5 Ways Search Data Can Inform Your <br>Marketing Strategy

With Google processing more than 3.5 billion search queries in a single day, there’s a surprising amount of insight that can be gained by analyzing the content and user behaviors behind these searches. Studying your own paid search data can substantially benefit several areas of your marketing strategy, including product, pricing, competitive strategy, branding, and store location selection.

Product Strategy

Search engines periodically release insights based on overarching or vertical-specific search trends. Bing and Google both offer places to start researching search trends related to your product. This data can help you:

• Research the viability of a possible new product launch.
• Discover what customers like and dislike about your existing products.
• Inform product-market fit.

If you analyze search query data directly associated with your brand name, you can identify customer pain points, bugs, and potential new product features.

Pricing Strategy

SEM ad creative testing can help inform pricing strategy, as well as the best way to message pricing.

• Develop a variable pricing approach: Launch hypothesis tests of identical ad copy and landing pages where the only variable is price. The ideal price point is when you’re generating the best possible balance of order volume and return on ad spend.
• Optimize pricing verbiage: Set up testing with identical price points and variant messaging to learn the best way to position prices and discounts. For example, customers may react differently to these two variations describing a discount on a $100 item: “Save $20” and “20% off.”

Competitive Strategy

The search engine results page is a goldmine of competitive data. By performing searches related to your product, you can:

• Find out who your competitors are.
• Identify your competitors’ weaknesses.
• Exploit your competitors’ weaknesses to your advantage.

Even if you don’t plan to launch a competitor campaign, it’s important to monitor your own branded search terms. The simplest way to do this is to look for spikes in your brand CPC. If it jumps, you may have a new competitor.

Brand Strategy

Search data can help you test new approaches to brand messaging. Marketers can utilize search data to:

• Understand how your brand awareness plays are performing.
• Identify tone and intent of customer interest in your brand.
• Continually optimize and identify ways to position your brand.

Store Location Strategy

Search data can help inform your store location strategy by providing:

• Granular geographic data to identify zip codes likely to be profitable.
• Insight into the market share of foreign language speakers to determine demand for foreign language customer support.
• Brand search volume cross-referenced with existing store locations—spikes can indicate hotspots for interest in your brand, and where existing locations underserve customers.

Search marketing isn’t just a direct response channel, but rather a means to inform your marketing strategy with data. Product, pricing, competitive strategy, branding, and store location selection are just a few examples of how to use search data. Make it a regular practice to analyze search data for insights that can be applied throughout your marketing strategy.

About the Author

Sarah manages Content Marketing at Boost Media and leads a team of marketing professionals to drive revenue through complex B2B marketing campaigns in the ad tech industry. Prior to joining Boost, Sarah developed marketing and sales strategy at BNY Mellon, a top 10 private wealth management firm. In a former life, Sarah worked in journalism writing for magazines including Boston Magazine, The Improper Bostonian, and Luxury Travel. When she’s not writing engaging content, Sarah enjoys cooking, running, and yoga.

About Boost Media

Boost Media increases advertiser profitability by using a combination of humans and a proprietary software platform to drive increased ad relevance at scale. The Boost marketplace comprises over 1,000 expert copywriters and image optimizers who compete to provide a diverse array of perspectives. Boost’s proprietary software identifies opportunities for creative optimization and drives performance using a combination of workflow tools and algorithms. Headquartered in San Francisco, the Boost Media optimization platform provides fresh, performance-driven creative in 12 localized languages worldwide.

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