How Google Trends can help you understand new markets

Understanding New Markets: How Google Trends can Help

If you’ve recently entered into an overseas market, then understanding exactly what’s going on in terms of the interests and preferences of that market is essential. It’s likely you’ll have to conduct some comprehensive market research, which will be both time-consuming and expensive. But these days there’s a much faster and cost-effective alternative. You can make use of a very handy, completely free-to-use tool called Google Trends.

What is Google Trends?

Google Trends is an online tool that allows you to see how frequently particular search terms are entered into Google’s search engine over a given period of time. You can identify spikes in search volume and change the category, industry, country and language to provide valuable insights into specific geographical areas.

Those insights can help you generate content ideas for new markets based on the most searched terms and give you a better understanding of the vocabulary that local consumers use when searching for the products and services you offer. This can form the basis of your keyword strategy.

Google Trends and your keyword strategy

If you’re entering a new territory, then your keyword strategy will have to be revisited. Some businesses make the mistake of simply translating their existing keywords into the local language, but this can often lead to crucial mistakes in phraseology and vocabulary.

Many overseas markets not only speak different languages but also have different cultural norms and are at varying stages of development, all of which can impact the terms used to search for certain products. Google Trends will allow you to identify exactly which native language terms are used most frequently.

As Google is the most popular search engine in most countries around the world, Google Trends will be able to inform your keyword strategy in many different markets. However, it’s a different story in China, where Baidu is the most popular search engine. Thankfully, there’s a similar tool for Baidu too.

Google Trends and content creation

Another area where Google Trends can be an enormous asset is when creating your content strategy. By understanding what terms your customers are searching for and when, you can create content at the right time of the year that’s based on the search terms consumers use and their topics of interest. It will also provide insights into the aspects of your services or products that consumers want to know more about. You can then create content, such as how-tos, which provide the answers.

Google Trends also gives you the ability to identify seasonality in specific industries and markets. That can be really helpful when planning a content strategy a year or more in advance. You can identify topics that consumers take an interest in at particular times and make sure you have relevant content ready and waiting to be published to grab their attention.

Create keyword-targeted content in your customers’ languages

At Linguistica International, our mother-tongue translators can help you create unique content in your customers’ languages that’s targeted at specific key terms. Find out more about our copywriting and transcreation services and call 02392 987 765 to discuss your project with our team.