Using Share of Search for brand tracking
Share of Search is a very versatile metric, but when not familiar with it, brand tracking is the best place to start. DeLaval International started using Share of Search as a metric for just that purpose some 6 months ago and expanded it from pure brand tracking to also observing categories.
“We used to measure brand tracking by using extensive periodic surveys,” explains Luke McKee, Global Head of Brand at DeLaval International, “but the problem was that this is very time intensive, rather costly and by the time the data was processed, you were already running behind on the facts. When looking for alternatives, we came across Share of Search and decided to give it a try.”
The main question DeLaval wanted to find out was the general awareness of its brands versus the competitors, but rather quickly realised that there was more to the metric than just awareness. It also enabled them to get a better understanding of where their business is going and give a more “realtime” view on their market performance.
“We started correlating the Share of Search data with the market share data we obtained and saw a strong correlation when we compared to our biggest competitors,” McKee continues, “This was a great insight as we can become more agile. Instead of getting updates once a year about our market performance versus competition, we can get it almost in real time.”
Besides looking at the overall brand performance, DeLaval also started using Share of Search to look at particular categories within their business. Selling a broad range of products from robotic milking machines to detergents for the dairy industry, DeLaval plays on multiple fields within the dairy industry.
The decision to split up the Share of Search overviews came relatively quickly and rather naturally when facing a lot of competitors in different fields. Selecting the right competitors is therefore also what takes a bit of time at the beginning when initiating Share of Search as part of the marketing metrics.
“The first couple of months you might have to play around with competitors and search terms to get the right view, but once you pass that point there are a ton of opportunities that immediately present themselves,” says Luke, “We have been working with it for 6 months now and are still pretty new to it, but continue to find new ways of using the data to gain insights. Beyond what we do today we also see potential to gain insights into consumer trends and measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns.”
The biggest advantages, though, according to Luke, is the simplicity of the metric and the fact that it is automatically standardized across the globe. Beyond that, it is almost real time and very cost effective compared to the ways their research was done before.
“The challenges with surveys is that it’s hard to standardize asking questions in different countries and keeping bias out. Looking at behavioural data like search makes it a lot easier to get true comparative figures. I still believe surveys have their purpose, but probably more when we want to investigate certain precise, in-depth topics,” concludes McKee
Getting started with Share of Search is very simple, but requires a bit of thinking at the beginning. If you want to have some useful tips on how to get started and what to think of when choosing competitors, here is some inspiration