This video is the second in our series about marketing during uncertain times. Our co-founder, Andrew Miller, continues to discuss questions we’ve heard from our clients. Learn more about using Google Trends to understand the search behavior of your audience—and how you can leverage the tool to inform your digital marketing strategy.
Watch the video or read the transcript below to learn more.
Hey y'all, wanted to share a quick update on some of the tools we're using as digital marketers to understand how customers are searching now. Believe it or not, as crazy as things are, there are still people out there searching. There are still people out there looking for businesses, products, and services. It just may look a little bit different than it did a few weeks ago.
One of the tools that I want to share with you guys right now is Google Trends. It's www.google.com/trends. It's basically a search engine that allows you to type in any search term or topic, and Google is going to tell you, in their own search volume and interest levels, how people are interacting with that type of content.
[Here’s a] quick example: searches and interest in coronavirus peaked a couple of weeks ago, as people were understanding, and learning, and researching more about the disease and the spread, and the symptoms, and everything else. And it's started to slack off just a little bit. But Google Trends is also great for understanding how search behaviors are changing in [an] industry and in your market.
A couple [additional] quick examples here. If you're a dentist, you may be interested in understanding where your patients are, right? Search volume was great through the first couple months of 2020—and then all of a sudden, around that same time period [in the] first half of March, we start to see search volume take a big nosedive. But still, there are people searching for dentists, there's still people searching for healthcare providers in all specialties. There are still people that need these services and products. So, you can start to understand that your customer base has not gone away—they're changing their behaviors.
So, what are people doing? People are looking for things to do, things to entertain themselves. Obviously, as we're all home—or as many of us as possible are home—we start to see a correlation in the increase in searches for things like Netflix, or Disney+ for those of us who have kids. We can start to see that search patterns emerge over time. We're shifting from a transactional mindset now to a research and entertainment mindset.
Our customers are still out there—but they're engaging and looking for different types of information than they were even a few weeks ago.
When we're starting to look at Google Trends, we want to be able to understand and use this information to adjust our strategies to understand:
- When it's a good time to come back into the market.
- What types of content people are looking for
- How their search behind behaviors and needs are changing and how we can address those as marketers
If you haven't already used Google Trends, check it out: www.google.com/trends. Hope it helps you make better decisions for your business. And we're going to post more of these updates as we're learning more. So carry on, stay well, and stay inside.
