Critical Aspect Of Search Data In Digital Market Intelligence

Critical Aspect Of Search Data In Digital Market Intelligence

Search data is some of the most detailed consumer trends and behavioural data. Leveraging search data takes more than having access to “big data” to solve your pressing business problems. Results from the CMO Survey found that only 1.9% of marketing leaders are confident that their companies have the right talent to leverage marketing analytics.

Acquiring search data is not just free, but also straightforward. Google has three free search tools which hold various types of data: category data and an individual website’s data. Search data tells about the consumers’ actions in a specific industry, whilst your own website’s data helps you to understand how your existing consumers behave.

Importance of Google Search Data

Organic search is the largest driver of traffic to websites across the internet, accounting for 53% of organic traffic to websites across the internet. Within the organic search category, Google is far and away the largest Search Engine out there, accounting for 88% of all search queries according to Statista.

Some of the sources of Google Search Data include :

• Google Search Console
• Google Analytics
• Google Trends
• Google Keyword Planner

What is Digital Market Intelligence?

Digital market intelligence collects and analyze thousands to (sometimes) millions of digital data points, from public, ethically sourced data to get to the kind of insights that would traditionally require qualitative surveying.

Market intelligence is the actual data or information that relates to your business’s overall market. it encompasses more than just who your target audience might be. The goal of collecting market intelligence is to help drive data-driven decisions about your company and not just your marketing efforts. Different types of market intelligence and the data points include:

• Industry-level trends
• Competitor analysis
• Consumer insights
• Product sales

Search data is one of the primary inputs in digital market intelligence, as it provides an abundance of real user behaviour data at an extremely low cost.

What can search data tell us about the market

Digital market intelligence can answer a lot of the questions marketing teams and even business leaders run into regularly. Some of the most common and illustrating how DMI can yield quick insights using search data.

• Did the market grow or shrink YoY?
• Is an external factor having an impact?
• How does demand for our brand compare?
• Are we visible enough to drive awareness?

Did the market grow or shrink YoY?

The size of the market is generally referred to as the Total Addressable Market, in a classic consumer insights sense. For quantifying TAM using search data, calculate the total keyword volume for the year across relevant search terms.  Keyword volume can be sourced and exported at scale by using a third-party tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Once you have your TAM total for both years, compare them to quantify the YoY difference. In terms of a calculation, it would look something like this:

[Total volume: Relevant keywords in year A] - [Total volume: Relevant keywords in year B] = YoY change in market size

Is an External Factor Having an Impact?

Business tactics are driving a jump or drop in performance, something that is out of control altogether. For instance, take a simple case of an external factor driving the demand for a service. Specifically, did the Olympics drive an increase in the demand for gymnastics lessons? From the data, it is clear that there was a significant increase in interest in gymnastics lessons during the Olympic window.

It is also invaluable for determining when to lean into specific products, information, or trends through levers like increasing paid spend, launching social campaigns, or shifting the overall marketing mix to meet the moment.

How Does Demand for the Brand Compare?

Search data enabling comparing the active demand for Brand A to the active demand for Brand B to answer this age-old question. You need to pull keyword volumes for any queries that contain Brand A’s name in the string. Then, followed by the same for Brand B over a window of time. Add the keyword volume for each respective brand to come up with the brand total. Calculate the difference for understanding how they stack up.

[Total volume: Brand A branded KWs over X months] - [Total volume: Brand B branded KWs over X months] = Difference in active brand demand

Are we visible enough to drive awareness?

“Share of voice” tells you about the conversation the brand is actually participating in. The measurement takes the total keyword volume a brand is competing for as a percentage of the total volume of possible, relevant keyword opportunities for the brand.

0.44% only users visit the second page of search results by identifying keywords where a brand ranks on page one. Calculate the aggregate volume for these keywords as:

([Brand-eligible keyword volume] / [Landscape keyword volume]) x 100 = [% Share of Voice]