How to Use Google Data to Boost Your Marketing and PR Efforts

A few years ago I created a Halloween-related campaign for a property client which looked at the cities that performed the most ‘spooky searches’ on Google. Using Google Trends and Ads (Keyword Planner) data, I was able to uncover which areas searched for things like “is my house haunted?’ and “how can I contact the dead?’ You can see one of the results for the campaign here.

At the time I remember thinking this approach to content campaigns was quite novel. I hadn’t seen many, if any, campaigns hooking into Google data before. I saw an opportunity and I ran with it. I also remember thinking, very clearly, that this will become ‘a thing’ in the near future, and it has - just call me The Oracle!

Today, barely a day goes by where I don’t come across an article that has leveraged some form of search engine data. It’s becoming the new infographic. Now, you may think I’m saying that like it’s a bad thing, but there are so many advantages to jumping aboard this trend...if you haven’t already.

Why use Google data?

At the heart of journalism and PR is the ability to tell stories in a compelling way, using a credible source. Credibility is key. If your business has a wealth of its own data at its fingertips then that’s fantastic; you’ve already established that you’re an authority on X topic.

What if you don’t own any data though? This is where it’s important to be able to utilize another credible source. My property client wasn’t an expert in all things paranormal, but by leveraging Google data - a credible source in itself - it became the authority. The research had been done thoroughly and the connection between my property client and the campaign was not so far removed a journalist would wonder why on earth they were talking about haunted houses (a sweet spot in PR which we like to call ‘circles of focus’). Credibility breeds trust.

How do these Google tools work?

One of the best things you can use Google data for is to spot growing trends. In the example above, we were able to spot trends in paranormal-related searches in the run-up to Halloween and use it to tell a story.

It’s important to note that Google Trends shows the relative popularity of a search query. Here’s an explanation from its Help Center:

Google Keyword Planner, on the other hand, shows you an estimated total search volume for a given term. If you search for the same topic in both tools you’ll find a difference in how the results are displayed because the tools are different - but they can both be useful.

How should I use Google data?

Google data can provide a wealth of inspiration for marketing and PR campaigns. It can be used to identify seasonal trends to give you a good understanding of what content is likely to perform best and when - and equally, what’s not likely to perform well because there’s just no interest there. This can help your overall content strategy and may determine what you write about in your email newsletters, or blog.

For PR, it’s super useful to be able to identify growing trends that you can then capitalize on by creating content campaigns that support your KPIs.

To give an example - below is a screenshot taken from Google Trends for the word ‘Coronavirus’ over the last 12 months (worldwide). You can see a very clear peak in relative popularity right about the time different countries started announcing their lockdown measures. Makes sense, right?

Of course, Coronavirus is a sensitive topic so must be broached in the right way. A client of mine, in the health and safety sector, monitored this upward trend to determine the right time to begin discussing preventative measures in the workplace, something that was of particular interest to their audience.

As UK lockdown went on, and people were stuck at home, I identified a growing trend in DIY, which formed the basis of a content campaign for a different client.

Taking DIY as an example, you can also use Trends to identify the relative popularity in different cities (so where there is a growing search trend for a particular topic), along with ‘Related Topics’ and ‘Related Queries’ which may provide additional useful data.

In this instance, data from Keyword Planner showed a similar result for terms related to DIY, with over 1.8 million searches in the UK in April 2020 alone.

Where has Google data been used well?

Most recently, we used Keyword Planner to inform a campaign which looked at the most popular recipes during lockdown, across the world. The inspiration for this campaign came after a colleague said they felt everyone was making banana bread right now as that’s all they were seeing on social media! The below graphic was created as a way of visually representing that data.

Here are three other campaigns I’ve enjoyed:

1. Shoe company Clarks delved into Google search data and analyzed 2,496 search terms that parents in the UK have been entering into their browsers to help them teach at home. The campaign broke down the most popular queries per subject and highlighted the city it was most searched for in.

2. Cyber security company Nexor created a whole report based on Google search data, revealing a ‘mad scramble’ for cyber security help and advice at the start of lockdown as businesses adapted to mass remote working.

3. Luxury travel firm Kuoni picked up some great coverage for its campaign looking at the most popular holiday destinations for next year, by looking at search data across different countries. It found that searches for 2021 vacations have increased by 121% compared to the results at the end of March.

As you can see from the examples above, there’s a lot of scope for using Google search data to boost your marketing and PR efforts, and, ironically, Google Trends has become a trend in itself!