Many of the product launches fail because there is very little interest in the product. Before launching your product make sure you use Google trends to find out whether there is enough interest in your product or niche in your area.
You might find out that contrary to your assumptions, there’s interest in another product in your niche that could be quite profitable for you (by checking out the related queries or related topics).
It’s also a good idea to find out the popularity and influence of the existing businesses that are already offering your product and see if they are doing well. This could be a sign that determines whether your product will make a fortune for you or not.
Because people use Google to find answers for many of their problems, and because Google trends uses real time data from searches done on Google, you can rely on the data extracted from Google trends and do a market research before you launch a product.
Finally:
As Consluting.com explains, the real value of your business relies heavily on how you help “people solve problems and move from their current state to their desired state”. And the more valuable that desired state is to someone, the more they are willing to pay for help getting there.
If you have an analytic mind-set to business management, Google trends can help you know how to deliver your customers to their desired states. Use the data from Google analytics to:
- Expand your reach
- Improve your organic traffic
- Increase your advertising ROI
- Validate your product idea
Author Bio:
Mostafa Dastras has written for some important companies such as HubSpot, WordStream, SmartInsights, and MarketingProfs. What keeps him up at nights is how he can help his clients increase sales with no BS content marketing. Visit his blog, LiveaBusinessLife, or connect with him on LinkedIn to get him to write for you.
