Digital Marketing Tool: Google Trends

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Digital Marketing Tool: Google Trends

Undoubtedly, digital marketing is on a roll globally. Every brand is struggling to be on the digital bandwagon with the goal of reaping the spoils of the enticing and alluring promise of digital media in global, regional and domestic marketplaces. This is fueled by the desire of companies to reach the right customer or prospect at the right time with the most appropriate offer at a relatively lower cost compared to the traditional marketing avenues (Ginsberg et al., 2017). Digital marketing refers to a strategy that employs digital devices and tool along with marketing strategy to better brand/product and service delivery. Digital marketing, thus, connotes marketing of products and services by using know-hows, mainly the internet, yet also including display advertising, mobile phones, and any other digital platform/medium. Currently, there are a number of digital marketing tools. However, this paper focuses on Google Trends. This paper will, therefore, discuss the basic information regarding Google Trends, its limitations, and how marketers use it in marketing their brands.

Google Trends refers to a search trends feature that displays the frequency of a given search term in Google’s search engine compared to the total search volume of the site over a given time period (Marks, 2012).  It is a website that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search engine across various languages and regions. Google Trends can be employed for comparative keyword (re)search and to explore event-elicited spikes in Google’s keyword search volume. This is hinged on the fact that it uses graphs to compare and contrast the search volume of various queries over a time period. The tool provides keyword-related information including geographical information regarding search engine utilizers and search volume index (Ginsberg et al., 2017). Google Trends has several customization options that permit an individual to select regions, data ranges, specific categories, and even the type of search (images, web, and so on) that the individual wishes to compare. These customizations include hot searches, top charts, explore trends, and Google correlate. In addition to giving great understandings into the variation and seasonality of searches, Google Trends allow one to see the regional and local interest for various search terms. In 2008, Marks (2012) notes that Google introduced Google Insights for Search which displays the trending searches in certain geographical regions. 

Google Trends is a simple tool to use. One can explore Google Trends by visiting the tool and then seeing searches that are presently trending and then digging into a topic for extra information. Additionally, one can enter a search term into Google search engine to see how search volume has changed for that particular term over time and within various locations. One also has the opportunity to change the time frame, location, industry, category, or search type (news, shopping, web, or YouTube) for comprehensive and extra fine-gained information/data. For more information on how to use Google Trends, follow links on Beckler (2018), Kalia (2018), Cunnington (2019, and Ahrefs (2018) references.

Focusing on marketers only, information gathered through Google Trends can be very handy and beneficial for brand markers. For instance, for marketers running a seasonal business, they will want to ramp up their marketing determinations when search terns pertinent to their businesses are trending (Preis, Moat, Stanley, 2013). During spikes in their search volumes, their cost per click in AdWords will possibly be higher. As such, they have to be sure so that they can allocate extra budget for their AdWords expenditure when their services or products are trending. Additionally, to compare multiple terms, a marketer can use the “+Add comparison” capability. To marketers, Google Trends equally shows them related search terms along with how search interest changes by region, sub-region, and time.

Similarly, information gathered from Google Trends can be employed for in paid search business purposes. Neidlinger (2019) states that Google Trends information can be employed for seasonal campaigns, assisting with inventory stocking and cost planning. Similarly, a marketer can use Google Trends to get irrelevant trending terms that one need to set as negative search words to make sure that a trending search does not their costs (Preis, Moat,  Stanley, 2013). For search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing, Google Search data can be employed. Google Trends data can be used to learn what intended or targeted audience or market are searching for, and by writing concerning trending topics, a marketer can assist in driving traffic to their brands’ sites (Neidlinger, 2019). Marketers can as well use Google Trends data to inspire their brands’ ad creativity. Marketers can browse Google Trends so that they can see what topics or information are presently capturing the public mind and imagination. Referencing a given trending topic in one’s marketing campaigns, regardless of whether it is an email blast, radio spot, a Facebook advert, can increase the marketer’s adverts’ engagement.

Notwithstanding its usefulness in marketing. Google Trends has certain limitations. One of the biggest limitations of Google trends is that the tool does not offer the right/exact search volume numbers for each and every keywords. The tool only allows for estimation of relative popularity of keywords but does not give precise search volume information (Marks, 2012), thus making the tool to be practically impossible to understand the actual popularity of a keyword through the use of Google Trends. Secondly, Google Trends lacks the ability to perceive high volume keywords surrounding a primary topic of a keyword research. Google Trends, in most cases, will only recommend a small and very obvious number of keywords that are somewhat linked to the principal term. However, this does not provide mush assistance to people who do not have comprehensive keyword research.

To conclude, Google Trends can help marketers find niches for their products and services, find pertinent product and service categories in associated topics, promote marketers’ stores around seasonal patterns and trends, use Google Trends for their content freshness, and create content regarding present trends and patterns. Marketers can also use it to find niche topics by (sub) regions, and to monitor their brands’ competitors’ position with Google Trends relate and compare. Lastly, marketers can use Google Trends information to assist them in determining the best time for creation of Google shopping advertisement