Google Trends is a free tool that is easily accessible to view recent marketing trends. Traditional research is time and cost-consuming. Google Trends shows you the trending topics around the world. You can make the search as specific as you want. Define the target audience, regions, dates, and categories to get trends of a specific place.
Google Trends gives you the exact insights into the trends you are looking for. It can let you explore the new trends, you can view the trending research over time. Besides that, it has a year in the search section that lets you view the trend in the past years. It even allows viewing competitors’ positions.
In this article, we will look at how to use Google Trends in marketing. We will also examine how it can help you grow your business. I will share the features I used from Google Trends to grow my business.
- Find a niche with Google Trends
For every business, it’s important to define a niche. Google Trends has made this easier. To find a niche for your business make sure you add a long time span for instance from 2004-present. It will help you to clearly understand the trend regarding your niche. You can see the growth or decline in trend over the past year. Besides that this tool also helps you to view the seasonal trends.
Here is an example of a trending product: Air Fryer
You can clearly see that over the past year the trend of using an air fryer has significantly increased. In the beginning, the curve is flat and now for the past 5 years, the curve is going upward. The reason is that people love to try new things when a specific health benefit is attached to them.
- Relevant product categories
Now that we have created a niche regarding a specific product. Here let’s take the example of an “Air Fryer”. Once you own a niche you can see the related product related to the Air fryer. So, once you type air fryer in Google Trend, scroll down and see the related product. Here you can see the related products below:
To view the related products helps you understand what people are buying similar to that specific product. You can add similar products to your store.
- Keyword research
Keyword research helps you deeply understand not only the target audience preference but also the possible product category you can offer. Here for instance in recent years, the trend of self-care has increased. People prefer to have an activity that keeps them relaxed and active. Many people prefer to do yoga at home by watching and following their preferred trainer on youtube. So if we search “ Yoga Mat” on Google Trends. On the right side of the interface in related queries, you can see the related queries. You can view the related products people are viewing for instance “ eco yoga mat” You can add these to your product category. Besides that, you can also add these keywords to your product page.
- Trend based content
On the homepage of Google Trends, you can view the trending search. These are the hot topics that are in trend at the moment. You can browse the daily trending searches and write content about them.
Below is an example of a trending search on 17 December 2021 in Australia. In the past 24 hours, people were searching about “Liverpool vs Newcastle ” and “The Witcher Season 2”. You either write worth reading articles about these topics or else if you own a sportswear store you can sell something specifically related to the ongoing football match.
- Monitor competitors’ position
Google Trends lets you view the competitor’s position. You can analyze how your competitor is performing against you. In the example below you can see the comparison between Bath and Body Works and Dove. Let’s see how they performed over the years:
Surprisingly, in the years 2004 to 2005 dove was a leading brand, however over the years till date both of the brands are performing at the same level. You can see a rise in Dove in the later years.
This unique feature lets you compare five competitors at once. Deeply understanding the competitors’ position will help you understand where your brand currently falls and what could be the possible measures you can take.
