Data-driven strategies using customer intent trends | Part 2

Following on from the first part of this article, we explore the benefits of share of voice data and search trends for shaping successful strategies.

Using share of voice data to identify players who understand customer needs

To understand who was capitalising on the most valuable categories and trends, we looked to share of voice across the market landscape.

As with the trend charts seen in the previous post, we used Pi Market Intelligence, a platform which captures the entire search landscape, our biggest source of customer intent data, to reveal value and market share insight.

This chart:

• Superdrug leads the way in the beauty market, particularly across the 'Makeup' category, which we already know to be hugely valuable and growing.
• There are a variety of players appearing: retailers, publishers, department stores and supermarkets.

SEO share of voice data enables you to...

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1. Open up new opportunity to the rest of the business

Share of voice data (seen below) can reveal so many fascinating and, most importantly, lucrative insights about our market.

A single chart can give clarity to current opportunity and help us fuel strategy across multiple channels.

- Advertising: Affiliates performing in our sector can become new advertising partners.

- Buying and merchandising: Marketplaces, aggregators and retailers can be scoped out to resell our products and services.

- PR: Editorial sites with a huge share of our market can become new PR contacts.

- Content: Non-profit / governmental advice and info sites can provide skyscraper content to inspire our new blogs and landing pages.

- Marketing: Social media platforms performing in our space can tell us where we need to be to reach our audience.

When we consider all of this, suddenly search isn't just a conversation for the SEO's, but for the whole company.

Knowing share of voice across our entire market opens up all this new opportunity.

2. Discover competitor insight and benchmark share

Share of voice data can also help us review our competitors strategies, recycle working formulas and use share of voice snapshots to analyze, test and benchmark our share over time.

This type of top-level insight allows us to speak the language of the board, helps us to justify budget allocation and enables search to be taken seriously throughout the business.

The winners prioritise customer behaviour and share of voice data

Read more here on the players who use behaviour data intelligently and put their customer at the heart of the strategy, to win commercially in their sector.

Using search trends to plan strategies: Plan Influence Peak Repeat

Moving over to retail fashion (‘Festival clothes’), and from share of voice back to search trend data, we show how different teams throughout the business can activate tactics as part of a wider strategy, using a ‘Plan, Influence, Peak, Repeat’ formula.

SEO and content | The team

Plan:

• The down-time phase
• Search volumes and interest is low.
• The perfect time to curate content and optimise content to avoid issues further down the line, such as duplication.
• The perfect time to publish content early, to build traction in time for the next phase.

Influence:

• The research phase
• The sum of searches during the research phase far outweigh the searches achieved at peak time. Therefore, huge opportunity is available.
• Don’t wait for the peak, as you’ll be missing out on big opportunity.
• Ensure content is optimised and visible before this stage.

Peak:

• The sales phase
• All hard work should have been undertaken before this phase.

Repeat:

• The drop phase
• Identify whether this is a one-off peak or a recurring trend.
• Undertake hygiene and site maintenance.

Other digital teams | The department

Plan:

• The low-hanging fruit phase
• PR: Use share of voice seo data (seen above) to spot opportunity for drumming up interest via PR activity i.e. discover strong publications, affiliate sites etc.
• Social: Identify social influence avenues (i.e. bloggers)

Influence:

• The cost efficiency phase
• PPC: Crucial to the digital department, the research phase provides huge opportunity as CPC rates remain low. This means you can build up a cookie pool in a really efficient way - rather than bidding at peak times when competition rates are through-the-roof.

Peak:

• The retargeting phase
• Display and email: Now that you’ve built up your cookie pool, you can start retargeting any customers who haven’t converted with display ads and email campaigns.

Repeat:

• The drop phase.
• Identify whether this is a one-off peak or a recurring trend.

Teams beyond digital | The whole organisation

Plan:

• The trading plan phase
• Identify any repeat trend patterns to inform trading this year

Influence:

• The merchandising phase
• Ensure all products are front of store, and front of screen to tie in offline and online channels in time for customer research.

Peak:

• The sales phase
• All hard work should have been undertaken before this phase.

Repeat:

• The discount phase
• Know when to discount and clear stock at the right time. Avoid triggering discounts prematurely with historical trend data, by recognising any red herrings or double peaks.

Couple customer behaviour with other trusted datasets

To further enhance our data-drive strategy, we can integrate our customer behaviour data with other sources. This enables us to:

• Give greater weight and currency to our insight.
• Provide a fuller version of the truth.
• Improve organisational buy-in.
• For more information, read about our joint report with leading social-listening platform Brandwatch, here.

To summarise

• Think of the customer needs first, and tech later
• Use search trends as customer research data
• Look at value not just volume
• Get organisational buy-in for your data, for aligned planning
• Integrate with other datasets for a truer view of customer intent

Watch the talk here and view the slides here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8KUeauRl8U&feature=youtu.be

https://www.slideshare.net/pidatametrics/datadriven-strategies-using-customer-intent-trends-sophie-moule-figaro-digital-marketing-summit

Alternatively, watch the talk and slides side by side on the Figaro Digital website here.