Market in Flux? Use These Three Google Tools to Get a Pulse
Published: June 9, 2020
Author: Shawn Grenald
Developing digital strategies for the future is a daunting task right now, especially since the cadence of your strategic review should be updated to match the speed of the shift in consumer sentiment. Being able to deploy effective new strategies and rapid optimizations are going be the differentiators in this volatile marketplace.
Consumer sentiment can shift for a multitude of reasons, such as the release of new vaccination and testing information or different regions within the country loosening their social distancing policies. Understanding where to focus your digital efforts becomes an even greater task because of these variances in sentiment. To assist with this there are two powerful tools that can assist with this: Google Trends and the Rising Retail Category tool.
The Google Trends tool can explore search terms by region and custom time frames. This tool offers the ability to compare multiple terms, which allows you to allocate your budget based on real-time consumer interest.
The Rising Retail Category tool highlights fast-growing product retail categories occurring within search queries. Within this tool, you can see trends of the overall product categories then can look at the most popular queries within each specific category. The ability to see what products consumers are currently searching by region can be an invaluable tool to leverage during this time.
Once you have a good understanding of where your consumer interest lies, your next step should be to ensure that your media strategy is best suited to meet the demand. A great tool to assist with this is the Performance Planner:
The Performance Planner can help you optimize your campaigns for efficiency and volume by discerning the optimal bids and budgets to meet your campaign goals. It also predicts the amount of inventory to expect for your current campaigns and the expected demand for that inventory. These recommendations are based off information collected during the past 7-10 days inclusive of market shifts and any seasonality shifts.
Will these tools help solve all of your challenges in times like 2020? Definitely not. But take advantage of smart, free tools to keep pace with how the market is moving, and you have a big leg up on your competitors.
