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Because knowing is half the battle

 

Businesses today cannot expect to attract new customers with the same services or products that have been offered 10 years ago. The only way to keep up with the ever-changing consumers’ needs is to constantly analyse what is trending.

Becoming the go-to source for a desirable product is the secret recipe for generating sales leads. For example, if you specialise in health and beauty products, offering exactly the type of products your customers are talking about will set your business apart from the rest.

Don’t fall into the trap of discovering what you’re lacking only when competitors steal your sales.

If you already have a variety of products on your e-commerce site, a single boost to a specific trending item can improve overall sales. As today’s product discovery and purchasing processes take place mostly on the internet (especially on mobile devices), business owners today can easily access, collect and record data throughout the customer’s entire shopping journey.

In this article, we’ll examine the advantages of utilising free tools such as Google Trends, AdWords and Google Search Console to decide what you should sell.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a fantastic tool for market research. It offers visual graphs of local and regional search queries of your choosing. It collects data that spans years, so you can easily see if a market is trending up or down. For example, here are the steps if you are considering boosting skin care products on your site.

Step 1: Observe the customers’ interest for cosmetics in Malaysia

The graph below shows an upward trend for the cosmetics search queries from 2005 to present in Malaysia. You can try out different search terms to get the most comprehensive data.

Step 2: Develop business ideas by looking up related searches

As you can see below, the top search queries provide wonderful insights on which products or brands that cosmetics buyers are looking for specifically. Korean skin care products seem dominant compared to cosmetics from other countries.

Google Keyword Planner

You don’t have to set aside a huge budget to run AdWords campaigns in order to make the most out of Google Keyword Planner. In fact, this freemium tool is the ultimate resource to knowing your customers. The whole idea of doing keyword research is to discover what people are looking for as well as the popularity of search terms.

There are three ways you can do market research using Google Keyword Planner.

• Search for new keyword and ad group ideas;
• Find out search volume for a list of keywords;
• Get new keyword ideas.

E-commerce platforms selling skincare products can find out which Korean brands (for example, Innisfree, Laneige, and Sulwhasoo) are the most popular. Using Google Keyword Planner, I found that in Malaysia, search volume for Innisfree grew 175 per cent in 2015 compared to 2014. Meanwhile, searches for Laneige and Sulwhasoo grew almost 50 per cent.

Google Search Console

After you’ve done research on what product to sell and how to market it, you can monitor the performance of your campaign using the Google Search Console.

With this tool, you’ll gain access to your site’s search traffic metrics, including where your site ranks on the search page for certain keywords. You’ll also know if customers are actually clicking on your landing page.

Some data you can get include:

• Clicks to your web page;
• Impressions you’re getting on Google;
• Click through rate (CTR);
• Your sites’ positions in the search results.

It is important to keep the CTR rate as high as possible to ensure the product you are boosting is profitable. By keeping a track record of the search traffic data, you will be able to adjust your approach to the right direction. Pay attention to the impression-to-click ratio for a specific keyword you’re targeting.

The takeaway

With the availability of these sophisticated and free online tools, it’s never been easier for your business to adopt a data-driven approach.

In fact, as the online retail landscape becomes increasingly crowded and competitive, using data to your advantage has never been more important.

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The views expressed here are of the author’s, and e27 may not necessarily subscribe to them. e27 invites members from Asia’s tech industry and startup community to share their honest opinions and expert knowledge with our readers. If you are interested in sharing your point of view, submit your post here.

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