It was back at the end of December, when the world seemed to slumber between Christmas and the New Year, that I wrote in my blog a few thoughts about how you may be able to measure the return of customer confidence and the ensuing increase in demand.
Sharing a tip for using Google Trends, a free to use tool that allows you to define specific terms used within search and within specific geographic regions, I recommended it as a proxy for measuring levels of demand. As we have been riding the roller coaster of confidence over the last two years, I find it a very useful guide to see how much of the available demand we are picking up.
A wise man once told me that Google is the world’s only database of intention (Matt Illston of Mr Zen www.mrZen.com) and it has stuck with me. When you can see the volume of searches for your industry rise or fall you can adopt your plans accordingly.
The attached image shows the rise, fall, rise, fall (well roller coaster) of key terms in the UK hospitality and travel industry. No wonder we are all exhausted!
This is also a great way to try and benchmark how all of your own search specific marketing is performing. Congratulations if your traffic and business levels are increasing faster than the industry trends – Time to investigate carefully if they are not.
Hope this is helpful and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like to talk through it in more details – joe@joelynchconsulting.co.uk