How to: Plan better with Insights for Search
First in a series of "How-to Guides", these posts will explore the use of our free Google tools to gather insights for planning - Ed.
Here in the Google UK Public Sector team, Swine Flu is currently top of our agenda. Our brand new team was set up specifically to work with Government departments in achieving their online objectives - and it’s a fascinating area. Today we might be trying to reduce knife crime; tomorrow, helping the Navy to garner more recruits.
Interestingly, many of our strategies are relevant for both the public and private sector. Although we may not be trying to sell our audience a product or service, we are usually working towards driving an end objective such as a .pdf download or mailing list sign up.
One such area of public / private sector crossover is search budgeting. No matter if the client is selling sports shoes or informing the public of flu symptoms, it is essential that future search marketing budgets are planned with seasonality in mind.
So how can we do this with any certainty? In the past, this kind of research might have been outsourced at a cost. Nowadays, all marketers have a great deal of information at their fingertips - for free - with Google’s Insights for Search.
Let’s take the example of a travel agent looking to sell holidays in the sun:
Research steps
1) Go to www.google.com/insights/search
2) Enter “summer holiday” as the search term
3) Set Country to “United Kingdom” and hit “Search”
The results – perhaps predictably – show spikes of interest around January (those planning ahead) and at the beginning of the summer season:
We can, therefore, see this data as a barometer of public interest in a given topic over time. But what does this mean for budgeting? Well, the vertical axis of the graph above shows “normalised” search query volumes. So a score of 100% on the graph means ‘the greatest number of queries of that type made in the time period you’ve selected’, relative to all queries made on Google’s search engine.
Using just the graph above, a media planner can easily deduce the following:
• Search popularity for “summer holiday” was at a 4-year high in July 2006.
• Peak-season popularity for “summer holiday” in the UK last year was up around 10% on the year before.
• Last year’s July popularity was just 3% lower than the July 2006 figure.
With these facts in mind, the media planner might decide to budget a little more than last year in case of a further growth in demand.
Dig deeper and Insights for Search illustrates powerful correlations between search and media coverage. Last week, whilst preparing a presentation for a public sector client, I wanted to demonstrate how public interest in Swine Flu has changed over time:
Clicking “show” beside the “News Headlines” option reveals links to related media stories, giving fascinating insight into how the public have reacted to press coverage of Swine Flu.
But that’s not all. Comparing data from different queries reveals further remarkable correlations. Here, we compare searches for “swine flu” and “hand sanitizer” over the same three month period:
The results show incredibly similar growth in popularity.
Key take-aways? Next time you’re planning a marketing campaign, thinking about budgeting, or just trying to gauge public interest, try combining Insights for Search with a little imagination. It’s amazing how much can be achieved for free!