Good marketing research is not only hard to come by, but can be pretty costly, too. High cost barriers can discourage startups from exploring research that can help their marketing programs. Thankfully, Google offers several free research tools that can help inform marketing strategies for companies of all sizes.
Check out the following tools if you’re looking to amp up your marketing strategy:
1. Think Insights
Think Insights is a research hub that provides insights into 14 different industries. It provides case studies, articles, infographics, interviews, research, webinars, and other insightful content.
2. Google Trends
Google Trends is a robust tool that provides several pieces of trend information about how people search. You can see the dips and inclines around particular searches. This can provide popularity insight around your brand or product category, among other things. It also provides insight around searches for images, news, products, and YouTube topics.
Additionally, you can see related searches and what geographical areas see the highest and lowest amount of searches–which can help inform local marketing strategies. For marketers that are interested in getting in front of topics that have rising demand and popularity, check out the “rising search section.”
3. Google Keyword Tool
Google’s Keyword Tool can help provide calculations on how often a search occurs for a topic, and how competitive it is. There are several ways brands can use this to help identify brand popularity and category demand—it’s not just a tool for informing search budgets. In fact, many marketers utilize search volumes to inform broader ROI models and businesses cases.
Some marketers look to see what phrases users search with, and the marketers use those phrases to dictate broader creative choices. For instance, if users are searching more often for “Car Insurance” than “Auto Insurance,” car insurance may be used on site copy and video transcripts.
This competitive metric provides insight into how many brands are bidding for presence around searches. This helps inform how feasible it is to get in front of searches. This can also be used to help inform how competitive a given subject is.
Finally, the tool provides insights into other related searches that can help inform new content ideas.
Google is constantly expanding its research offerings. These are three of their most popular tools. Startups should make it a point to regularly leverage these tools and work with their marketers to stay in tune with the wide array of research.