Google Insight is Genius.
filed in Web Analysis on Aug.17, 2008
Google has released one of its most powerful tools yet – to an awe inspiring silence.
The potential to create highly effective marketing campaigns with outstanding ROI is every media buyer’s holy grail. What if you could take a keyword and generate dynamic reports of market driven data that literally tell you which markets to invest in, which keywords to add/drop and most importantly the trends defining the viability of your markets’ interest? Enter Google Insight.
Generating lists of keywords with similar relevancy to an existing online media campaign is nothing new. We’ve taken for granted the fact that serious campaign creation and management involves many unknown variables and sluggish optimization. GoogleAdwords’s keyword tool and other products on the market have been a media buyer’s right hand man when testing and optimizing campaigns. These tools are excellent but lack market driven data and statistics to transform a mediocre campaign in into real powerhouse of ROI.
Google Insight is truly amazing - and relevant to anyone who’s communicating a product, service or experience. It’s so easy a 15-year-old could generate more effective reports in 5 seconds that would otherwise take a decent media buyer – slaving over multiple spreadsheets and 10+ cups of coffee – days to create. More importantly the “rising searches” section literally tells you which keywords to test. Use the time duration filter to compare lifecycles and growth acceleration curves across multiple geographic markets and search terms.
See Google Insight in action with 2 terms that greatly differ in both in search purpose the expected outcome from a given campaign:
1. Kate Spade. This targeted search term is most likely relevant to e-commerce websites where geo-targeting and an understanding of trends can really drive ROI. Check out the results over a 30 day time period in the US:
East Coast states claim the top 5 in rank (hehe… I know, shocking) . Aside from the “related” keywords that could be added to this to this campaign, the “rising searches” section actually manages your investment in new media for the month. “Kate spade sale” and “kate spade handbang” are in “breakout” status with more than 5,000% change in growth!.
2. Olympics. This term is broad enough that it can be applied to a huge variety of businesses– most likely large brand oriented advertisers like McDonalds, Coca Cola and Nike. Check out global growth over 30 days, 90 days and 12 months:
30 Days:
90 Days:
12 Months:
Apparently New Zealand is most receptive to the Olympics over a 1 year period. Searches made in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have amazingly consistent search volumes over the same time period. If I were a brand advertiser I would try to focus on trends all at least 60% of my investment in the top 5 markets and jump to the US only 6 months prior to the release of the games with a gradual budget increase.
Haven’t heard of Google Insight? Most haven’t. I haven’t heard much about this in the online media world and nearly zero in mainstream media - but then again who relies in mainstream media for technology and internet news anyway!?
Google Insight is going to change the playing field of internet economics. For those who are serious about e-commerce and online media – a 30 minute daily investment into this tool will no doubt reduce redundant time management and significantly increase revenue streams.
September 4th, 2008 on 3:54 pm
Thanks Cam, for an interesting introduction to what could be a really using tool.
There are a couple things that I am skeptical of, however.
Let’s, for example, consider this concept of “breakout” status. If, using your Kate Spade search as an example, “Kate Spade sale” reached breakout status recently, can’t we assume that the search term is a “new” one, and has reached its status simply from going from 0% to being in existence, in which case its growth is essentially infinite at the start?
Let’s say Kate Spade had a summer sale, and sent out postcards to all of its registered clients. For the first time, some those clients hopped online and searched for “Kate Spade Sale”, creating the breakout status listed. Let’s say 100 people did just that.
However, some of those same clients probably also searched for “Kate Spade purse.” However, if 1000 people did that, but “Kate Spade purse” was already receiving 10,000 hits, this hit would only report a 10% growth, with “Kate Spade Sale”, a new search, has an infinite, or “breakout growth.”
In this style of situation, which is all too feasible, we can see the potential for the growth per volume number to differ largely from the actual volume of search.
Here, as a marketing manager, I would probably be included to invest more media in “Kate Spade Purse” than “Sale,” even though the growth purse volume of the latter is higher.
What this tells me is that the use of Google Insight needs to be coordinated with a tool that tells you actual market volume.