Google Trends as a Data Source for Marketing Analytics January 2015
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3 January 2015 Google Trends as a Data Source for Marketing Analytics
4 Introduction Not many marketers are in the fortunate position of knowing precisely how their campaigns are really performing. There are a lucky few who can directly observe the entire world in which their campaigns operate; however, for the majority it s a different matter. Many are left trying to observe the indirect impact of campaigns and this makes it tricky to properly understand the ways their efforts impact consumer attitudes and behaviour. There may be some hope. As the online world plays an ever larger part in our modern lives, our activity in cyberspace is an increasingly closer reflection of our real world likes and dislikes. This may be where Google Trends data could help marketers to understand, albeit in an indirect way, the impact of a marketing campaign. Let s consider a fictional case. Imagine a brand manager working for an airline company who is grappling with the problem of a poor brand perception amongst the public at large. The poor perception was based on the way the airline used to operate but those problems have now been addressed. The job of the marketing team is to tell the world that the company has mended its old ways. If the marketing team run campaigns aimed at changing these perceptions, they will need some way to measure if perceptions are changing. If they can analyse how often people are searching on terms related to the airline (and also other related terms), they may be able to draw some conclusions on campaign effectiveness. Google Trends as a data source may not give them a direct measure of customer satisfaction, but it might offer a set of insights into the search behaviour of customers and how these search volumes are changing over time. These movements in search trends may give us clues as to how well the marketing campaign is working. Using Google Trends for Marketing Analytics All the best marketers have a good understanding of which of their activities are working and which aren t. How do they know what s working and what s not? Instinct may play a part, but in truth they can only know definitively through the analysis of data. As many marketers are aware, data is often expensive. They either purchase it directly from data vendors sometimes at quite a cost - or it comes as part of some agency agreement and the real cost of the data is hidden. The good news is that not all data need cost a fortune. Perhaps surprisingly, there are some useful data sources out there that may not cost anything at all.
marketingqed Google Trends as a Data Source for Marketing Analytics 5 Google Trends is one such data source. We ve witnessed some interesting uses of this data source to control for - or to explain - some of the subtler points seen in marketing mix models. So how can marketing analysts draw on this novel data source? This paper explains where the data comes from, what the numbers really mean, what the caveats are and of course how to get the data in the first place. What does Google Trends offer? Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends) is a data source that allows you to query the volume of search activity that takes place on the vast Google database. Every day, more than 3.5bn queries are performed by people looking for things on the internet using the Google search engine. Google Trends data is often referred to as Found data -- a by-product of the so-called Big data provided indirectly by people carrying out their everyday activities. Google Trends allows you to review statistics on popular search terms at an aggregated level. If you are able to create suitable queries, you may be able to extract useful information from the data source. This data can then be analysed to see if there appears to be a change in the data that coincides with your marketing campaign. Although there are a number of different ways you can view this data, perhaps the most common way to look at it is across time - i.e. by creating a Time Series view of the data. The actual numbers reported often appear confusing to novice users, but once understood they are relatively simple to interpret. Fundamentally, the data itself represents the percentage of all searches during a particular time period that related to the specified term. Let s look at an example. If we go to the Google Trends website and enter the term Toyota, we are presented with a set of tables and charts showing historical search activity including the term Toyota. 1 http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/ 2 Note that the data reported excludes rare search terms and also duplicate searches made by the same user over a short time period.
6 Enter or refine search terms and filter results Time series of relative search activity Regional index for search activity Other popular and related searches From a Time Series perspective, we are most interested in the data that is represented by the top chart. This shows us the level of search activity for this particular term over time. To use this data for a specific piece of analysis, we recommend narrowing down the search. What we are presented with initially is a global summary of search activity, so we can tailor the search to look at a particular trend within a certain country. To do this, simply use the filter or click on the country in question to narrow the search.
marketingqed Google Trends as a Data Source for Marketing Analytics 7 In this example, by filtering on Spain and selecting data from Jan 2012 to Jan 2014, we are able to create the following chart: The above chart shows us the relative search volume in Spain for the term Toyota during the specified period. By clicking on the cog icon at the top of the screen, we can download a CSV file which contains the data from the chart. Note you can only do this if you are logged into a Google account whilst browsing. What you will find in this exported file are the data points from the various charts on screen. This is the data that we can use for marketing analytics purposes. Here is an example of the data which can be downloaded from Google Trends. Search Options There are a range of search term options that can be applied to your search (you can find more detail via https://support.google.com/ trends/?hl=en#topic=4365599). Obvious search parameters, such as timeframe and location, are available to further narrow your search. One notable filter that may not be quite so obvious is the Category option. Here we can narrow down searches to those within a particular sector. Normalised Data Something you will need to consider is that the results from the database are normalised based on the size of the population in the market being reviewed. This means that if you
8 are looking at trend data across two regions, the size of the region itself has been taken into account already. For example, if we look at a term such as Guinness for both Ireland and the US, we might expect that the sheer difference in population size between these two countries might mean that search activity in the US would dwarf that in Ireland in absolute numbers. However, on a per-internet-user basis this legendary brand is clearly more interesting to those in Dublin than to those in Detroit! Note that for search terms with low popularity, data may be presented on a monthly rather than weekly basis. Choosing the correct Search Term When choosing a search term, it s worth being careful to make sure that the term selected is the most appropriate one available for your purposes. Subtle differences in the term can completely change the reported data so you may wish to exclude certain related terms in your search (see https://support.google.com/trends/answer/4359582?hl=en for details on how to achieve this). Question How might the Trends data help? What to look for? Are we driving consumer interactions with our brand? Hopefully your campaigns are driving online search behaviour. Google Trends might help identify where and when. Brand search terms over time. What is the seasonality in this market? Google Trends may unveil a seasonal pattern in searches. For example, a search for the term Car Insurance may be correlated with overall activity. This trend can be used to help estimate baseline performance for inbound calls or web site visits before accounting for incremental activity through other marketing driven efforts. Generic terms for the market being considered rather than a particular brand. Is our message cutting through? If a campaign has a special theme or message - e.g. Search for BigRed online, trends may help you create a baseline for search activity on this and other related searched. Has your marketing created a genuine lift in the search levels above the baseline? Econometric analysis using the Google Trend results as a dependent variable would be useful here.
marketingqed Google Trends as a Data Source for Marketing Analytics 9 Summary Google Trends data represents an innovative and readily available data set that may prove to be hugely useful to marketers. It can be used to capture underlying trends or even serve/act as a proxy for campaign performance. Whilst these approaches aren t for all brands, it is likely that this rich and cost effective data source offers something for the majority of modern marketers and should be considered as part of the data one should collect when examining campaign success.
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