How to Use Google Search Data For Marketing Campaign Ideation

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How to Use Google Search Data For Marketing Campaign Ideation

Bryan Karas

October 15, 2018

Unilever deodorant brand Degree just launched a marketing campaign to end all marketing campaigns – it has every element of creative, the use of influencers, branded hashtag, marketing partnerships, experiential event marketing…everything!

The campaign even capitalizes on the growing wellness and fitness trend…

The marketing team at Degree pretty much pulled out all the stops with this one and it’s quite impressive – but for me, the most interesting aspect of this campaign is how they came up with the idea.

People still use Google?

With all this fancy tech out there these days (FB, Insta, Amazon, Reddit etc) it looks like people still turn to that monster of a search engine we call Google…

And Degree used that data conglomerate at its most basic level – keyword search volume.

According to a recent press release, the deodorant brand is “tapping into the growing popularity of dance and dance classes, with the Google search phrase ‘dance classes near me’ increasing 50% over the past year.”

Well that makes sense – find a trend that aligns with your brand, go over to Google’s Keyword Planner (or some other keyword software tool) and look at search volume growth. If you like what you see – boom – marketing campaign!

You mean, it’s just given to us?

Umm…yeah, so let’s look at some ways to take advantage of the free data we get from Google and come up with your next marketing campaign…

Go to the Keyword Planner and start playing around with Historical Metrics – this will give you data on keyword growth and seasonal trends. Now if you want to find relevant topics that are hot RIGHT NOW head over to Google Trends. Think about publishing a piece of content today – taking advantage of what’s trending – then tying it into a more holistic marketing campaign over time.

Degree’s Dance More Live More campaign is having two pop up dance classes in NYC and LA – but why are the lovely people from the great state of Iowa always left out until the caucus comes to town?

Google Trends lets you see where (i.e., country, city, subregion, or metro) a keyword is most popular and it’ll also let you compare how interest for a particular search query differs in multiple locations. Find locations where your product, product category or brand are trending – if it’s Iowa…go there.

How to Always Come Up With Data-Driven Marketing Campaign Ideas

Coming up with new quality ideas every single day isn’t easy – it’s like asking Van Gogh to paint his Starry Night masterpiece again and again. But in the marketing world it must be done – so here is a blog post that’ll help you come up with new ideas over and over again.