William Charlwood

Here’s a quick, cheap and simple way of doing some online market research.

Suppose I want to sell widgets (they seem to be quite popular after all) then should I stock red, green, blue, and yellow widgets or just red ones? Which widget is most popular?

What I can do is set up an AdWords ad promoting my widgets and then run a campaign using the keywords “red widgets”, “green widgets”, “blue widgets” and “yellow widgets”.

After a while, I’ll start to get three sorts of data back from Google.

First, I’ll see how many searches there were for each keyword and in general the number of searches done relates to the market interest. So if more people search for red widgets than blue widgets, I’ll know that there is more interest in red widgets.

Second, I’ll see which keywords generate the most traffic which will give me a better idea about the potential demand for my widgets: people who click on ads are more likely to be interested in buying widgets than people who just search for the things, especially if I include the word “free” as a negative keyword in my campaign.

Finally, I’ll start to see where my ads rank for each keyword which, if I’ve set the bid prices to the same level for all my keywords, will tell me some interesting things about what my competition is doing.

For example, if the keyword “red widget” causes my ad to rank lower than for the keyword “green widget” then assuming my competitors are smart, it is likely that red widgets are more popular and profitable.

What should I do about this? Stock red ones.

If you are thinking of opening a store selling branded goods such as motorbikes, a quick bit of market research like this can tell you which brand to run with: Honda, Harley, BMW etc. You clearly need to take into account local factors here and that is something you can also do with Google.