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Google’s market dominance is no secret. The search engine receives eight and a half billion queries daily, making its inner workings a goldmine of insight into what people worldwide are asking, wanting, and thinking. Imagine pulling back the proverbial curtain and seeing it all – what’s top of mind at any given moment, in any place, as evidenced by internet searches.

You can. It’s called Google Trends.

And maybe the wildest part: Very few marketers are using it.

WHAT IS GOOGLE TRENDS EXACTLY?

Around since 2012, Google Trends is a minute-to-minute look at Google search queries for trending search terms, yes, but also any search term. Line graphs and shaded maps reveal what people are searching for, in real time and dating as far back as 2004.

It gets better. Google Trends also offers search term volume and trends by location (including subregions) and language, giving attentive users an easy and authoritative look at how search interest shifts within, and differs among, various regions over time. An armchair sociologist can have a field day on Google Trends, examining ebbs and flows for any imaginable topic. It’s another population, though, for whom Google Trends is pure gold:

Marketers.

WHY IS GOOGLE TRENDS SO VALUABLE TO MARKETING?

It probably goes without saying: Access to interest in a particular topic in a particular place at a particular time can dramatically boost market research and keyword targeting that’s instrumental to effective marketing in 2024.

And beyond its face-value functionality, Google Trends’ advantages keep coming:

Google Trends features worth noting:  

REAL-LIFE BUSINESS USE CASES

I was personally introduced to Google Trends not at work but at a brew pub, more than a decade back. My buddy started telling me how he was considering a golf cart shield business but still needed to so some more market research. He pulled up Google Trends and typed “golf cart shields” into the search bar; it turns out very few people nationwide had ever searched this phrase. He narrowed his query down to “golf carts” and started seeing search volumes in warm weather climates. However, only when he drilled down to Florida did he see a high volume of searches for golf carts – leading him to conclude that golf cart shields were just too niche to justify an investment.

For me, the experience resonated. In the span of a happy hour, I became one of a very small number of marketers at the time harnessing Google Trends for marketing good. To this day, I extol its virtues to digital marketing agency peers and business owners alike. Here are a few ways that Google Trends can benefit business:

Of course, digital marketing consists of much more than what Google Trends alone can provide. Is your business looking for an agency that offers forward-thinking strategies and tools along these lines, and who can leverage Google Trends on your behalf? Look no further than Hammer Marketing. Drop us a line or swing by for a visit today! 

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